Greg Smith Surreal Rock Star Moment What was your most surreal rock star moment on the road? Who was it with and what was it? It's always cool meeting people and stuff like that. I'm meeting Jimmy Page, I grew up as a crazy Led Zeppelin fan but honestly I think some of the most surreal stuff for me is actually being on stage with these guys. I mean when I was playing with Rainbow I'll never forget there was one time and it was on the American tour, we're playing 'Mistreated', you know an old Rainbow Deep Purple song and Ritchie was just feeling it and he was on his knees and he had that Strat, rolling it against the monitors and shit like that and I'm just looking at him and I'm up there laying it down and I'm going like 'holy crap'. And then I think to myself what series of events happened that he's there and I'm here, you know what I mean, because I was a crazy Deep Purple fan. Sometimes I'd have those moments and then you gotta shake it off and go I'm hired to do a job, I'll freak out later. [Laughter] There's still the 15 year old kid inside of me. I grew up with all these guys man and I'm still huge fans of them. Like even Ronnie Dio. Ronnie was a good friend of mine but before I ever met Ronnie and being a big Deep Purple and Rainbow fan. I mean I was a 15 year old kid with the albums man going 'holy crap', man Ronnie Dio, Jesus you know, unreal. I'm playing with Alice Cooper at Sweden Rock Festival and we go to the hotel where everybody's hanging out at the bar and there's Ronnie at the bar. I'm with Eric Singer and he goes "oh, you know Ronnie, there he's at the bar" and I'm like "No no, I don't know Ronnie". Eric goes "Oh, come on let's go say hi to him". I was like "No, I don't want to bother him", and he goes "What are you crazy, come on, let's go". So he brings me over, introduced me to Ronnie and Ronnie's like "Oh man, nice to finally meet you" and I'm like "What??" Like you know who I am? [Laughter] So we start talking and shit and it was like I knew the guy for 20 years, he was such a sweetheart and we started talking about treating Rainbow stories and this and that, and road stories and playing with Ritchie and you know then after a while Eric was like all right well I'm out of here. Ronnie and I just hit it off and then the very next year we're out with Alice and Dio was opening up for Alice and then we just connected even more and we hung out every day and it was just surreal. You know getting to know him too, I'm a huge fan and I'm happy I got to know the guy. How did you meet and get in to play with Ritchie Blackmore? By the time I got to play with Ritchie I'd already pretty much played with a lot of guys in his band, Dave Rosenthal, Chuck Bürgi, Joe Lynn Turner, so I heard all the Ritchie stories. I knew exactly how to deal with him and by the time he was putting together Rainbow. They had been using somebody from Long Island that didn't quite work out and the drummer, John O'Reilly, who I've been playing with in Joe Lynn Turner's band recommended me and he said to Ritchie "Oh man, he's played with Alice Cooper and Blue Oyster Cult, all sorts of bands and he's professional" and Ritchie was like "Yeah, I think we'll give him a try". I was playing at a club in Long Island and Doogie and John O'Reilly came early, Doogie came up on stage with the band that I was playing with and we started singing together and I remember seeing like, there's a window, this purple Mercedes pulls up outside. It's Ritchie and Candy at the time and he's listening and I could see he's just checking it out and he sees me and Doogie harmonizing together and singing together and then he parks instead of leaving. He parked and he came in. It was like 'All right, I got a chance'. Then so we finished our set and Doogie brings me over to meet him and say hello and everything like that. And at the time I was brewing my own beer with a buddy of mine on Long Island and I'd like him to try some of my beer. He goes you brew your own beer? Yeah, would you like some, it's right here. So I poured him from my own beer and he liked that. He likes things that out of the ordinary, you're weird, you know what I mean. So that to him was a little out of the ordinary and he liked it. He invited me to go up and jam with the band at a rented mansion that they had in the Hudson Valley. I went up there, jammed with them, we just did mostly blues as a matter of fact. I have the recording of that on my computer which is obviously pretty badass. Doogie sent it to me. Doogie had a copy of it and sent it to me. We just did mostly blues and really not much Rainbow stuff and at the end of the the whole jam he was like "Right, if you want the job, you've got it" and then he left.... What the hell just happened? I mean do I have the gig? Am I in the band? What's going on? I don't you know. I still didn't know for about three weeks whether I was in the band or not you know. © The Hangout - April 13, 2021