![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan3.jpg)
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A song about castles and crossbows
Meanwhile, Classic Rock reviews another family box set — Rainbow’s The Temple Of The King 1975-76:
The tour rehearsal material, for all its historical value, is ruined by too much bass and distortion. But across six live discs – with just a little overlap with the band’s 1977 album On Stage – there is much for Rainbow connoisseurs to savour, including stunning performances of Stargazer and Do You Close Your Eyes.
As Dio himself said, with some satisfaction: “Ritchie and I wrote some really wonderful things”.
Read more in Louder Sound.
Get Ready to Rock has a much more in-depth review of the offering, including some quotes from Cozy Powell:
After the breakup of Strange Brew in 1975, Cozy Powell had quit the music industry and was tempted back by the Rainbow audition. And Cozy once told me: “Yes, I was number 80, or 77 or something like that. I’ve heard some funny stories about Ritchie being difficult with drummers.
Apparently this one guy came along, set the drum kit up, looked the part, got his suitcase out and changed next to the kit with this all black kind of outfit and black gloves. Eventually gets up and says he’s ready and Ritchie says ‘Get rid of him’. This poor guy doesn’t even play a note. I remember that audition. I got a phonecall on the Wednesday night from my tour manager and got the plane to L.A. in the morning.
Off the plane, check into the hotel and straight down to the audition, no time no nothing and a kit I’ve never even seen before. There were about 100 people in this sound stage looking at me like a golden boy they’ve just flown over from England at great expense. The first thing he said to me was ‘Can you play a shuffle?’ How about this and BANG! started playing this shuffle and 20 minutes later ‘You’ve got the job”.
Read more in Get Ready to Rock.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Alas, we can always count on Classic Rock Magazine / Louder to abide by the Bare Minimum Effort Act and provide only the most cursory treatment of Rainbow (and larger Deep Purple extended family-related) product. After having witnessed close to three decades of same, CRM has once again demonstrated optimal energy conservation – saving appreciable quantities of its best ink with a view to preserving its legacy as the ultimate Zep fan-boy magazine (with reserve tanks filled with adulation for close second placers AC/DC). What say ye Valhalla?
Kudos to Get Ready To Rock for actually making an effort to giving a proper overview of the Rainbow package, providing some colour and even digging up some interview material. Now that’s the way these things should be done.
March 10th, 2026 at 02:59Nice to read that the remastering here seems to be an improvement too. Universal’s past remasters of Rainbow material were nothing to write home about. Lackluster.
March 10th, 2026 at 03:21My brother has picked this set up for my birthday… naturally, as many have said elsewhere, nothing new but it’s a lovely looking box and has reduced the number of jewel cases in my collection slightly… I’m keen to hear the new ‘masters’ but don’t hold out much hope I’ll be blown away… I utterly adore the Dio era of Rainbow 🌈 and will buy the next box hopefully covering On Stage and LLRnR! 🎸 speaking of which I stumbled across this yesterday… from 7:20 is rather sublime… doubt we’ll get a ‘clean’ version of the isolated strings ever released, but this is well done and beautiful with it:-
https://youtu.be/1bgyI56gUmY?si=PsooZgdLVZGJffTq
Dio in isolation – wow, breathtaking.
That channel is pretty cool, lots of isolated Purple tracks… if you’re into that kind of thing, which clearly I am.
March 10th, 2026 at 08:27