Hello Rainbow worshippers
It's obvious now the announced European Tour is cancelled. The reason is the band is very successful in the States. Rainbow even got a nomination for a Grammy Award (about the best honour of the music industry). The track "Anybody there" got the nomination in de category "Best Rock Instrumental". The Grammy went -unfortunately- to Sting (Police) with the track "Brimstone and treacle". Still this proves Rainbow is doing better and better in the States.
The Japanese Tour in March will take place. For now the plans for an European Tour are delayed to October/November. probably after the release of a new album.
On the article of the group Hammerhead in the last fanzine we got more positive than negative response. Even Polydor appeared to be interested in this band. Still they were too late because Hammerhead is about to sign a contract with EMI Germany.
The last few weeks we didn't came much further at Polydor than the telephone operator. The right people were unapproachable every time we called. So we can't tell any news yet about the solo album of Roger Glover, that's supposed to get released early 1984, maybe next time.
Keep rockin'n'drinkin' with the Rainbow Devil !!!
RITCHIE BLACKMORE
ABOUT "BENT OUT OF SHAPE"
I'll be honest, I heard the album. I'm not impressed...... no way, in fact I think it's very good, it's rockin'. I'm very satisfied how my way of composing evaluate. Personally I think the most melodic songs are closer to Abba than to Foreigner. I never would write a song like Foreigner, although I have to admit I like the voice of Lou Gramm's (singer in Foreigner). So I'm very satisfied. I know it's not exactly the hardrock fans and it'll probably mean we'll lose some fans, but that's the price we have to pay. My favorites tracks are "Street of dreams", "Can't let you go", "Snowman" and "Anybody there".
On the cover there's a misprint, it should have been "Anybody there?" So with a question mark behind it, like a seance that is started. Initially I called it "Doomed". "Snowman" originate from an animated film about a snowman who picks up a child and flies away with him. It's a very good fantasy film. It took me back to the dreams in my early youth. The person who wrote it is Howard Blake, a 60 years old pianoplayer who lives in Brighton, he never heard of us. Originally the song was called "Walking in the air". For me it's one of the best tracks on the album, it's the direction I want to go in. I like this kind of powerful, extensive rock. I like to have a backdrop full of snowmen on stage. We changed it from a happy into a horrible snowman. I have this effect on people.
"Firedance is kind of a step back I think, it's a complicated riff. Every time I play it I have to tune the low E string again, that's why I do the solo on 5 instead of 6 strings..... I want everyone to know how difficult this is to me. "Drinking with the devil" is an average rock'n'roll thing. The best part is the guitarplay at the end. Worth waiting the three minutes. I do have respect for Status Quo, not more though. The guitarplayers are standing in a row on the edge of the stage and try to convince everyone how much fun they have. I rather watch aerobics on tv. We are still heavy metal, but it's now sophisticated heavy metal. I won't step on stage to do Status Quo-performances like Judas Priest and the Scorpions.
It's all so easy for us to do a cliché heavy album, but that's not what it's all about. Many people are not satisfied in England on this moment, but it won't be fair to put that in my music. I can't play those mentally deficient 12 bar blues and 12 bar rock with my fist in the air. We are all grown up. I'm just not interested to do those kind of things. Maybe we'll lose some fans, but I refuse to fall back and do mentally defective albums to get a bit more in the picture. I don't need that. I don't like to be socalled "cool". I like to be difficult and stubborn. That's the way I am and it always be like that.
ALCATRAZZ
TOO YOUNG TO DIE, TOO DRUNK TO LIVE
Graham Bonnet was from early 1979 till August 1980 the singer of Rainbow. The fantastic "Down to earth" album let us hear Bonnet's talents. At that time he surprised everyone with his high and powerful voice. Just like his voice also his, in the world of hardrock, strongly deviant looks were amazing. Bonnet never had a problem with that. The performance on the Monsters of Rock Festival at the Castle Donington was, just like for Cozy Powell, the last Rainbow feat of Graham Bonnet.
Soon after this the solo-album "Line up", including the hit "Night Games" comes out. After this Bonnet joins the Michael Schenker Group. His stay is not that long. During the very first try-out concert everything goes wrong. Bonnet is kicked out of the band right away. The already recorded album "Assault attack" is released a few months later.
It's one of the best Schenker albums, not at least because of Graham's excellent vocals. Bonnet starts lookin' in the Los Angeles area for members to start a new band.
Soon he's on the right way and start tellin' around that he'll be back soon. The press don't take too much notice of Bonnet's words. But when late 1983 the album "No parole from rock'n'roll" comes out it's clear Graham Bonnet is still alive and kickin'.
His band ALCATRAZZ, named after the infamous jail in San Francisco, exist of the young Swedish guitarwonder Yngwie Malmsteen (ex-Steeler), bassist Gary Shea & keyboardsplayer Jimmy Waldo (both ex-New England) and drummer Jan Uvena (ex-Alice Cooper), who got the job after Cozy Powell choose for the savings of David Coverdale.
After the album and the single (they filmed a videoclip for it in the Alcatraz jail) there were in December the first live shows in the States, and not without success. In January they conquered Japan and there are plans for an European Tour. If they do come over to play overhere there's only one advice: Go & see it!
Here are some reports of ALCATRAZZ LIVE ON STAGE we got from fans in the States and Japan.
MILWAUKEE 26 december 1983
Father Christmas was extremely good for us this Christmas. Besides the many gifts he gave us a concert of Alcatrazz on Boxing Day in Milwaukee. A great way to end 1993. The venue was very small, but the band didn't care. It was not packed, mainly thanks to the temperature of a few degrees below zero. This was only the 7th gig of this new group, but it all went already very well. Graham Bonnet had the time of his life walking all over the stage. He was wearing his casual
coral-red suit with a white t-shirt. Graham was at his best in the hard rockin' songs and exchanged laughs a lot with keyboardplayer Jimmy Waldo from start to finish. The Swedish axe hero Yngwie Malmsteen is a born poser and showman. His appearance, clothes and styles he has mainly from Ritchie Blackmore. They played mainly material from their debut album: "Jet to jet", "Island in the sun", "Hiroshima mon amour" and my favorite "Kree Nakoorie" were the highlights.
The instrumental "Incubus" let us hear Yngwie's talent. The crowd's response was very calm, till Yngwie did his solo. But this together with Graham's announcement for "The Desert song" from his MSG days woke up the audience. The encores, the Rainbow classics "All night long" and "Lost in Hollywood", took the fans in ecstasy. After the show the Alcatrazz members were handing out many autographs on posters for everyone who was still around. It all looked very spontaneously. Mr Bonnet had the time of his life, especially with the female fans. Yngwie Malmsteen autographed everything with "Magic from Yngwie".
Later, in the bar of the Park East Hotel, Yngwie, Jimmy, Jan and Gary together with their roadcrew and recordcompany were present. Jimmy was very talkative about his keyboards, especially about the love for his old mellotron. Yngwie was busy with several fans telling how good he was appreciating Ritchie Blackmore's early musical excesses, Graham only came in for a brief moment, as soon as it became a bit more busy and noisy, he left soon. By the time Alcatrazz will play Europe they will (or should be) in bigger halls. They're worth checking out, they'll destroy their debut album live.
Holly Grant
OSAKA 24 January 1984
It was very exciting to see Alcatrazz live. The Festival Hall was full of young kids. This all was because of Bonnet who is a former member of Rainbow. Graham's voice was superb, just like the guitarwork of Yngwie Malmsteen. It looks he's very influenced by Ritchie Blackmore. It was a fantastic concert. It's a pity they had to do some Rainbow songs in the encores, the public would have like to hear some more Alcatrazz songs. But as they only have one album out the choice was limited.
Yoshie Moctida
TOKYO 29 January 1984
The concert of Alcatrazz in Tokyo was very good. Yngwie (the guitarplayer from Sweden) is fantastic. Graham sometimes lost his voice, but the show was excellent anyway. They did 3 Rainbow songs: "All night long", "Lost in Hollywood" and "Since you been gone". All my favorite Rainbow tracks. Graham also sang "Night games" of his solo-album. The public was impressed by Yngwie's guitarplay. He plays just like Ritchie; sometimes every fast, sometimes very sensitive. He showed in his solo his love for classical music by including a lot of Bach in it. The climax of the concert was when they did "Jet to jet". They did 3 concerts in Tokyo, at the end of the first show Yngwie Malmsteen smashed his guitar to pieces.
Marcy Funabashi
NO PAROLE FROM ROCK'N'ROLL
Alcatrazz debut-LP
This record starts with the single "Island in the sun", a commercial song that you can place in the row of "Since you been gone", "I surrender", "Stonecold" and "Street of dreams". The second track "General hospital" is a good melodic song, that, like most songs on this album, is something between Rainbow and MSG. "Jet to jet" on the other hand is all like Rainbow.
The song sounds as a remake of "Spotlight kid", especially the mid part is exact the same. Yngwie Malmsteen only is missing the flexibility of a Ritchie Blackmore. "Hiroshima mon amour" excels through Graham's fantastic high voicerange. Dio or Turner can't sing like this. Also the guitar and organ solos are first-class. One of the best tracks. "Kree Nakoorie" springs in the eye through the long, fast, reminding to Blackmore, great solo of Malmsteen. He proves here to be a supertalent and leaves new axe-heroes like John Sykes, Jake E Lee and Vivian Campbell behind him.
"Incubus" is a short instrumental that live is used on tape as the intro. "Too drunk to live, too young to die" is a fine uptempo rocker, they use live as the concert-opener. There's fantastic double-bass drumwork by Jan Uvena which reminds to Bobby Rondinelli. The keyboards and guitar sound very good again. This is the best track on the album for me. "Big Foot" is again a song like "Hiroshima mon amour" and "Kree Nakoorie"; a bit more slow and Eastern orientated with a Blackmore kinda solo. After the melodic rocker "Starcarr lane" the album ends with the ballad "Suffer me". Ballads never were Graham's strongest point, but here he's doing quite well. The keyboards on the end of the song are a bit annoying, but the guitar sounds very good again.
"No parole from rock'n'roll" is for Bonnet fans definitely a must have. The guitarwork of Malmsteen is first-class and Uvena, Waldo and Shea play very well. So this is a very promising debut. It was produced by Dennis Mac Kay and released on Rocshire Records (XR 22016). This record is (so far) difficult to get, only through US import. From the Alcatrazz concert in Osaka we got a tape (thanx Yoshie).
Live everything sound very solid, the songs of the debut album sound live a lot heavier than on vinyl. After the intro-tape "Incubus" they start with the sparkling "Too young to die, too drunk to live" and "Hiroshima mon amour". In MSG's "Desert Song" Malmsteen plays almost better than Michael Schenker. "Night Games" and "Island in the sun" appear to be well known, the crowd sings and claps fanatically along. From the debut they also play "Big Foot" and "Kree Nakoorie".
The last one with a long solo of Yngwie that goes over into "Since you been gone". The first encore is a long instrumental in which Yngwie takes the spotlight. After this we get "Lost in Hollywood", shortly played just like the version on "Down to earth". Yngwie comes very close to Ritchie Blackmore in the Rainbow tracks but I still miss the magical sparks you apparently only can expect of the big B himself. The show ends with "All night long" on the usual Graham Bonnet way. This guy has a throat. In this song he leaves nothing of Joe Lynn Turner.
TOP TEN FAVORITE ALBUMS OF:
GRAHAM BONNET (VOCALS) :
1. Beatles - White Album
2. Led Zeppelin-In Through the 0utDoor
3. Stevie Wonder-Talking Book
4. Beach Boys - Surf's Up
5. Buddy Holly- The Buddy Holly Story (compilation)
6. Gallagher & Lyle - Love On the Airwaves
7. George Harrison - All Things Must Pass
8. John Lennon-Imagine
9. Kinks - Kronicles
10. Badfinger - No Dice
YNGWIE MALMSTEEN (LEAD GUITAR) :
1. Johann Sebastian Bach -"anything he wrote"
2. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Fifth Symphony
3. Paganini - Twenty Four Caprices
4. Jethro Tull-The Broadsword and the Beast
5. Vivaldi -The Four Seasons
6. Al DiMeola -Splendido Hotel
7. Jimi Hendrix-Electric Ladyland
8. Kansas -Two For The Show
9. Genesis - Trespass
10. Frank Marino - Juggernaut
TOP 20 RAINBOW SONGS
We will do another inquiry for a top 20 of Rainbow songs. This time we will also do a top 10 of (ex)Rainbow members. Send us your favorite Rainbow top 10 and a top 5 of (ex)Rainbow members. Send it before 15 April 1984.
NO THANKS TO BAAL
In November 1983 DIO played in Stockholm, before the show Swedish tv did an interview with Ronnie. Most of it went about mysterious happenings. The question if he'd any mysterious experiences he answered with: Oh yes, I've had quite some mysterious experiences. For example in one of my former bands, Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore and I put that band together and we were both interested in the spiritual side of life, we were very interested in white magic. Not in black magic. Because even though it exist, I prefer to stay away from that.
It's very, very dangerous. Something you should stay away from. But white magic, we, Ritchie and I try to speak or converse with some of the spiritual world. And on one of our recordings, for the album "Long live rock'n'roll", we had quite a few problems with tapemachines starting on their own, stopping on their own.
There was a song ("Gates of Babylon") it seem we never could be able we finish. So we decided to have a seance and got in contact with someone who said he was Baal.
And Baal was one of the earliest devils, he sometimes had the head of a spider, and then the head of a goat...., he could change his appearance. And he told us we would never leave the studio alive and he should show us certain signs like starting the tape, stopping the tape.
He named us by name and was very intelligent which is extremely unusual for a spirit. They normally speak in very bad grammar and only says to you: I want you to die.
Because they don't know anything other than sadness and they hate to see you happy. So they want you to die and can be unhappy with them. We went on and on and tried to exorcise the spirit from the studio. We contacted a priest but who want to have nothing to do with the place we were at.
It was a 14th century Chateux that had been lived in by Frederic Chopin and we try to speak with Chopin, we got some signs from Chopin, some notes of him played on the piano when no one was near it. And bottles were breaking, all kinda strange things were happening. We finally did finished the album, we had some people get pushed from the stairway when nobody was around. So we decided to best leave it alone. So if one looks at the back of Rainbow's "Long live rock'n'roll" album, you'll see on the list of thank you's, at the very end it says: "No thanks to Baal".
STREET OF DREAMS
The single results of the track "Street of dreams" varied pretty much. In England the single more or less was a flop, but in the States it was a hit. Still there were some problems in the States about the videoclip that was made for the single. The popular program "Friday Night Videos" refused initially to air the clip. Reason was the beginning of the clip, in which you can see a hypnotist tryin' to get his patient in trance by swingin' his watch.
This part takes quite long (about one-and-a-half minute), before the actual song starts. On the last moment "Friday Night Videos" decided to air the video after all. In Holland it was not to be seen on tv. The Fanclan approached Adriaan Jassies of the Tros Pop Video Show.
He was enthusiastic about it and asked Polydor for it. there it went wrong, because Polydor felt nothing for it because of the (high) costs to get a copy over from the States. Anyway at least we gave it a try.
The songs was made like this; Joe Lynn Turner already wanted to write a song about reincarnation for three years. he couldn't find the right ideas for it though. Finally he got the right idea.
On that moment Joe was in bed in Rainbow's Chalet in Vermont, Joe remembered a riff of Ritchie and realized that was were he was lookin' for. The next ting Joe did was wake up Ritchie and together they wrote "Street of dreams".
HOT SHOTS
TONY CAREY again has released a solo album. This one's titled "Hungry".
Motorcity Madman Ted Nugent covered on his new album "Penetrator" the Fandango song "Blame it on the night". The original with JOE LYNN TURNER on vocals sounds a lot better.
DIO plays presumably on 11 June the Dutch Pinkpopfestival.
The video of the DIO concert in Utrecht will be released later this year. Besides "Evil eye" (they were not happy about that one) also all the Rainbow songs are cut out. Does this means that despite all his criticism on Ritchie Blackmore, Ronnie knows he has not a superb guitarplayer like the as "moody" Blackmore on stage?
In England were some concerts partly or completely filmed. In Bristol and London Colin Hart filmed several songs on the side of the stage, in Cardiff there was during the first show a camera in the back of the hall, while on the second night a small camera on both of the sides was filming. The recordings will be used for private use only though.
The results in the poll for 1983 of the popular English hardrockmagazine Kerrang for the Rainbow members were: RITCHIE BLACKMORE no 1 (and beating all the other guitarheroes!), DAVID ROSENTHAL no 4 and ROGER GLOVER no 6. Turner and Burgi not listed in the top 10.
"BENT OUT OF SHAPE" got to no 8 and RAINBOW was no 5 as live-act. There also was a 9th place for RITCHIE BLACKMORE as being "boring". He just came in front of Iron Maggie Thatcher who ended on no 10 in this category.
Ex-Rainbowmembers also were represent quite well. Both COZY POWELL (drummer) and RONNIE JAMES DIO (singer) on no 1. DON AIREY (keyboards) on no 2 and JIMMY BAIN (bassist) on no 9. Besides DIO also made the top 10 in the categories most promising band, band, album, cover, liveband and singles.
In the top 100 Veronica top 100 all times (aired on 2 March this year) "ALL NIGHT LONG" was on no 70. This is the third time this Rainbowsong was in it. The other years they were no 75 (in 1981) and no 62 (in 1982). This result is made up after the response of the thousands of listeners of Veronica Radio. The question is: where are all those Rainbow fans?
Ritchie and Roger also scored with DEEP PURPLE the first place ("Child in time") and the 81st spot (" Smoke on the water").
CRAIG GRUBER, is now in the band of Gary Moore, he's not yet to hear on the album "Victims of the future". But you can see him with Gary Moore on 21 March in the Vereeniging in Nijmegen and on 30 March in the Hanehof in Geleen. Live the very first Rainbow bassist will do a short bassolo in the song "Empty Rooms", his style of moving on stage reminds of Ritchie Blackmore.
Another former Rainbow bassman, BOB DAISLEY, is on Moore's "Victims of the future". On 2 songs, "Murder in the skies" (Joe Lynn Turner will love the lyrics) and "Teenage idol" he's playing. The album is worth to give it a listen. The guitarwork of Gary Moore steals
again the show.
COZY POWELL plays, with Whitesnake, on 30 march in the Edenhall in Amsterdam. There new album "Slide it in" is the first on which you can hear Cozy drum. The album only got one star in Sounds, where Rainbow's "Bent out of shape" got all the 5 stars. It's understandable though as the new Snake album doesn't let us anything new in comparison with their older albums. So only interesting to the real Whitesnake fans and collectors of vinyl with ex-Rainbow members.
SONG TEXT
BAD GIRLS
B-SIDE "SINCE YOU BEEN GONE"
She steals my love out a way that she licks her lips
She's got that look right down to her fingertips
My mind says something's wrong when she whips her eye
But when he told me something else that can never lie
And everytime that she touches me I just wanna die.
Chorus:
She's a bad girl
She's a bad girl
She's a bad girl
And I can't explain
How I feel, is it real
Is it love by another name?
Oooh, and when I'm all alone in the night
I call her up on the telephone and feel allright
When she shakes my tambourine I start to dance inside
That she throws my proud a switch and let her fingers glide
I don't need to go that way but I sure like the ride.
Chorus
She's so bad
Oooh, she steals my love out a way she licks her lips
She'a got that look right down to her fingertips
My mind says something's wrong when she whips her eye
But he told me seomething else I can never, never, never lie
And everytime that she touches me I just wanna die.
Chorus
© Rainbow Fanclan 1979-1984
|
