TANYA’S RAINBOW OF RUBBISH: Rainbow
They say there is a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, guarded by crafty Irish leprauchauns. Well, that may well be the case, but all I saw when I got to the end of this Rainbow Of Rubbish were the four girls from B*Witched doing some cod Riverdance to try and regain some sort of career. I soon smacked them upside the head, but C’est La Vie as I’m sure they would say.
No, at the end of the spectrum of shite is one final entry, a band who had so little shame that they decided to name themselves after the entire Rainbow. They were called Rainbow – and unsurprisingly they were rubbish. It was a vanity project, an offshoot from the equally dull (and colour mentioning) Deep Purple. The Purple were famous primarily for writing the easiest record ever made – in Smoke On The Water. This tag slowly got to their guitarist Ritchie Blackmore until he could take it no longer and left. Notwithstanding the obvious fact that he had written the childishly simple song ever and that fact was not going to go away by changing bands. Indeed it became quite clear that Blackmore was a bit of a blamer in general. Rainbow got through three seperate singers – all kicked out citing creative differences. I assume they wanted to be creative – and this was different to “three note Blackmore”.
Rainbow – in the great tradition of British Heavy Metal – were dull, lumpen bores. Their most successful song was “Since You’ve Been Gone” a Blackmore penned number about how nuts he’s been since someone has – unsurprisingly – been gone. If you were so worried about people leaving you wouldn’t keep kicking them out of your band. In the end the dictatorial style of Blackmore (and lack of sales) forced the band to split – Blackmore went and joined Whitesnake (what is it with this guy and colours?). Rainbow had never really been a band anyway – just Blackmore and bunch of puppets. Blackmore on Guitar, George on bass, Bungle on drums and Zippy on vocals.