Forty Years of Rainbow

On this day, forty years ago, Rainbow (then stylized as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow) released its first album; Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. Featuring a young Ronnie James Dio, recruited by Ritchie Blackmore himself, the album marked Ritchie's exit from Deep Purple, of which he was a founding member.

Blackmore began to feel dissatisfied in Deep Purple by the Stormbringer (1974) album, and conflicted with other members (notably the lead singer, David Coverdale) on musical direction. saying "Most of the band was going towards funk and shoeshine music and I wanted to get back to rock."

The catalyst for what supposed to be only be a single (which later turned into this same album) was the rejection of Blackmore's proposal to cover the Quatermaas song "Black Sheep of the Family". Fortunately, Ritchie found a like-minded singer in Ronnie James Dio. Elf, which he was fronting at the time, had toured with and opened for Deep Purple for several years. Ronnie, along with Craig Gruber (Bass), Gary Driscoll (drums), and Mickey Lee Soule (keys), from Elf teamed up with Blackmore to cover the song. The partnership that began with a simple cover soon blossomed into three albums, and helped springboard Dio to Black Sabbath, and later, Dio.

Anthropolist Sam Dunn produced an eleven part documentary series about the history and evolution of metal, dubbed "Metal Evolution". In the episode "Early Metal Part 2: UK Divison", he traces the influence of proto-metal hard rock bands Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. However, by the mid-seventies, these bands has lost some of their spark and much of their classic, heavy sound.

Enter Rainbow. Dunn credits Blackmore with "reigniting" the spirit of heavy metal at a time when it was on the decline. Not only did Blackmore's Rainbow keep metal alive, they also brought in many aspects of metal that persist today.

Ritchie, at the time, was obsessed with classical and baroque music, and sought to incorporate the themes and styles of classical music with rock. The result was the birth of a new sub-genre of metal: neoclassical, which remains to this day. In addition, the lyrics of Rainbow were filled with fantasy and medieval imagery, couresty of Ronnie James Dio, which would also stand as a lasting theme of modern metal.

The album still stands up as a masterpiece today, forty years later.