Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (Rainbow) 3

Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975, because he hated the direction the band was going in: David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes wanted to incorporate more funk influences into the band. Blackmore also thought that their 1974 album Stormbringer was crap, which it was, and Blackmore was also notoriously difficult to get along with

Blackmore hooked up with an upstate New York act called Elf. Elf had put out three obscure and not particularly noteworthy albums of hard rock, progressive rock, and some stuff that was kind of a mix of country and blues. Lead singer Ronnie James Dio had been kicking around since the early 60's in various small time outfits before forming The Electric Elves, who morphed into Elf in 1970. Elf often opened up for Deep Purple and Deep Purple's bassist Roger Glover had produced the band.

Blackmore had an affinity with Dio- both liked sword and sorcery lyrics, lyrics with a fantasy motif. Those sorts of lyrics were often part of heavy metal music, and Dio would bring them into Black Sabbath and his solo career as well. This debut album, and the one after it, were fairly decent albums. Not great, or very good, but tolerable. There was a fair instrumental version of The Yardbirds " Still I'm Sad" and a decent cover of a song called " Black Sheep of the Family" by an obscure British progressive rock act of the early 70's called Quatermass. There was a fair amount of classical/ Renaissance guitar from the classically trained Blackmore. Opening cut " Snake Charmer" was pretty good. " Man on the Silver Mountain" and " Sixteenth Century Greensleaves" became FM radio hits. Blackmore's guitar work is good, and Dio had a very powerful voice, but the album overdoses on Dungeons N' Dragons lyrics. It's not awful, it is decent, but a long way down from Deep Purple. The album sold well enough to reach the top 30 here and it did even better overseas. The ex Elf members were all sacked after the album, and Dio and Blackmore continued with new guys for several new albums. After Dio left to replace Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath in 1979, Rainbow became a poor man's Foreigner. Not that Foreigner were any good either.