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Original releasedate: 31 January 1980

This is a rough'n'ready translation of the magazine which was original in the Dutch language.
Besides this is only a summary as only the most interesting parts are translated.
From the Headoffice
From the headoffice we wish everybody a happy New Year. Everyone should know by now that Rainbow will play the Benelux during the first weekend of February.



RAINBOW U.S.A LIVE REPORT DEC. 1979

BLACKMORE THE MAN IN (THE) BLACK !!!


Rainbow's albums, Deep Purple, Ronnie Dio, rock and roll and even Life itself all come under the hammer as Ritchie Blackmore gives his frankest-ever interview to SYLVIE SIMMONS in Los Angeles

NO MATTER what he does", Ronnie Dio once said of Blackmore, "Ritchie always comes out all right. If he fell into a vat of shit he'd turn out to be wearing a rubber suit."

What usually happens is that Blackmore just tries to avoid the shit as much as possible, especially the vat of the stuff affectionately known as the music business, and anyway, rubber suits just don't happen to be a particular perversion of a guitarist who's into regression and reincarnation but doesn't chose to return to the 15th century because they didn't have a cure for syphilis in those days, even if he could upset the status quo by playing long and heavy metal solos on the lute.

Like the audience at tonight's show, Blackmore is strictly a whisky-and-woman man, I gather, who likes observing people from the vantage point he's created by his image as a moody bastard, and putting them on the spot when he meets them face to face. The waitress in the Smugglers Inn bar is treated to a monologue about the cancer-causing agents in the beers she has to offer. He has a dark sense of humour: sort of Monty Python on voodoo. I sense a predilection for torturing small animals at an early age. "Actually I threw stones through people's windows and fought a lot". I stand corrected.

This is how an interview started, titled "THE MAN IN (THE) BLACK" was published in Sounds (15.12.79). If you want to read the original interview with The Man in Black, then click here

On this spot the first part of this interview was placed. The second part two of this interview was published in "Over The Rainbow #4".



Q's & A's
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

QUESTIONS BY MEMBERS


"STILL I'M SAD" "Still I'm Sad" is written by Samwell-Smith/McCarty. I was wondering if these are members of that a band and on which album is this song?"

Martin de Jong, Haarlem

Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty were members of the YARDBIRDS, a band who had several hits in the sixties. "Still I'm sad" was a hit in 1965 and reached the top 20 in the Veronica top 40. The Yardbirds had different line-ups, i.e. Jeff Beck was one of the guitarplayers. "Still I'm sad" is still available on vinyl in Holland on the "16 GOUDEN SUCCESSEN" album, released by Charly, distributed by CNR-Weesp. Catalogue number: 541.671.

"Still I'm sad" is also covered by Boney M. It's on their second album "Love for sale", this sounds exactly like the version by the Yardbirds, while both Rainbow versions are totally different to the original.



M.M. READERS POLL 1979
Best Group

  1 (10) LED ZEPPELIN
  2 ( --) POLICE
  3 ( --) DIRE STRAITS
  4 (  3) Yes
  5 (  1) Genesis
  6 (  5) Boomtown Rats
  7 ( --) Who
  8 ( --) Supertramp
  9 (  4) E.L.O.
10 ( --) Ian Dury's Blockheads
12 Rush
13 Thin Lizzy
17 RAINBOW
18 Motörhead

Singer

  1 (  4) ROBERT PLANT
  2 (  1) JON ANDERSON
  3 (  2) DAVID BOWIE
  4 (  5) PETER GABRIEL
  5 (  8) IAN DURY
  6 (  6) Phil Collins
  7 ( ..) Sting
  8 (10) Bob Geldof
  9 ( ..) Gary Numan
10 (  9) Bob Dylan
15 Ian Gillan
18 David Coverdale
19 Geddy Lee
20 Phil Lynott en Paul Rodgers

Most Promising

  1 GARY NUMAN
  2 POLICE
  3 JUDIE TZUKE
12 SCORPIONS
13 WHITESNAKE
14 WILD HORSES
20 VAN HALEN

Top guitarplayer

  1 JIMMY PAGE
  2 STEVE HOWE
  3 STEVE HACKETT
  4 Mark Knopfler
  5 RITCHIE BLACKMORE
  6 Brian May
  7 Gary Moore
  9 Rory Gallagher
13 Angus Young
14 Alex Life son

Top bass player

  1 CHRIS SQUIRE
  2 JOHN PAUL JONES
  3 PHIL LYNETTE
  5 Sting
  8 Eddy Lee
11 Emmy
14 ROGER GLOVER


Top drummer

  1 PHIL COLLINS
  2 JOHN BON HAM
  3 COZY POWELL
  6 Neil Peart
13 IAN PA ICE

Top Keyboardplayer

  1 RICK WAKEMAN
  2 JOHN PAUL JONES
  3 TONY BANKS
  4 JON LORD
12 DON AIREY

Best single

  1 I Don't Like mondays - Boomtown Rats
  2 Are 'Friends' Electric - Tubeway Army
  3 Sultans Of Swing - Dire Straits
  7 Overkill - Motörhead

Best Album

  1 In Through The Outdoor - Led Zeppelin
  2 Breakfast In America - Supertramp
  3 Tormato - Yes
  6 DOWN TO EARTH - RAINBOW
  8 Live Killers - Queen
10 Black Rose - Thin Lizzy
15 Strangers In The Night - U.F.O.

Top composer

  1 Led Zeppelin
  2 Yes
  3 Genesis
11 Rush
13 RITCHIE BLACKMORE

Best producer

  1 Jimmy Page
  2 Nick Lowe
  3 David Hentschell/Genesis
  7 ROGER GLOVER

Best live-act

  1 Led Zeppelin
  2 Genesis
  3 Yes
  4 Thin Lizzy
  8 Rush




HISTORY LESSON

Teacher Sphritszsaft tells.....
1963: The Outlaws

This story starts in 1961. Singer Mike Berry gets a contract by producer Joe Meek. Berry needed for his concerts a backing band. They found Billy Grey and the Stormers. Grey gets fired and the name is changed into THE OUTLAWS. In this first Outlaws-line up it's Billy Kuy (leadguitar), Chas Hodges (bass), Bob Graham (drums) en Reg Hawkins (rhythmguitar), but this last one gets pretty fast replaced by Canadian Ken Lundgren.

The Outlaws are not only the backinggroup for Mike Berry but also for John Leyton, and they also make two singles and an album of their own. That same year also singer Heinz Burt is part of the band, but leaves to join The Tornadoes. The age of the members was between 17 and 19 years old. The singles were both good instrumentals, in that time pretty rough and unpolished. Joe Meek gave them a so called cowboy-look and came up with weird wild-west-titles like "Valley of the Sioux". It was too original, it was copying a bit the Shadows ("Apache" and "Kon-tiki").

In 1962 Billy Kuy and Bob Graham were replaced by Roger Mingay (leadguitar) and Don Groom (drums), but that was for a short period only. A few months later again a new guitarplayer and drummer were engaged. The new drummer was Mick Underwood and from Screaming Lord Sutch 17 years old Ritchie Blackmore was the new guitarplayer.

So the line-up now was: Ritchie Blackmore - leadguitar, Chas Hodges - bass, Ken Lundgren - rhythmguitar, Mick Underwood - drums.

The first single they did together with Ritchie, was "Return of the Outlaws" and had on the b-side "Texan Spiritual" in the summer of 1963.

Both songs were instrumentals and sounded like "Telstar", a well known tune in that time, not that rare as Meek also produced that record. The lead-guitar plays the melody on both songs on a simple background.

This record sold better than any other Outlaws record before, still it didn't made it to the charts. Joe Meek wrote most of the songs. He was humming the melody while the band then figured it out on their instruments.

Meek sometimes used the Outlaws anonymously as backing group on records of other artists like Heinz Burt (actually it was this ex-Outlaws-man asked Ritchie to play on his records). Despite of any records sale success, they got known of their notorious live shows. Stories said drumkits ended up in the audience. They even made it to the frontpage of the "News of the world" paper when they bombard waiting buspassengers with bags of powder. The owner of the A.B.C. in Blackpool refused the band because of "their reputation of troublemakers".

The next single in 1963 was "Law and order", together with "Doo dah day" on the b-side, both from a film called "Live it up", which was released just before Christmas. This had vocals but it's not clear who was the singer. Another single followed pretty soon after that: "Set the Wild West free"/"Hobo, which was", reviewed by Billy Fury in Melody Maker on 17 August as "It's a bit off, dreary".

The next single was "Keep a knocking" with "Shake with me" on the b-side was release just before or just after Christmas 1963. Ritchie left the group in May 1964 and was replaced by Harry Vincent. Gene Vincent (no family?) had the band for a while as his backing group in 1964 and they toured England and Germany.

One of the R.B.A.S members once played as support act for The Outlaws in Bristol. He still remembers the group featuring Vincent well, but can't remember Ritchie. It's obvious he wasn't with the band at time. Gene Vincent soon got enough of the group's behavior and they all got fired. Chas Hodges, the bassplayer, played in some songs pedal-steel-guitar. Ritchie who was in the band earlier, played his cherry-red Gibson, probably the same he used to play till 1970 in Deep Purple (the one you can see on the cover of "Concerto for group and orchestra"). At that time he wasn't that gloomy like these days. He was very open and polite and even showed his guitar technique on the stairs of the hall for anyone who was interested at the time. Can you imagine?

The songs played during the concerts were mainly the singles and some classic rock-and-roll-songs. Ritchie's nickname then was BLUEBELL! Joe Meek, producer and boss of The Outlaws, didn't do well and committed suicide in the end.

After Ritchie left the group he still played on some Heinz records. Drummer Mike Underwood remained a good friend of Ritchie. Via The Herd (featuring Peter Frampton) he joined Episode Six, in which Ian Gillan and Roger Glover were. They called him Mick instead of Mike. It was Mick, who Ritchie told about Ian and Roger when Deep Purple halfway 1969 were lookin' for a new singer and bassplayer. Mick later played drums in a group called QUATERMASS, they recorded on the Harvest-label the track "Black sheep of the family" (the same track is on the first Rainbow Album). Later on Underwood joined the STRAPPS. On this moment Mick plays together again with Ian Gillan in GILLAN. You can hear him on the "Mr. Universe" Album.


To end this story: most of this information is from the R.B.A.S. (The Ritchie Blackmore Association Society).




© Rainbow Fanclan 1979-1984