Sorry for another poll, but I'm on a Rainbow roll lately and I needed an excuse to get the discussion going on this awesome band!
The excuse for the discussion, the poll, offers not a selection of songs, but is made up of ALL THE THREE ALBUMS Dio recorded with Rainbow. I've added the limit of 8 choices, one more than the usual, just to make more room for all the awesomeness contained in those albums. I thought about maybe doing a survivor about this, but I wanted to see how an all inclusive poll, with all the songs included, would perform.
For those who need a reminder, and I hope there aren't, Rainbow is the band formed by Ritchie Blackmore after the split with Deep Purple.
More precisely, while dissatisfied with the direction of Purple, Blackmore hooked up with Ronnie James Dio - frontman of the band Elf, opening band for DP on tour - , recorded a cover DP didn't want to (Black Sheep of the Family), wrote another original song (16th Century Greensleeves) and liked the results so much that he used all of Elf, minus the guitarist of course, to write an entire album: Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow.
The album was a success and therefore Blackmore quit Deep Purple. Since Blackmore likes stable line-ups as much as Stanley Kubrick liked single takes while shooting his movies, he fired everyone except Dio and went on tour with the line-up that would write the second and monumental album, Rising.
The classical influence of Blackmore and Dio's fantasy lyrics were a match made in heaven, and on these two albums there are timeless masterpieces that would inspire many bands to come, and mid tempos like Stargazer or atmospheric slower pieces like Catch the Rainbow or The Temple of the King set a benchmark still hard to top today.
The third album came in the guise of Long Live Rock n' Roll, once again packed with catchy tunes like the title track, big epics like Gates of Babylon, and one of the first templates for speed metal, Kill the King which already was opening concerts in the years before, as it was immortalized on the live album On Stage.
After these three glorious albums, Blackmore wanted to steer the band in a more commercial direction and that spelled the end for his partnership with Dio. But that's another story (and maybe another excuse for a poll), for now let's concentrate on three albums that 40 years later still stand above countless of the bands and albums these records have inspired!!!
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