David Rosenthal How I Got The Rainbow Gig I'm wondering if we can take you back to when you're a younger man and Rainbow was pretty much your first big gig. Did you ever get feedback on what made you stand out and how were you able to win that gig? Sure, I had heard from a friend at Berkeley of who knew a friend of Ritchie's that he was looking for keyboard players so I sent him a cassette, that's showing my age, but it was a cassette of my cover band at the time playing a bunch of progressive rock tunes that we used to cover and on one side of the tape and the other side was my senior classical recital from Berkeley which was all lit pieces and really complex pieces and I sent that because I knew that Ritchie was into classical so that's what in his ears perked up when he heard that combination and that's why he invited me to audition. So I went down there with my keyboards that I had at the time. I certainly did my homework, step one was Rainbow has five or six albums out already with three or four different keyboardists so I'm going to really listen to this carefully and see what do these different keyboardists have in common stylistically because that's obviously what Ritchie likes in a keyboardplayer. To wrap my head around what he was possibly about because I'd never met him before. So I did that and then I brought my keyboard rig at the time which was a far feast. I'm a broke musician at Berkeley, I had no money, I had a Farfisa organ, I had a Fender Rhodes and a Roland SH-1000 synth so I bring that stuff with me because that's what I knew and I was prepared to do the songs that they had asked me to learn. I don't remember what they were but I get down there with my stuff and then they say okay well that's nice that you have that stuff but we want you to play on Ritchie's stuff and he has a B3, a Mini Moog and a Clavinet and all the sounds that he liked and that were common on Rainbow records. Now I've never played any of these keyboards before, I knew how they operated theoretically because I had studied but I'd never played a B3 before, I'd never played a Mini Moog before or a Clavinet but I went up there and I just kind of went for it and a lot of the first day was jamming and stuff. Ritchie immediately picked up that I was good at answering a riff he would play me, I would play it back on the Moog and then he would come up with a couple of riffs and he would show to me and you know let's try jamming on this and I would learn it right away and so he liked so anyway the first day went really well and that earned me a call back. So the next day it was between me and one other guy and they decided that they were going to give each of us a three-hour slot and Ritchie would then choose between the two of us. I was given the evening slot, the other guy would be in the afternoon which gave me the whole next day to say okay what can I do to get an edge here. So I got on the phone to all the Sam Ashes on Long Island which is where the audition was and I found one that had a Mini Moog on the floor because it was still kind of current and I hopped in my car and went there and made friends with the salesman. I told him what my situation was and he said go over and gave me a set of headphones and I sat there and I worked on the Mini Moog all afternoon. So when I went back for my call I was now able to get a whole bunch of patches. I had a feel for what he was looking for so again any way that you can get an edge in these situations so they heard a difference in the sounds I was getting from one day to the next and I found out a year later, Roger Glover told me that there was one key point aside from all these other things. That was that during my callback thing, he said okay so let's imagine we're on stage now in front of 20.000 people and Ritchie just broke a string, there's nothing happening on stage so you have to fill space. Go! So I just started playing something, I played like a riff thing on the Hammond and I did a few solos on the Mini Moog and just played some things, I played did something funky on the Clavinet, whatever. I didn't think anything of it but Roger told me a year later I was the only guy that actually played. He said everybody else that when they asked that, they had a different excuse as to oh don't worry about me. I'll have something ready if that happens and oh yeah I'll work something up. And he said I was the only guy that just started playing. I thought nothing of it, I was asked to play so I played but they were looking to see if I was fearless or if I would crack under pressure or however you want to put it but I thought nothing of it at the time but that was one of the things that that helped me to go with it. Then I also found out later that because I was 20 years old when I auditioned and got the gig and the manager thought I was too young to go on the road and to do this and Ritchie was like no he's my guy, I'm okay with it. I think he's going to be great and he can do it and they, I found out later, had a big argument about it and thankfully Ritchie won the argument and I got the gig and I ended up in the band. What was it like at such a young age to be part of something so big and so successful? I think if I would have thought about it my mind might have been blown but you can't think about it you just you just do and I had done the "Straight Between The Eyes" album, Ritchie and I really connected musically at that time. I made that album when I was 20 and then the tour started when I was 21 the next year and I went back and learned the catalog and all the stuff that he wanted to play and I really get what he was looking for and what he wanted in a keyboard and it was very natural for me. It wasn't like I was trying to be something that I wasn't. I have rock and roll running through my veins, I grew up on it and and it was very natural for me to get those kinds of sounds and I had a good time doing it. I got to learn these songs and now we're going to play in front of 20.000 people and we're going to do this and it was a whole lot of fun. Don't get me wrong but I really never had a chance to stop and reflect but I think as life goes on and I look back on that time period, the more years I get away from it and gets further in the rear view mirror the more I appreciate it how much fun it was and how lucky I was to get a break and opportunity like that at such a young age because I know so many other musicians, brilliant players, great musicians who never got that one opportunity to go out and show themselves on a world stage or in a really big gig and it's not from a lack of musicianship, it's just they just never got the opportunity so I don't take anything for granted, I'm very lucky that I got a chance to do that and I'm grateful to Ritchie to this day that he took a chance on a 20 year old kid and gave me a shot because all the rest of my career might not have happened the way it did if I didn't have that one first opportunity. © Keyboard Chronicles - September 15, 2022