When you think or speak about the group Rainbow, legends actually come alive. The brainchild of maestro Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, the dynamic quintet would carry on Purple’s sense of aesthetic bombast while layering in mystical lyrical imagery courtesy of the diminutive yet sprite-like Ronnie James Dio.
Even before Dio would be extolling the power of “neon knights” with Black Sabbath and patrolling the midnight sea on his eponymous band’s “Holy Diver,” he proved himself a confident, one-of-a-kind frontman. Springboarding off the blues-rock sound of his American band Elf, Dio would dice in wizardry, mysticism, and magic to give Rainbow its own legacy within the annals of hard rock and heavy metal.
The Temple Of The King 1975 – 1976, a nine-disc set, conveys a band with the power to go toe-to-toe with any contemporary. And it only takes two studio albums. Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow lays the groundwork with staples like “Man on the Silver Mountain,” “Still I’m Sad,” and “Catch The Rainbow.” Rising takes the band into the stratosphere as Tony Carey’s synthesizer, Jimmy Bain’s thumping bass, and Cozy Powell’s titanic drumming create a masterwork that the power brokers at Tor Publishing Group would easily salivate over. Songs like “Tarot Woman,” “Stargazer” (complete with orchestra), and “A Light In The Black” emphasize a hard rock renaissance and unveil the talents Dio brings to the musical table by way of lyrics and voice.
These two albums are also important because they showcase Rainbow at its prime before its sound grows more commercialized and a revolving door of singers (Graham Bonnet, Joe Lynn Turner) sift through following Dio’s departure to join Sabbath in the early 1980s. The box set only spans the years 1975 and 1976 but Rainbow makes sure to pack a wallop in this brief amount of time.
What also makes this boxset special are the three 1976 German concerts the band performs — Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Nürnberg — over the course of four days. Alternating between soft and hard, beauty and grit, Dio takes Rainbow to the mountaintop with the intent of crumbling its accompanying surroundings. Blackmore’s guitar playing gets its much-deserved workouts, especially on tracks like “Catch the Rainbow.” “Man on the Silver Mountain” takes a blues stroll before the power intensifies, while the behemoth that is “Stargazer” wafts through different musical textures and atmospheres before the glorious climax is achieved. Then there’s the brief moments of tribute — the opening refrain of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” introducing the group to the stage, and Cozy Powell brazenly playing along to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture during “Still I’m Sad.”
Even in its rough mixes and rehearsal tracks (showcased on discs eight and nine), Rainbow doesn’t ease back in terms of its musical output. Listening to the rough mix of “Stargazer,” for example, you wonder why the opening synthesizer melodies and underscoring chords were left out on the final result. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you’re listening to the same tracks three or four times, The Temple Of The King 1975 – 1976 proves that not only are you “seeing” stars; you’re clearly hearing five of them as well.
~ Ira Kantor
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