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Tower of stone
Music Radar has a piece that dissects Rainbow’s Stargazer. It’ll be of particular interest to those of us who can tell their third mode of G Major from the B Phrygian Dominant scale.
What really catches the ear, however, is when Blackmore decides to go off-piste and start firing out notes outside of that scale.
He plays a run that chromatically climbs one fret at a time until its explosive peak, where he bends a whole tone up from the 17th fret of his high E – turning the minor seventh into a root.
This concept of using the ‘wrong’ notes after so many right ones is a musical device that Blackmore has employed many times as a tool to catch listeners off-guard. Another famous example is his solo in Deep Purple’s Highway Star.
Read more in Music Radar.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
No worries, I won‘t bash the Rising album, the song or Ritchie‘s indeed immaculate solo!
The Music Radar analysis is spot on, in terms of note choice Ritchie was even in 1976 still far ahead of the pack. He played unusual scales and he had a real knack of mixing them fluidly blurring the transitions. Any guitarist can move from one scale into another (many are too lazy for it though), the art is to do it naturally so it doesn‘t sound “yanked”. Ritchie excelled at that and I’m not even sure if he was really conscious of it or just simply played what was in his head and muscle memory.
And don’t let the term Phrygian Dominant scale scare you, this is what it sounds like
https://youtu.be/8m6Tvnn3gEM
and it is indeed very Blackmoresque, Gypsy, Spanish, Middle Eastern, what have you. Also a scale that would fascinate Metallica on quite a few of their songs.
October 7th, 2025 at 00:57Stargazer is a track that never gets boring and stands the test of time.
October 7th, 2025 at 08:56So just to be clear, Rising is a masterpiece. Stargazer a work of art… turning the minor seventh into a root… who knew?
But I do know this: Undeniable majesty.
Rock on 🙂
October 7th, 2025 at 11:47The intellect of Ritchie Blackmore, sheer brilliance.
October 7th, 2025 at 11:50GREAT SONG!! GREAT LP!!!
October 7th, 2025 at 14:15One of my favorite songs, ever, and not just in rock. The complexity of the whole work – music, melody, instrumentals, lyrics, voice, storytelling – the way how the entire story is epically imagined, put together and then expressed to the listeners is just mindblowing.
Masterpiece without a question.
October 7th, 2025 at 20:45Nice to see positive coverage of an epic composition. A true artist leaves this world with a few if possible, and Ritchie along with various members of the ‘classic era’ Rainbow will do just that. Along with Gates of Babylon, well enough said there. Many try and occasionally a few stumble upon something as grandeur as both of these songs. Love Dio’s vocal and lyric work along with Cozy’s drumming, never forgotten. As a few punters have said to me over the years, now this music has something in it, something special, it is much much more interesting than what Ritchie previously did. I always knew what they meant by that. Cheers.
October 7th, 2025 at 21:10Thinking of poor Ronnie’s lyrics getting another belting here very soon, well the possibilities are still there at least. However one subject, folklore etc, has me asking Uwe (something I have been meaning to ask him for eons, but keep forgetting) is what is his take on the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob? To keep it in a nutshell, as it isn’t music as such, although lyrically it is connected to certain lyricists of some of our favourite rock music artists. Cheers.
October 7th, 2025 at 23:36Music theory class, everybody take a seat!
Interesting to watch for the slide intro:
https://youtu.be/C5yBgFnhzgQ
Fräulein Izzy then proceeds at 01:02 to start that chromatic climbing culminating in her “turning the minor seventh into a root” via bending, i.e. pulling an A up to a B. And those hymnic ascending quarter notes at the end of the solo are actually a very straightforward rendition of all the notes of the Mixolydian scale, in case you were wondering. ☝️🧐
https://youtu.be/aDZiDMR7q2w
Ritchie was an exquisite note bender, incredibly tasteful and controlled. It’s something he has largely given up with BN because as he has rightfully observed “people didn’t bend notes in Western music at that time, it was all ornamental trills”. That is true (not that he ever gave a damn with BN that renaissance musicians didn’t have electronic drums and drum machines either 😑), but he sacrificed something he was very good at. I could never get enough of his bending, but find his ubiquitous trills in BN often mannered and an empty showcase for the superior four finger technique of his fretting hand (he was always very proud of that capability and looked down on the many guitarists who didn’t have it). His bending skills were more musical to me.
Of course, the prevalence of acoustic instruments in BN also plays a role, bending simply doesn’t work as well on acoustic as it does on electric instruments which can afford a softer string gauge (= thinner, more bendable strings). An acoustic instrument’s tonal authority generally benefits from thicker strings and those limit bendability.
October 8th, 2025 at 00:39The author of #2 aka Stephen, can we perhaps use a catchy acronym for your currently rather lengthy handle? Something like
SIWASOADTBRTWDBOHBVTYBORAC – phew!
That kinda sticks better and is nicely descriptive.
October 8th, 2025 at 00:49@4 Great track, perhaps my favourite Rainbow song. I have always thought of Blackmore as an intuitive player, guided by animal spirits. I have never really thought of him as relying on his intellect. This isn’t a dis. I think players that rely too much on intelect sound mechanistic. If you want to go down that route, you need to be Bach.
October 8th, 2025 at 05:31I think Ritchie has a sound basis in music theory, but he refuses to be constantly led by it. He is not a player who solos entirely on feel, he knows what he is doing and why. But it doesn’t inhibit him from doing unusual or unexpected things. I always have Don Airey’s interview comment in mind how Ritchie in comparison to Gary Moore, Randy Rhoads and Michael Schenker “tends to overthink>/i>”.
Now I personally prefer Ritchie’s style to all three of the above-named guitarists, indicating that I am actually fine with his mix of heart and mind when soloing. I don’t think you can create something like his Gates of Babylon solo on feel alone and even the Stargazer solo has parts that seem more cerebral than feeling-inspired to me. My guitar-playing son once called Blackmore’s playing raffiniert which translates as clever/refined/sophisticated. He said it to differentiate him from guitarists which are more gut-led such as Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Slash or Stevie Ray Vaughan. I think raffiniert sums Ritchie up and that is not a bad thing at all. What he did on Hold On is to me raffiniert, he didn’t care for the song, likely didn’t feel much while playing the solo off the cuff, but he had an innate understanding for what would be required. It‘s not a solo played with wild abandon, but one that is smart, controlled and highly effective and therefore brilliant in its own way.
For those who care(d) to listen, Ritchie in his prime was the thinking man‘s hard rock guitar hero – that is not a bad title to live by and it sure appeals to me. There is nothing wrong with combining thought and feel.
(I actually think that Jon Lord, though much more musically schooled and adept than Ritchie, was the more emotional player of the two and the one who relied more on or was guided by a gut approach.)
October 8th, 2025 at 13:34To answer your question @6, Herr MacGregor, the only type of folklore that I feel drawn to is of the horror movie type, preferably the classics such as Dracula/Nosferatu, Frankenstein’s Monster or the Mummy. Zombie splatter films bore me to death. I like tragic bad guys with some depth.
The fairey tale stuff, trolls and leprechauns, never held much fascination for me. Some of the Brüder Grimm stuff has of course Freudian appeal with its overt sexual symbolism, that is at least kinda interesting.
But really: I prefer seeing a film or reading a book about the French Revolution (or something like The Count of Monte Christo), Nazi resistance or the Civil Rights struggle in the US to some medieval knights in shining armor, princesses and fairy tale stuff. The social justice warrior in me is offended by the fact how nearly all that fantasy and fairy tale stuff is embedded in stiff class society systems all the protagonists do not really question or want to change (except by wanting to be a good king in place of the bad king). There is nothing wrong with love and drama in turbulent times of turmoil, but I prefer Dr Zhivago over Star Wars. Darth Vader had way too little sex and was a bad kisser to boot. Yoda wasn’t very good at reproducing either.
October 8th, 2025 at 14:29Sterling:
I have always thought of Blackmore as an intuitive player, guided by animal spirits. I have never really thought of him as relying on his intellect. This isn’t a dis.
I would change your statement to:
I have always thought of Blackmore as not just an intuitive player (though he has intuition too), relying solely on animal spirits. I have never thought of him as ignoring his intellect, his experience and, more importantly, how the whole thing will look and sound to third parties, when soloing. That doesn’t mean that he is without animal instinct, but that instinct is always controlled and reined in, Ritchie is too self-aware/self-conscious and guarded to let it go unleashed. This isn’t a dis either, on the contrary, I think his mix of traits is a strength and makes him very special.
When reviewing Rising at the time, NME scribe Bob Edmands wrote something very true about Ritchie, a characterization that has held up to this day:
Blackmore is never gonna be a new Hendrix. He`s not into that sort of frenzied inspiration. It`s a sense of dramatic effect and dynamics that he`s built his reputation on, and those instincts have rarely been put to better use than here.
“Stargazer” is the track that says it all, taking up half of one side, with a satanic majesty and a perverse epic grandeur that make it a classic.
Blackmore turns in one of his most stunning solos on “Stargazer”, precise, calculated, soaring and shimmering over the melee. And the song thunders for the exits with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra taking up the riff. Well done Koncert Meister Fritz Sonneleitner, you and the boys sound just like a rampaging synthesiser. It`s amazing what they can do with orchestras these days.
https://geirmykl.wordpress.com/tag/bob-edmands/
October 8th, 2025 at 14:57(with great thanks to Geir Myklebust’s fantastic site)
Methinks, Blackmore has elements of Baroque music thinking, akin to Corelli, Vivaldi, Bach etc. His solos are either so carefully planned that they sound natural, or carry so much fine frenzy in them, that people tend to think they are carefully planned. At the end, it is the amalgamation of both.
October 8th, 2025 at 15:41“As a few punters have said to me over the years, now this music has something in it, something special, it is much much more interesting than what Ritchie previously did. I always knew what they meant by that.”
And that is where we (have to) disagree, Herr MacGregor, for me there was always too little roll in Rainbow’s ardent rock. There is a joyfulness and life affirmation in Mk IV’s propulsive Comin’ Home that I don’t hear/feel in, say, Rainbow’s A Light In The Black, where I only hear doggedly delivered determination. There is no lightness of touch to balance things (and that absence of lightness maybe determines why Rainbow is more heavy metal than hard or heavy rock like Purple). With DP, Ritchie left behind the more variable musical vehicle to back him. I’m not sure whether he ever even realized that himself. He wasn’t always his own best advisor.
October 8th, 2025 at 15:54Tony Carey once said that not everything with Rainbow was as free form live as it seemed, a lot of parts were rehearsed to seem improvisational. That is not a criticism and it fits in with Ritchie’s personality: He likes to be in control of where things are going both with him and whoever is playing with him.
What Georgivs says, Blackmore is a good mix of various traits and qualities, but there is always a bit of calculation in him, he doesn’t just let rip, like, say Johnny Winter (who was incidentally much rated by Blackmore as a blues player, but I know a lot of people who would get headaches from half an hour of 70s Johnny Winter in full flight 🤣). Ritchie is too smart and refined to ever really sound raw. That elegance and restraint in his playing always appealed to me. Blackmore is essentially a fencer on guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9X_qCwG-c
October 8th, 2025 at 16:45@ 15 – well said Georgivs, that Baroque element that resides in certain rock musicians, from the good old days. That is why Blackmore liked Jethro Tull, one of the reasons. @ 16- you are disagreeing with other people Uwe, each to their own. People hear what they hear, Some comment on it, many don’t. I have known quite a few people who appreciate Deep Purple for their musicianship, but not so much their music, if that makes any sense. They just don’t get into them. However when Ritchie and Ronnie evoked a different spell in the early Rainbow, their ears pricked up. It happens occasionally with us all. We suddenly hear something, from somewhere and then the mind takes over and does the rest. A similar thing happens with Black Sabbath, most of it they find boring, but the occasional song or musical interlude evokes something, no doubt from the past. But they are not BS fans at all and they still appreciate Iommi as a musician. Cheers.
October 8th, 2025 at 20:52It would be interesting to know what went through RB’s mind in the 80s, when he continued to shine in the studio (to put it mildly – the JLT years, PS) yet sounded so poor live.
October 9th, 2025 at 04:35i love this Stargazer-Solo, too, but in my opinion the best studio-solo was in Gates of Babylon
October 9th, 2025 at 07:49The Gates of Babylon solo is a lot more off the wall, it really is proggish.
October 9th, 2025 at 23:15yes, thats right; but even some of the live Soli of Stargazer were also “off the wall” (but not proggish) , for ex. Cologne/76
October 10th, 2025 at 10:51I wish a Ritchie would have explored that proggish side more, but the solo part of GoB is basically a David Stone-induced coincidental detour rather than an earnest experimental stylistic change with a longterm perspective. And of course Ritchie’s then blossoming desire of conquest of US mainstream charts stood in the way of Rainbow exploring that style more in depth. By LLRnR (the album), Rainbow really had nowhere to go anymore, Dio might have been up to turning Rainbow more proggish, but Ritchie was pulling in a different direction, sing along chorus parts like the title song which was a recipe largely repeated (if simplified) for All Night Long on the next album.
October 10th, 2025 at 14:25Even going back to the Rising album for that vocal ‘commercial’ tone. Starstruck and Do You Close Your Eyes are heading in that direction. The LA Connection was in motion. Cheers.
October 10th, 2025 at 21:27To be fair, Ian Gillan wasn’t above singing a vocal melody in synchronicity with a guitar riff either once in a while if nothing better occurred to him. It’s something DC and GH to my recollection never did with Purple. Coverdale’s vocal melodies aren’t overly complex, but he eschews simply following a guitar riff.
You’re right, Lady Starstruck was like that too.
DYCYE was just a barrage of noise to me, horrible song right from the first time I heard it.
I never minded LA Connection, that particular song echoed Elf and I always liked them.
October 10th, 2025 at 23:41#25 Uwe:
This evening I went to see a 70s/80s cover band, they were great, they did a bit of everything from Boston, to the Doobie Brothers, to Sabbath, to Van Halen, to ZZ top, to Pink Floyd etc…. obviously the encores were Smoke, R’n’R and Highway Star….
when you hear these 3 pieces, everything else really fades into the background, you realize they go beyond anything else written after 1972, incredible…
but apart from that you came to mind, because after the performance, while talking to the keyboard player, there was a 60 year old guy with whom I exchanged a few words and among other things he told me which is his best album ever….it’s not Made in Japan, but rather the one with the hand holding the rainbow!!!
October 11th, 2025 at 23:15and then I immediately thought of Mr. Uwe!
I know, the album certainly has its many fans and is widely perceived as a major work though most of it never found lasting entry into Rambow’s live set. In the three years of their existence, Dio Rainbow very much relied on songs from their debut live with Kill The King the intro and Mistreated a remnant from Mk III.
I think in 1976, people were starved for a no-holds-barred album like Rising (because by that time a lot of early 70s hard rock heroes had mellowed down in their releases disappointing their core audience), the dark relentless energy of its music, the escapist fantasy lyrics and the evocative cover (a stunning piece of art, I’ll give it that, in comparison the debut cover had looked a bit like a BARBIE doll “Castle Magic” 🦄 package 😂).
Hey, I even have a vinyl copy of it signed twice (a couple of decades apart) by Tony Carey!
I’ll let you Dio Rainbow nuts be happy with it, it never did that much for me though I saw Dio Rainbow twice. But I overall preferred the songwriting and the Elf groove on the debut (as did Dio in various interviews) and the format stretching on the LLRnR album which to me also has a much better production than Rising.
October 12th, 2025 at 11:59But Uwe…don’t DC and GH sing aling to the tune of You Fool No One?
October 12th, 2025 at 14:19But I get what you say.
And agree when it comes to LA Connection. Plus the sound of Rising is thin indeed but I think it goes to show it’s a nice piece of work if people ratd it that high for decades nevertheless.
I’d rathet take LLRR to the desert island though.
Not quite sure what you mean, Max, the YFNO vocal line with its long drawn out melody (by David‘s and Glenn‘s own admission a nod to Jack Bruce and his vocal lines on Cream songs such as I Feel Free) is very much removed from Ritchie‘s busy riff underneath:
https://youtu.be/ne7vBIqhKdk
https://youtu.be/JK73Cv0xpJE
(isolated vocals at 04:00)
Did you perhaps mean What‘s Goin‘ On Here where the chorus vocal line is close to Ritchie‘s riff and melody if not exactly the same?
https://youtu.be/-OArB5reGFM
I don‘t think that the two ever came closer to what Ritchie was playing in a song.
October 12th, 2025 at 20:23You may be right, Uwe, I remembered that tune being played by Ritchie before the singing set it…but I might have confused it with Still I’m sad … quite similar songs the way Ritchie executed them. And as I don’t like both of them (apart from the middle section on MjE, where IP and RB truely shine!) I havn’t listened to them in a long time. BTW: the Purple Album version has to be the worst DC track that has ever seen the light of day…
October 13th, 2025 at 15:19I actually thought as much, you ole passionate MiE listener, there Ritchie indeed plays the Still I’m Sad monk chant melody
https://youtu.be/X9fmleT7mxs
on guitar over YFNO and that would later on transform into the rhythmically similar Rainbow version of Still I’m Sad.
It’s not quite the same as GILlAN singing after Blackmore’s riffs as it was Ritchie who copied a vocal melody here first and turned it into an instrumental to which RJD would live then lend his vocals, singing the original vocal melody of the Yardbirds.
I was never a fan of the Rainbow treatment of the song, I prefer the original with its 60s charm though it is inherently a slightly silly novelty number.
Ritchie has a weakness for those from that era as we all know …
https://youtu.be/HQntKceVXfc
https://youtu.be/3S7wUiKx6YA
October 13th, 2025 at 20:24Fair enough. You got it right, Uwe while I didn’t find the time to do my homework properly. Habit of a lifetime….
October 13th, 2025 at 23:50