Very, very brief time
Peter Goalby tells the story of how he was the singer in Rainbow. For all of about five minutes.
Thanks to Uwe for the heads-up.
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse10.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/glover.jpg)
Peter Goalby tells the story of how he was the singer in Rainbow. For all of about five minutes.
Thanks to Uwe for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Not only Pete’s local paper reported about his joining, but also the German Musik Express in a small column along the lines of “new singer in Rainbow following Ronnie James Dio is Pete Goalby who has sung with Trapeze, the band ex-Deep Purple Glenn Hughes also came from”. No picture though. So something official must have crept out which makes sense given that Pete was already on Rainbow’s payroll and was told by Roger after the fateful jam that he was “fired” and not that he had “failed the audition”.
That Ritchie expects his fellow musicians to come up with own ideas or at least develop his ideas in a jam situation is hardly a surprise given how he has always worked both in Purple and Rainbow. I remember a 1980 interview where he specifically lauded Don Airey for that quality saying “you give Don the tiniest idea and he will be gushing with variations and extensions of it, that’s very helpful“. Not everyone can do that though. Some people can only write in private or seclusion and I’ve played with really good singers both male and female who were great at replicating melodies, but if you put a microphone before them to contribute something to a jam they would turn into a deer in the headlights and just freeze.
I do doubt whether Graham was all that much different to Pete in that respect though given that he had never written a song before he joined Rainbow (unlike Pete who was an astute songwriter in his own right and even continued penning songs for Uriah Heep after he had left them) and made a career of interpreting other people’s material. All the vocal melodies on Down To Earth are either Ritchie’s or Roger’s (and Graham – unlike Dio or Turner – doesn’t have a single writing credit) except of course for the Ballard-penned Since You’ve Been Gone which must have been played both to Pete and Graham in the Clout version Bruce Payne had languishing on his tape recorder (and which contrary to conventional wisdom does not differ that much from Rainbow’s arrangement except for the missing guitar solo over the halftime part).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJcZn4OOSMs
But by the time Graham joined Rainbow, most of DTE was already in the can instrumentally, so he likely wasn’t put in a similar position as Pete to come up with something on the spur of a moment.
Goalby was a good singer and very much AOR-focused – the direction Ritchie at the time wanted to go in and which RJD did not want/could not join him in -, the song he played to Ritchie to showcase his voice is this one here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzJfv2IT_EU
which is ballady at the beginning before morphing into a tuneful enough Foreigner/Bad Company style rocker around the two minute mark. I remember Pete mentioning in an interview when he was already with Uriah Heep that he considered Lou Gramm and Steve Perry the two best AOR singers, but had a preference for the former “because Steve, when he sings real high, starts to sound a bit like a woman, while Lou Gramm’s voice stays manly no matter how high he sings“. (I personally prefer Steve Perry to Lou Gramm because of the luster in his crooner’s voice, his role model was – as was Graham Bonnet’s btw – the great Sam Cooke after all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ekOXs1-7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPr3yvkHYsE )
The Heepsters have only good things to say about Pete’s tenure with them – with one exception: that he wasn’t perhaps the greatest natural frontman. Watching this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt5cSKErGPE
I tend to agree. Pete sings beautifully, but a crowd pleaser like David Byron
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES3327nN3Ng
(Having a drink or two or three .. before hitting the stage of course helps with a more unrestrained performance … 🙄)
or Bernie Shaw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t6atRpy0sQ
he ain’t, a bit on the introverted side (John Lawton was like that too). I wouldn’t rule out that a via constant romps with Ms Amy Rothman suitably testosterone-charged lovestruck Ritchie
https://i.pinimg.com/564x/b7/3f/89/b73f89e012926ab63b4407b8e342f5ed.jpg
picked up on that with his animal instinct even during the rehearsal already, this accelerating Pete’s departure from the band. Ritchie generally doesn’t need a whole lot of time to make up his mind about someone or something – to put it mildly. 🙄
November 3rd, 2025 at 14:40Pete Goalby would have been a better fit than Bonnet for my take on this hypothetical situation. Rainbow (that possible lineup) may have lasted a little longer me thinks. Although Cozy most likely would have still told Blackmore where to go. I don’t take to the myth that Graham Bonnet didn’t contribute anything to those songs at all. Cozy allegedly contributed to Lost in Hollywood according to the album credits. Maybe not on paper in the writing credits but melody wise, come on, who was laying that down for him to follow, Glover we could think as a basic outline. Bonnet is a good singer, he would have put his slant on those original songs. What would they have sounded like without him with only Glover and Blackmore writing and Glover singing or humming or even whistling them? Call me a cynic but with Blackmore’s attitude at times regarding writing credits?????? I witnessed Goalby in action with Heep and he was a rather good vocalist, sure he was too AOR for me but still a fine singer. At least John Lawton didn’t sound AOR back in the 70’s. Regarding Goalby’s stage persona, well how can you get worse than Bernie Shaw? He is terrible to my eyes, s bit too much of the ‘trying too hard’ scenario for me and also too yobbo-ish and shouty. Anyway, Lord Byron did rule as many of those older original front line male vocalists did with their charisma etc. Cheers.
November 3rd, 2025 at 20:50Not even on his solo album Line-Up following Rainbow did Graham write anything – I believe the first album where he had writing credits was the – truly great – Assault Attack of MSG. Of course he did progress into becoming a (co-)songwriter later on.
But being the excellent and experienced singer he was, he must have added something to Ritchie’s and Roger’s ideas, whether that passed for a co-songwriter credit is another matter.
I think Bonnet’s gung-ho laddish frontman qualities were undeniable and evident, the guy had sass. He was intrepid fronting Rainbow, possibly because he was so unaware of their history and didn’t know too much about DP either. Hard to picture the very “musicianly” Goalby doing the same. I don’t mean this as an insult, because I think they are great, but Pete is more the type of singer for the Little River Band. Again: not a put-down at all, that is an ace band.
November 3rd, 2025 at 22:22I understand why Pete Goalby got Ritchie’s attention:
his vocal style is reminiscent of Freddy Mercury and would have been very cool at the time with the commercial breakthrough Ritchie had in mind.
then maybe he realized that it was better to avoid possible similarities or maybe that technically Goalby did not give him 100% guarantees.
November 3rd, 2025 at 23:58Wouldn’t RB have noticed an issues with pete when they rehearsed in the USA? Recall hearing Graham also struggled performing/coming up with vocals at Le Château, and that the tunes only finally came together at Syosset Sound, in Long Island., so guess they persevered a bit more with him given time and cost rising.
November 4th, 2025 at 08:22I have to say that Bernie Shaw is the better suited singer for the Byron era Heep, more than any other vocalist that has been in that situation. Plus he is a bit of a Byron acolyte too, from what I have read in a few interviews. And he apparently doesn’t have anything to do with any songwriting. Some singers are like that, Roger Daltrey is one. Art Garfunkel another. When the songs are really good I guess that could be an easy thing to do, just get into the song and deliver. I suppose my main critique of the more modern day rock singer is that they don’t have much stage presence as such. Tony Martin was another, they sort of look like they don’t know what to do, it is a fine line if they don’t play any additional instruments or don’t know the ‘acting’ style moves and have that extra charisma to boot. Some ‘acting’ dramatic singers have the moves and the grace, if that is a way to put it. Of course the vocal delivery is what is most important. Very good singers are NOT a dime a dozen. Cheers.
November 4th, 2025 at 09:02It’s a shame he sounds so wooden in the recording as it makes an interesting tale of RB’s working methods really dull. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that GB contributed lines & melodies to DTE but they were uncredited. Might have been a typical RB approach at the time – didn’t he stiff Stone for credit for the intro to GOB?
November 4th, 2025 at 12:48from Popoff’s “english castle magic”
Ritchie said could you base the melody for All Night Long around Out Of Time by Jagger. “and i said sure. So that’s the only one i kind of had full melody control”
November 4th, 2025 at 12:57Pete is very good singer, enjoy his work with Trapeze, Uriah Heep, he will do well!, and abomamoog is one favorite album all time.
November 4th, 2025 at 14:17David, that is not Pete‘s voice you‘re hearing, but the podcaster’s one reading out loud Pete‘s email answers to email questions posed, hence the dead delivery.
Pete‘s speaking voice – here in session with rock therapist extraordinaire and spiritual guide Phil Aston 😆 – sounds like this:
https://youtu.be/9fjjwose9Ug
*****************************
Bernie Shaw is too operatic for me too and so was David Byron, but hasn’t that been Heep’s shtick all along?
*****************************
Bonnet has said in interviews that he should have insisted more on a co-writer’s credit on some songs of DTE, but didn’t think of it back then, because he came from a background where he had always interpreted other people’s material. Bonnet’s voice is so one of a kind, he certainly puts his own slant on anything, but there is a lot of grey area between mere interpretation and co-writership.
Roger sure had experience with Out Of Time, he played bass on Dan McCafferty’s version of it from 1975:
https://youtu.be/B0W1psBmwgY
November 4th, 2025 at 16:29Interesting. Never knew Peter Goalby was the guy who preceded Bonnet.
Seem to recall that when Blackmore told the story of how DTE was made, some years ago, he declined to name Bonnet’s predecessor. And implied that the un-named singer a) wasn’t very good, and b) was rather critical of the other band members.
Which conflicts both with Goalby’s vocal talents, manifest on several Heep and Trapeze records, and what Goalby has to say about his friendly relations with all concerned, excepting RB himself.
@7 – David, maybe it was this article? https://www.loudersound.com/features/rainbow-down-to-earth
“According to Bonnet, with Glover looking on he was required to sing each song four different ways. Glover “would give me a vague idea of melody and then tell me to do whatever I wanted to make the song my own”.
It still gnaws away at Bonnet that he was not subsequently assigned any songwriting credits on the Down To Earth album. “They knew I was the new boy and they pulled the wool over my eyes a little bit,” he claims. “Yes, Roger did the lyrics, but the melodies were mine. I was very green. It wasn’t until years later that I thought: ‘Wait a minute, I wrote those songs!’ “
November 4th, 2025 at 19:45You can’t doubt Goalby’s abilities nor his musical pedigree, but if he didn’t know how to improvise something over a bare bones idea of Ritchie, then you have a problem because Ritchie (and Purple in general) do not approach creating music in any other way. Ritchie isn’t the type of musician to walk into a rehearsal room and say I’ve written this at home, here is the tape, and I’ll show you how it goes right now. The mirror image is Sabbath’s bafflement in the Born Again sessions when they were writing the music, but had no idea what Ian would sing over it, which they found weird, with Ian however telling them to finish their instrumental work so that he could then take the tapes and add his vocals over what he heard.
If songwriting methods are incompatible in bands, it creates huge issues. I’m a guy who can come up spontaneously with ideas in a rehearsal space too, but if the other guy in the band can only write and demo at home (and is averse to changed once the band start working on it), n’er the two shall meet. It becomes frustrating for both sides.
That said, I think that Ritchie – always conscious of image things – maybe had a singer in mind with a more handsome appeal than Dio for the new commercial route to be taken. Graham Bonnet might have had too short hair and worn dinner jackets but he had chiseled features
https://d1dy244g59v5jo.cloudfront.net/artist-fe/fe91561429b03e2dd4188a0caeef49fd5d79a5a46611b36ab46eb392311de1aec829e243.jpg.512×512.jpg
and Joe Lynn Turner had a pretty boy look underneath his wig (of which no one was aware at the time and Ritchie is in any case sympathetic to all types of hair augmentation … 😈).
https://youtu.be/9GrESXkW3gU
Tasmanian woodsmen will now say how superficial that is from me, but let me tell you it does matter in a band like Rainbow and with someone like Ritchie. Had Glenn Hughes looked like John McCoy in 1973, he wouldn’t have stood a chance joining DP and the extensive makeover DC got with cross eyes surgery and slimming pills (plus Ritchie berating him for his overweight) says it all.
Now cue in Herr MacGregor and how anathema this all is to his long-held insular convictions … 😂
https://youtu.be/9GrESXkW3gU
November 4th, 2025 at 20:57Don Airey also i believe wrote around a third of DTE without credit
November 4th, 2025 at 22:00Ritchie belittled that in the 1980 interview I mentioned as “developing ideas given to him”, but made a point how that was not songwriting to him. I guess Blackmore ran a tight ship as songwriter credits go, he was never happy with the band credit policy of Mk II.
Tony Carey never got a credit for the iconic synth intro to Tarot Woman, yet it set the mood for that song. Similarly, Don never got a songwriter credit for his intro to Mr Crowley which to my mind is the reason for the song’s enduring popularity to this day. Unbefuckinglievable.
November 5th, 2025 at 16:54Song composition as in musical structure and the lyrics are the only recognised aspects to songwriting, from what I understand of that situation, correct me if I am mistaken with that. An intro or middle eight or something additional probably should be a recognised piece of the songwriting. However it is a fine line as we know. Who pushes that claim within the band or with the songwriter(s) at the time. Some musicians don’t really give a damn about a little piece they construct to help complete an arrangement. Some artists give a ‘additional’ songwriting credit of sorts, to other members of the band itself. The main songwriters usually are listed before that scenario from what I have noticed on album credits. Take Jethro Tull as an example, ‘all songs written by Ian Anderson, additional material by Jethro Tull”. It can also be a individual band member that may get mentioned, depending on the situation. Don Airey with Mr Crowley is a good example as Uwe mentioned and also Tony Carey’s intro for Tarot Woman. Do they bother mentioning that at the time, do they get a financial credit for that piece to ‘keep them happy’ etc. We are familiar with the David Stone situation with the song Gates of Babylon. In regard to singers subtly changing things to make it easier or better to sing, well that technically isn’t recognised as ‘songwriting or composition’ so we know where that ends up. Cheers.
November 5th, 2025 at 22:46And I’m sure RB didn’t write the intro to Eyes Of The World either.
November 6th, 2025 at 10:50#14: From Rudy Sarzo’s book “Off the Rails”, p 34:
Rudy: “The intro to Mr. Crowley, who came up with that?”
Randy Rhoads: “That was a keyboard player named Bill, a friend of a friend of Ozzy’s, who had come down to audition. Bob and I started jamming on this chord pattern that Bill had. When Ozzy came in and heard what we were playing he thought it sounded a bit like “Mr. Crowley”. So when it came to record the song, Don Airey came in and added his own touches and arranged it as the intro.”
November 6th, 2025 at 15:22@ 17- I never knew that about the keyboard player Bob at all. Thanks for that little piece of ‘Mr Crowley’ information. Cheers.
November 7th, 2025 at 00:11Sorry, Bill that should be.
November 7th, 2025 at 00:12