Ritchie Blackmore kertoo harkitsevansa vielä muutaman Rainbow-keikan soittamista: Pääpaino yhtyeen omissa kappaleissa

Hollantilainen Radio Veronica haastatteli hiljattain legendaarista Deep Purplesta ja Rainbow’sta tuttua kitaristi Ritchie Blackmoren liittyen Rainbow’n hiljattain soittamaan komeen paluukeikkaan. Kysyttäessä mikä sai hänet soittamaan Rainbow’n kolme paluukeikkaa, Blackmore vastasi:

”Besides money, I heard [new RAINBOW] singer, Ronnie [Romero, who is originally from Chile but now settled in Madrid, Spain], singing on YouTube. Candy [Ritchie’s wife, Candice Night] had played it to me. She said, ’What to do you think of this guy?’ And I don’t go on the computer very much; I’m too old for that stuff. And Candy is often going on YouTube or whatever, and she said, ’He’s singing some of your old songs, the RAINBOW songs.’ And I heard them, and I went, ’Wow! This guy is really good. He’s exciting.’ And there had been some talk about reforming RAINBOW with David Coverdale and a few others — Glenn Hughes… Although they are friends of mine, I wasn’t urgently involved in it. I was hesitating for probably a good part of a year before I kind of decided I wasn’t gonna do it — until I heard this singer. As soon as I heard the singer, he had such a good voice, so much vitality, and that excited me. I thought, ’Wow! He’s singing all the old songs, but he’s doing it so well — old hard rock.’ It was exciting to hear.”

Kun Blackmorelta kysyttiin saiko hän tarjouksia useamman Rainbow-keikan soittamisesta, hän vastasi:

”Yes. Many. But I wanted to see how the three went. If they were disastrous and we had accepted more, it was gonna be awkward. We might do a few more shows again.”

Hän kertoi pitäneensä paluukeikkojen soittamisesta:

”I enjoyed especially the last one in England. The first two were a little bit intense, because we hadn’t played together… we hadn’t done a lot of rehearsing, so the first two shows were a bit hectic and chaotic. But the last one in Birmingham was… obviously, we’d played two shows at that point, and that seemed to work, to me. And it was great to see all the old people… I mean, it was so weird how… I think it was twenty thousand people… It sold out in fifteen minutes. And I kind of wondered who they thought was playing, ’cause when I got to the auditorium, it was so vast that I thought, ’Maybe somebody else is playing this show tonight.'”

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Kysyttäessä oliko keikkojen settilistan muodostaminen vaikeaa, hän vastasi:

”No. [It was] very easy, in a way. We had about fifteen songs that were very obvious songs to play, like ’Catch The Rainbow’. And we incorporated a few DEEP PURPLE songs — ’Black Night’, ’Smoke [On The Water]’, ’Highway Star’ — of which some of the fans said, ’Why did you do those DEEP PURPLE songs?’ And I would say, ’Why not?’ And they said, ’Well, we thought it was just gonna be RAINBOW. We would prefer to hear [more] RAINBOW songs.’ Which I thought was kind of ironic again. I’m thinking, ’Wow! We just threw three songs in by DEEP PURPLE when they wanted more [RAINBOW].’ And I noticed when they clapped, they weren’t clapping so hard for DEEP PURPLE [songs]. They said, ’We hear that every year,’ ’cause [the current lineup of] PURPLE goes around [on tour]. So the next time, if we go out and we do anything, I would do probably ninety-five percent RAINBOW songs; that’s what they seem to want to hear. And it didn’t occur to me. I just naturally assumed they wanted to hear everything.”

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