Old Wavers often tried to move with the times, go a little New Wavey - Peter Gabriel, Alice Cooper, Robert Fripp, J. Geils Band... Get a hot producer in if they couldn't pull it off themselves (as did Yes)
But some didn't make any concessions, just dug their heels in.
And prospered - in some cases having their biggest commercial success during the New Wave era.
Here's Ritchie Blackmore on the cover of Sounds in 1982
Love the fact that he is doggedly sticking with his personal golden-oldie canon (Strawbs!)
None of that Robert Plant thing of striving to keep au courant with the new trends...
Also surprised to read that Ritchie had a period of occult-dabbling, doing seances and what not...
If I was pressed to think of a group that I had no interest in ever exploring.... well, there'd be many, obviously, but Rainbow would be right up the top.
With bad music - with Bad Music Era bands - there is always the possibility of learning something through exposing yourself to the awfulness... it can be indicative of something in the popular desire... and there can be a sort of pungent frisson with bad taste, the tang of decay or excess, that is perversely bracing and invigorating after listening to so much Good Music... bit like those cultures/cuisines where eggs are kept for a hundred years, or a fish is buried in a pit and allowed to rot...
But Rainbow just seem unutterably lame, all the more so for the ear-worm stickiness of things like "Since You've Been Gone"
It's partly the band name. Rainbow.
Also the logo
And the artwork
Well this cover art is a classic of Old Wave graphics
Apparently metalheads rate the first few Rainbow albums
The first one is essentially Blackmore plus the band Elf, as in Dio
Then he fires Elf, except for Dio, and recruits such echt-Old Wavers as Cozy Powell
Thoughts of Elf and Dio remind me of this Spinal-Tapper- than-Spinal-Tap story:
"In September 2003, Dio accidentally severed his thumb during a gardening accident when a heavy garden gnome fell onto it. Dio was concerned he would no longer be able to do his signature "devil's horns" hand gesture, but a doctor managed to re-attach it."
I know Dio is - was - tres petite indeed, but how big was this garden gnome? What was it made of, osmium?
Perhaps it fell from a height - from some further-up plateau in a rockery where Dio was troweling away?
I'm just trying to picture it out.
Seems like that garden gnome and you share some music antiphaties Simon
ReplyDeleteWell I wouldn't wish a thumb severing on my worst musical enemy - I'm sure it was a horrible business. It's just hard to picture. You could imagine a really bad bruise or even a fracture - but a severing? Maybe there was an unusually sharp pointy bit on the gnome - like the chin.
DeleteWeird accident indeed, and a second story related to the devil horns and the finger chopping of a metal musician
DeleteWhich one is that? Tony Iommi's accident with a sheet metal press?
DeleteYes, i dont remember the details but there seems to be a connection between that accident and the horns
DeleteOr is it antipaties? Anyways I guess the moral of the story is "if you fall down with a seance and black wizard beware of garden gnomes
ReplyDeleteAnd then that´s another old waver "axman" - occultist, Jimmy Page being the most famous
ReplyDeleteThere's a whole bunch of Crowley-loving types in the rock firmament. But I had never heard of Ritchie Blackmore being a dabbler. Although his surname would suit an occultist.
DeleteBob Fripp was into the dark arts, or maybe the nicer sort of magic, I'm not sure.
I love that Rick Derringer tune - it's on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack I think.
ReplyDeleteThat's funny that Blackmore was so unrepentantly Old Wave in his personal canon, but I think it says more about his cussed and cantankerous personality than it does about what he was really doing musically.
ReplyDeleteThe 1979 Rainbow album 'Down To Earth' - the one with 'Since You've Been Gone' on it - was absolutely seen as their New Wave move at the time, announcing itself as a back-to-basics move from the title onwards. It has 3 and 4-minute songs about relationships instead of 8-minute songs about "the shadow of the wizard", which were their speciality in the Dio era. And the new singer Graham Bonnet had short hair!
One of the singles from the follow-up album, 'Difficult to Cure' was 'Can't Happen Here', which is a sort-of protest song with lyrics about "oily propaganda from the leaders' lips".
Rainbow were one of my favourite bands when I was 15. I hardly ever listen to them now, and I would not try to tell you you are missing something great if you never explore their oeuvre. But 'Kill The King' from 'Long Live Rock 'N' Roll' has a thunderous energy that points the way to the Speed Metal of the 80s. And if you want to know why anyone ever cared about Cozy Powell, that's not a bad place to start.
I knew a Rainbow fan or former fan would be flushed out.
DeleteIn the full text of that interview, Ritchie has some (mildly) disparaging comments about Bonnet. Wasn't he more of a mainstream pop singer?
I don't know if 3 or 4 minute songs alone counts a move to New Wave - it's more like a general characteristic of pop. From what I remember of 'Since You've Been Gone', there's nothing about it equivalent to e.g. Pete Gabriel banning cymbals and hi-hats in the sessions for IIII so's to get that Comsat Angels type sound. (And Paul Weller plays on the record doesn't he?). It's more like 'let's get on the radio, sell some records' type move.
I remember quite enjoying the big Cozy Powell solo hit ("Dance with the Devil"?) as a kid. In fact would probably count in the Rock Songs I Liked Before My Taste Formed series, if I ever get around to continuing with it.
I also liked the name "Cozy Powell".
I love this sort of exchange. I was broadly thinking along Ed's lines as I read Simon's original post - but Simon's response made me think anew. Important stuff, this! Rainbow had another couple of UK Top Five hits around the time of Since You've Been Gone: I Surrender and All Night Long.
DeleteHmmm, well I assume you are jesting as it's hard to think of anything less important, BUT it might well be an enjoyable inessential activity.
DeleteIt's not exactly a power ballad, "Since You've Been Gone", but it feels like it has far more to do with that tendency, radio-friendly metal (Whitesnake etc), than the Vapors or The Cars.
Those other hits have left no trace at all.
I remember seeing Graham Bonnet on Top of the Pops with his solo hit "Night Games" and being surprised that although he was plying hard rock, he had short hair. He looked very neat and clean cut. And in the video, all the band members look like you'd expect, but Graham's wearing a button shirt (no tie) and a pin stripe jacket.
Well, yes, I am jesting. But I'll take any enjoyable inessential activity at the moment as a counter to all the shit that's going down. Just as an aside, I find it rather touching that R.B. was so enthusiastic about the likes of Tull, who are more or less his contemporaries. In my days of inkie reading, I never remember bands being particularly complimentary about their peers (influences is another matter). I also recently saw a clip where Gary Numan was being really generous about a Depeche Mode album - which, again, seemed a nice thing to do.
DeleteTo go deep into the weeds around the Deep Purple family tree... Yes those Rainbow hits are reminiscent of 80s Whitesnake, but the causation goes the other way: Blackmore started having hits with Rainbow, and then his former bandmate David Coverdale followed his lead and also started recording more commercial tunes.
DeleteIt's an interesting question where that whole genre of radio-friendly metal comes from. It was massive in the 80s. I guess that very American style of AOR - not exactly soft rock, not exactly hard rock, but somewhere in between - must have been a big influence. Journey, Kansas, Styx: that sort of thing.
Rick Derringer's gone really weird as of late. As in, regular guest on Infowars.
ReplyDeleteOther musicians to appear on Alex Jones' shows include Kanye (most famously and infamously), Ted Nugent (duh), Billy "massive twat" Corgan, M.I.A. (who debuted a fashion collection on Infowars), and, in an utterly heartbreaking move, Willie Nelson.
Ugh I wish I didn't know that about Willie Nelson. MIA does not surprise me in the least. Although Infowars fashion does sound like a bit: stylish tinfoil hats and caps for every occasion.
ReplyDeleteI thought Rick Derringer died decades ago. Must have confused him with someone else. Isn't Moe Tucker also on that end of things these days?
ReplyDeleteOne other minor point. On that Sounds cover Blackmore looks like the exact, and I mean exact, midpoint between Dudley Moore and Bill Wyman.
The only one that surprises me / disappoints me is Willie Nelson.
ReplyDeleteEveryone else, makes total sense.
MIA is a Born Again Christian these days, right? Anti-vax.
"It's more like 'let's get on the radio, sell some records' type move." Agreed, but that is a very New Wave impulse!
ReplyDelete1979 Rainbow were New Wave in the manner of the Knack or the Cars, not Gang of Four and PiL.
Yes, Bonnet was indeed a pop / R&B singer before Rainbow, although his stint there apparently changed his direction, because his subsequent career was mostly in hard rock.
Blackmore has been notoriously sour about R&B. He supposedly quit Deep Purple because the other members were getting into Soul and Funk, which he didn't want to play.
This 1995 interview with Blackmore is pretty revealing. He's the metal Morrissey!
https://www.loudersound.com/features/ritchie-blackmore-the-lost-interview