Rainbow

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore resurrected the beloved hard rock band Rainbow in 1995 for the album Stranger in Us All. The new lineup – technically named Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow – was not an all-star who's who of hard rock like the groundbreaking original version with vocalist Ronnie James Dio or the radio-targeted AOR version with vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. All incarnations of Rainbow, even the mid-period lineup fronted by bellower Graham Bonnet, are generally revered in hard rock circles. In its own way, Rainbow's music was just as influential as the music Blackmore made during his years in Deep Purple.

Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore resurrected the beloved hard rock band Rainbow in 1995 for the album Stranger in Us All. The new lineup – technically named Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow – was not an all-star who's who of hard rock like the groundbreaking original version with vocalist Ronnie James Dio or the radio-targeted AOR version with vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. All incarnations of Rainbow, even the mid-period lineup fronted by bellower Graham Bonnet, are generally revered in hard rock circles. In its own way, Rainbow's music was just as influential as the music Blackmore made during his years in Deep Purple…

Perhaps the first example of "dragon rock" – a style perfected by bands like Iron Maiden and Dio in the early to mid-'80s – was Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, a rather pretentious 1975 collection from the guitarist's first post-Deep Purple project…

After the commercial failure of the excellent Home of the Brave, Chris Rainbow was brought back down to earth with something of a bump by Polydor. Out went the exotic recording locations and top American sessionmen but, more critically, out too went the innovative production team of Malcolm Cecil and Bob Margouleff, who had been responsible for giving HOTB much of its spectral beauty…