Newsgroups: alt.music.deep-purple,alt.music.dio 
Subject: Helsinki gig; night and Sunday 
From: dio@snakemail.hut.fi (Tapio Keihänen) 
Date: 02 Oct 1995 22:51:57 GMT 

This might be little hard to read, because I'm relatively tired... I wanted to write this now, however.

After the show ended bit after midnight, a couple of friends of mine went to wait the band at the hotel. After a little while they came, all together, and signed some stuff for those guys. They went to their rooms, but then returned back downstairs to the lobby. Ritchie was wearing jeans, some T shirt and that what-do-you-call-it hat (similar to the one he's wearing on the SIUA album cover) and carrying an acoustic guitar. The three tour managers came downstairs with the band, too.

At this point most of my friends had left the hotel and there were three of them left any more. The band - without the keyboardist - started jamming there in the lobby, playing guitar and singing etc. The hotel's bar was closed, and the hotel staff refused to open it for them, no matter what they did. So they most likely went to empty their minibars at their rooms and brought some beer and champagne downstairs.

As they were playing there, my friends were still outside, as the hotel crew didn't let them in (no room - no entrance policy). Everyone from the band went to the reception and all of them tried to talk the guys inside. Ritchie alone spent some five minutes with seemingly some "reception manager" without any success to get those guys inside. Eventually the singer (I remember it was a singer, I'm not sure though) went to open the door and let those guys sneak in. The reception manager tried to prevent that, but the singer just stopped him and told that "they'll be here only for two minutes". ... and to my friends he said "let's make it a very long two minutes".

The band continued jamming there with my friends, offered them beer and champagne and so on. They were playing mostly whatever came to their mind, but Ritchie played also at least the Over The Rainbow song and most of the Temple Of The King. Candice and Ritchie were kissing and hugging each other all the time.

The hotel staff continuosly tried to get those three "outsiders" out, eventually threating to call police to get them. At that point Candice suggested that they'd go to their room, as the staff wouldn't bother them there, but that suggestion didn't catch fire. My friends spent something like bit less than an hour with the band there, and the band had played an another hour before they got in. They took quite many photos there, I've seen a couple of them and I gotta say that some of them are very interesting ones ;).

Then, around 4am or so (or maybe 3am, I cannot remember for sure) Ritchie told that maybe it would be a good time to go to bed, so my friends said their goodbyes to the band, band left to their rooms and to the hotel staff's pleasure, my friends left the hotel. Right after my friends get about a half a block from the hotel, police stopped them and told them that the hotel staff had alarmed them. When they heard the guys' story about what had happened, they started to laugh with them and told that "it wasn't exactly the first time this happened". They went to check whether there was any damage of any kind at the hotel and as everything was in perfect condition, they let them go.

I went to the hotel myself around 11am on the Sunday morning and those friends came there too and told me what happened. We waited for some time (a rather long time, to be exact - or at least it felt like a long time in that cold and rainy weather), managers went in and out, so did the band members (it was either Doogie or one of the managers who went to the McDonald's near there to get some breakfast;).

Ritchie didn't come down until something like 1.30pm or so and when he came, he spent about hour with a Japanese couple in the lobby. That couple (both rather small, the man wears a suit and the woman wears .. hmm.. don't know what it is called, but 'woman's suit') are going to follow the band for the whole European tour.

Eventually, the band came out, signed some stuff for us (I got Paul Morris' autograph on the ticket) and went to their van. A couple of minutes later Ritchie came out, signed some stuff for us and went to his Volvo with Candice & drove to the airport. Managed to get his autograph on Rainbow: Live In Germany LP front cover ;).

I managed to ask him one question before he left, to be exact it was "What happened to the 16th Century Greensleeves and Black Sheep Of The Family you recorded with Ronnie when Ronnie was still in Elf and there was no sign of Rainbow?" Ritchie just answered that they recorded those songs for the first album, there was no plans of single or anything. Either he didn't want to answer to the question correctly, or he didn't remember that.

Ah, one more thing: Before the show on Saturday, Ritchie went to play football at one local baseball field with some of his bandmates and managers. One of those friends who were later also at the hotel followed them to there and got to play against Ritchie's team with two German guys who were already there on the baseball field. My friend asked the guys whether they knew who that long-haired guy with that strange moustache was - answer was "No". Then he asked whether they knew bands Deep Purple and Rainbow - answer was "yes, they make good music...Why?" When they heard that it was Ritchie Blackmore, they first didn't believe it but when they got autographs and aftershow passes after the match they believed ;).

I hope the above makes some sense, I'm too tired to proof-read it ;)

-- Tapio Keihanen --- dio@snakemail.hut.fi
"Everybody's got to live together, all the people got understand
Love your neighbour like you love your brother
Come on and join the band" -- Ronnie James Dio @ The Butterfly Ball 1974