Former RAINBOW and DEEP PURPLE singer Joe Lynn Turner has once again slammed Ritchie Blackmore for the guitarist’s decision to go out and perform classic DEEP PURPLE and RAINBOW material with a new group musicians instead of reforming RAINBOW with a more “authentic” lineup.
Speaking to the “80’s Glam Metalcast”, Turner said that he had been in talks with Blackmore for at least a year about a renewed collaboration before he found out from a French newspaper that Ritchie was returning to rock music but excluding Joe from the project.
The singer said:
“Most people don’t know this true story, because I didn’t try to really come out and make people understand it all, because I just said, ‘Look, the guy’s gonna do what he wants to do.’ But I was talking to his so-called ‘management,’ ’cause it’s his mother-in-law for a good year. I’ve got all the e-mails to prove it. We were going back and forth talking about what the reunion of RAINBOW would be. And I wanted an authentic RAINBOW reunion; I wanted to get authentic players. I wanted the real RAINBOW — not just the RAINBOW I was in — but I wanted to bring up Doogie White and Graham Bonnet and I had Bob Daisley. Unfortunately, Jimmy Bain had passed and so on and so forth, but Don Airey… I wanted to make it sort of a RAINBOW extravaganza. There would be a core band, whether it was [Bobby] Rondinelli or [Chuck] Burgi on drums or Dave Rosenthal — I spoke to all of them. I was lining all this up.”
He continued:
“You may or may not know anything about the Blackmore camp, as we call it, but they’re very guarded. And the mother-in-law — the story is I had a spy in that camp, and the story is that she was badmouthing me to Ritchie saying that I wanted to take full control of it all. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. I was talking to Live Nation, which we had over a hundred and sixty dates promised, either headlining and/or special guests at all the big festivals.
He added:
“Our label, Universal, was gonna release not only an album but a four-song EP. I had Rock Fuel Media out of L.A., which was gonna do a 3D video of the whole thing. It was just gonna be gigantic and enormous — amazing. And she turned around and just dropped it like a hot potato — didn’t even give me any reason why. And I found out in a newspaper called Le Parisien that I wasn’t gonna be in the band. So I kind of laughed at it — simply because he said that I didn’t know about it. But I said, ‘Well, he’s making a mistake, but he doesn’t know about it.’ And I know that’s my opinion today.”
1 comment
like to have seen turner,bonnet doing some vocals, don airey on keyboards, roger glover doing bass besides whoevr else played bass on the records. only drumme ri knoew who was in rainbow was cozy powell (r.i.p). just getting some musicians together who can learn and play the stuff doesnt cut it for me. got to have some of the well known people who played in the band.
its like another line up of whitesnake.one person who owns the name and hires whoever to play in the band. just using the name