Joe Lynn Turner Interview Classic Album Review When you when you first started in Rainbow, is it true that Ritchie used to put a lot of pressure on you not to be so theatrical in your performance? Well, I was originally a guitar player and singer in Fandango. I played lead guitar and with another guitarist named Ricky Blakemore. Think about that synchronicity, that's pretty strange. So when you take the guitar off your hands get really big, you don't know what to do with yourself because you're now in front of a mic so you have to sort of learn your performance and everything and Ritchie was actually a big help in that, I have to admit, I credit him for that and give them a lot of respect. He calls it cabaret, but being an American I was all out to entertain more sort of halfway between David Lee Roth and something but I wasn't that stalwarts doom and gloom type of a singer. But I learned a lot through that. Would you describe the song 'Death Alley Driver' as a metaphor for the Rock and Roll Lifestyle? Yes, absolutely. I mean 'Death Alley' was a a highway that I used to travel down. It's actually called route one and nine in New Jersey. Okay, that's a truck route and a friend of mine and I used to travel this route in order to pick up drugs like cocaine and things. Seriously we were very young but still... and this highway was always very nefarious because it was very seedy, prostitutes, and motels all along the way and, burger joints and very seedy. So I was just thinking... I used to call it 'Death Alley'... like it was crazy we got to go take that route again so when I was coming up the lyrics for this I figured it's the epitome of a rock star's life, white lines and the whole bit, the stop signs and all that and the alliteration to fast living obviously. I was the one who actually came up with the video and said Ritchie you're in a black car, you're the death, you're chasing me on the bike and the whole bit and it did very well for us. Didn't that video maybe win an award or something? Yeah, I think that one did. You weren't actually in a lot of your videos, Rainbow weren't actually in the lot there in their videos. We were in the video but in the graveyard scene and things like that. We were... I mean we didn't like to do videos and yet videos were necessary at the time. We didn't care about awards, we didn't care about videos. We were always there for the fans. The fans like it but it's the same attitude Blackmore has with the Hall of Fame. He really couldn't care less, he was never to give a gold record or anything like that. It didn't matter to him. He would always say it's all about the music. That all that counts. I was reading Martin popoff's book and he says Ritcie Blackmore was a big Abba fan and you actually as a band met Abba. Well, just wondering if there was any jamming? Oh no, it was basically in a club drinking and things but it wasn't a studio or anything but he was a huge at the fan. It shocked me really because I would be like you're kidding, "Dancing Queen" and all those songs. And he goes I love melody and he really does, at least when I was in the band, He loved the songs. He wanted to play for the songs. He liked the structure of the songs, the lyrics were important. "Street of Dreams", things like that really affected him, very deeply. When we would come up with things like that and we took a lot of flack for abuse commercial but as Jimi Hendrix said there's no crime in half of your song played in the Jukebox. Just means you're popular. So we were poppy, we were popular and we got on the charts and we sold more records. We played more arenas and we did what we were supposed to do. That's what I was hired for bringing that melodic... and that's the same thing with Malmsteen, I was to bring him into a song because he's a great player but no songs. I read actually that as a part of Fandango you actually supported the Beach Boys is that right? I wonder if you have any interesting Brian anecdotes? Oh yeah, we were [laughs]. Well they didn't hang around with us or anything. They were kind of like friendly but right back to the dressing rooms, into the limos, that type of thing, because Fandango would be the eternal opening act we were. We did The Outlaws, The Allman Brothers, we played the cowboy circuits as we called it. And then we got the Chicago Fest which is a three-day festival and our equipment... eighty thousand dollars, back in that day was a lot of money, it's I mean it's a lot of money but that benefit now it would be three four times as much.... and all of our stuff got stolen from the truck. They took the whole truck, these thieves and also by the way I believe Billy Joel equipment was stolen, and Jethro Tull's equip[ment was stolen. You supported Jethro Tull? Well, we were on the same stage. It was a festival, we would open up in broad daylight, the rest of the festival progressed of course and the bigger bands would come on. I'm a huge Tull fan. I was too. I was just a big fan. As a supporting act to these bigger acts did you learn a lot from them as a performer? The whole experience you see, you cut your teeth on all that. The whole experience, all those experiences really start to shape you. You watch them on stage, you see what they do, you understand the songwriting angles that they have, you analyze everything, so I'd have to say that some total of its parts that's how you become who you are. Just living life experience like that, absolutely. Roger Glover said "Bent Out Of Shape is Rainbow's best sounding album, Martin Popoff describes it as elegantly gloomy". To what extent do you agree? I don't know about gloomy but I think maybe Roger's coming from a producer's point of view... you know what I mean? Because it's a very well produced album as far as it sounds. We were at Sweet Silence in Copenhagen and we had done most of "Straight Between The Eyes" there but we also went up to Morin Heights. So the first album... I think he means production wise, now perhaps Martin is talking about song material, I don't know... "Can't let you go" that was an absolutely good video wasn't it? I don't know... "Stranded", "Street of Dreams", gloomy? It's really odd. I love Martin, I know him forever but at the same time he's a critic... And you know what critics are... I never understood it as gloomy. I didn't think we had a gloomy period. No, it's got some fun stuff on it. You guys were into some pretty dark stuff at the time, especially when that album came out. He feels that's reflected in the in the video "Can't Let You Go", that's off that album, isn't it? We did dabble in certain occultisms and things like that that's no secret with Ritchie and stuff. We all learned our lesson with that and we're coming with a higher power there. If there's black, there's white, if there's up, there's down, that's spirituality. We've got both anticipants and they both are powerful and that's exactly what's happening in the world. This brings us back, this Earth is controlled actually. This is Satan's playground, this is more the devil's workshop right here. This is sort of a prison planet we're on, and I think the lessons that we're supposed to learn to gain that higher spirituality and evolutions of soul of consciousness is where we're at. So it's a rough go right now. Wasn't there a seance or something with Jimmy Page? I'm just wondering how did that go. Frightening as usual, a little bit of poltergeist, flying of the books off the shelves and things like that, we used to stay in the castles... the Schlosses in Germany Ritchie would insist. We'd be on the tour bus, very funny, and our road manager Colin Hart would say "Right then, who wants to go stay in, let's say, the Holiday Inn, running water and running blondes and brunettes and this and that, and then the castle". Ritchie looked at me and go "You're in the castle" and I go "Alright". I'm in the castle, they might have a candle going up these stone steps to my room, at least the seances in these castles, and one night we were sitting out drinking until about three four in the morning and in the vestibule down below, we must have been on third or fourth floor, and there's a piano and the night watchman was telling stories and all of a sudden the piano started to play. The night watchman said that the manager had died just from a heart attack at that piano. We started to go "Okay." We were playing with it in and out, but at the same time it was it's frightening because you don't realize that the power that the dark side has. It really has just in fact just as much, if not more, power right now because you're invoking it and that's what's happening here right now. That's the Belly of the Beast. We're invoking these Dark Towers and now we're in a fix. Now we're in the belly of the system and the system is trying to take us over and control us. This is a very desperate time for hHumanity. We may not pull out of it this time. It's happened before throughout history but humanity is always come through. But right now, I think a lot of people in this world have gotten too comfortable and they're not awake enough to realize slowly that.... you know the story of The Boiled Frog where they put the frog in the water and it's you don't realize it's boiling then they turn up the heat more and more, day by day, until it's boiled. That stuff. I'm curious actually with the Deep Purple reunion of '85 and was Rainbow shut down to facilitate that reunion? I'm not sure what you mean by that... shut down? They wanted Blackmore back for the Purple reunion. Was it engineered? Absolutely! I knew about it. I knew exactly.... In fact I felt very proud that I was bringing them back with Gillan becauseI had no compunction. I was hoping to a solo album. I was fine with it. No problem at all, so I was very aware of it. Absolutely! I knew the deal with BMG had happened and I was basically told that this was going down and I said I'm not going to stand in your way. I think Ian Paice was very kind about it because he wrote, I think it was in Fireworks magazine, I've actually saved the clip, where he said Joe was kind of like the middle man. The guy that held it together because without Joe doing that record, then Ritchie would have been off someplace and we would have never actually been able to get back together with Gillan to do "Perfect Strangers" and so on and so forth. And I was very proud of that because that was actually the truth. And I had a great time with Purple and I still think we have a very good record with "Slaves and Masters". Very good! I remember the Rainbow reunion, I think it was about 2015. As a fan I envisaged a kind of a setup where you would be involved, where a Graham Bonnet would be involved, do you not feel it was a missed opportunity with what we ended up with? My comments have already come out with that and some people, I think most people agree with me, but at the same time I'm not looking for agreement. I'm just looking my opinion is that it was a letdown because the legacy is very important, at least it was to me, and it is to me, we worked very hard in those days to keep up our side of the Rainbow. You know Rainbow had three or four incarnations and like Purple said 20 or 5... 25 incarnations. We were very proud of it and I think by... you know I use the word cheap imitation. And I have to say that's what I said because it just wasn't there. We were a great band, listen to any live videos or tapes, the band this kicking and was really good. To me a reunion is not a reunion, Ritchie was the only real member that was there. It was kind of just Blackmore's Night meets Ritchie Blackmore playing Purple Rainbow songs. I was let down by it and I think most of the fans were. I think they went to the songs of course, the songs were great. I don't think the performances were all that great. I saw the show in London and I came away thinking it lacked something, it lacked certain anything. It was okay to see him with the electric guitar but it just didn't feel particularly great to be honest... it wasn't Rainbow no that's not all that's not what we were go back and look at "Straight Between The Eyes" in San Antonio or any of the videos that we did live. Kicking! I mean: Kicking! He was on top of his game, Blackmore. We pushed each other, we really did we every night. We go out there and we'd push each other. A smoking drummer, everybody, Don Airey, Dave Rosenthal or whatever. Killer players and we brought it home. Every night our performances was spot on. Very rarely could we even have a little bit of an off night, because we were so excited about what we were doing with the musicians we were playing with and the songs that we had to perform. So no, I didn't have the live that it needed. I had all these videos back in the day You see? Again, that's the truth, There's a difference between the truth and a fabrication. So that's the last incarnation of Rainbow. Kind of a bit of a forgery a fabrication you think? Where's the album? Where's the songs? Where's the touring? Where's the sweat, blood and tears of it? Is it real? © Classic Album Review - January 19, 2023