Rainbow – Long Live Rock and Roll – 1978
There’s a theory that the children of a movement are more like the cult of that movement. More earnest. There’s less irony. I think that’s sort of true. And it’s no truer than it is with Rainbow. Only it’s weirder because the group is led by one of the leaders of that movement.
Ritchie Blackmore may have been an inventor of modern metal but, with the addition of Ronnie James Dio, all the cliches that Spinal Tap would skewer just 4 years later make sense. The mythology, the epic stories set to the template of METAL GODS is, well, it comes off as downright childish. And I’ve got little interest in it.
The lead track, “Long Live Rock and Roll”, should be good but by this time AC/DC has sort of already cornered the “song about how great rock and roll is” song. A trope they will revisit for 35 years.
Rainbow sounds like they are diluted. Second rate. Just when you think, “oh, yea, this is more like it” on a song like “L.A. Connection” & “Gates of Babylon”, then Dio comes in with his crappo lyrics and just ruins everything. Although I do love the music on the latter.
Side Two really explodes with “Kill the King” a track that Judas Priest could have sued Blackmore and Dio over. Ritchie is in fine shred here and that is followed up by the blues-infused metal “The Shed” a song that has Motley Crue’s entire career written all over it. But it can’t redeem the whole record, especially when that awful last song, “Rainbow Eyes” drags the whole thing down.
There are moments, though. They are just buried too deep to help the record. Good luck getting to them.
Grade: C+
ASide: Kill the King, The Shed
BlindSide: Gates of Babylon, Sensitive to Light
DownSide: LA Connection
