Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Rainbow
Label: Polydor Records
Release: 1979
Length: 36:05
Rating: 3.5/5
‘Money rules the world,’ English guitar wizard Ritchie Blackmore must have thought in 1979, after clashing with the legendary (sadly late) American singer Ronnie James Dio over the future sound of his band Rainbow. Ritchie was fed up to the back teeth with Ronnie’s fantasy-drenched, almost proto-power-metal lyrics, and with the fact that Rainbow just couldn’t break through on the other side of the Atlantic, even though audiences across continental Europe, hungry for hard rock in the middle of the punk and disco invasion, worshipped them almost fanatically. He was dying to conquer the American radio charts, but to do that he had to seriously commercialize Rainbow’s sound. The end result of the ‘conquer the USA’ mission was their fourth studio album with the telling title »Down to Earth«, which was almost completely different from what they’d done before and made with one single goal: to win over the hearts of American audiences, who didn’t care much for complex song structures and Dio’s daydreams about castles above the rainbow, and just wanted good, easy fun until the early hours.
After Ronnie was fired, Blackmore kept only one member of the lineup that recorded the previous studio album, the masterpiece »Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll« (1978): the legendary (and sadly late) drummer Cozy Powell, with whom he got along pretty well, at least at first, before Cozy figured out he was dealing with the king of guitar eccentrics. Finding a new singer should have been next to impossible, but Blackmore wasn’t looking for a Dio replacement, he wanted a singer with a completely different voice, stage presence and charisma. Once it became clear that Ritchie still couldn’t find common ground with his old Deep Purple ‘buddy’ Ian Gillan to talk him into joining, he tried his luck with Pete Goalby (ex-Trapeze, later Uriah Heep).
Goalby’s time with Rainbow was short-lived, though. During some warm-up gig the poor guy accidentally touched Ritchie’s guitar, so the great dictator in black showed him the door on the spot, just one in a long line of bizarre incidents in the legendary guitarist’s career. Blackmore finally found his ideal Rainbow singer (by his own standards) in Graham Bonnet (ex-The Marbles, later Alcatrazz, MSG, Impellitteri), who not only had a distinctive, slightly raspy voice but also stood out with a glamorous, tongue-in-cheek, most ‘American’ look of all the singers Rainbow ever fronted, even though he was the only Englishman among them (Doogie White is a Scot). Alongside the more commercial music, image became important for the ‘Americanized’ Rainbow too, if Ritchie wanted as many (comely) young women as possible turning up at their shows.
The new keyboardist, on Powell’s recommendation, since he was an old acquaintance and collaborator, was Don Airey (later MSG, Gary Moore, Ozzy Osbourne, Deep Purple), who first got serious attention as a member of the progressive rock/jazz rock fusion supergroup Colosseum II and as an ‘outside’ collaborator of the legendary Black Sabbath on the album »Never Say Die« (1978). The biggest surprise, though, came in the form of the new bassist and producer, who turned out to be none other than Roger Glover, Ritchie’s old buddy from the Deep Purple days. The decision caught plenty of Ritchie’s followers off guard at the time. Roger, who only picked up the bass after Jack Green (ex-Pretty Things) stopped meeting the required conditions, had by then long forgotten the old grudges, and the way Blackmore kicked him out of Deep Purple in 1973.
The new Rainbow had more in common with melodic rock/AOR than with the neoclassical hard rock of the Dio era, and Glover’s ‘down-to-earth’ production and the absence of epic arrangements played a big part in that. The opener »All Night Long«, an energy catalyst, makes it clear right away that »Down to Earth« was a decidedly commercial affair. It was the first hit single from the album, and while it didn’t become the huge success its mastermind had imagined, it’s one of the few Rainbow evergreens from this period, and Bonnet and Airey still play it at their solo shows. The structure of this classic is really nothing special: a simple but effective Ritchie guitar riff, backed by the bouncy rhythms of the Glover/Powell duo. Bonnet’s distinctive, raspy, irritated singing goes hand in hand with lyrics about partying until morning, but it’s the melodic chorus, helped along by backing vocal harmonies, that lodges itself in your ear receptors for good.
The somewhat dark »Eyes Of The World« is without doubt the most complex piece on the album and the only track on »Down To Earth« that, with its socially critical pulse, might have appealed to Ronnie James too. It opens with a gloomy synth intro, followed by a sly shift into a punchy section where mighty drum crashes dictate a merciless tempo and Bonnet’s passionate vocal outburst peaks in the chorus. Ritchie’s trademark guitar improvisation is there too, instantly recalling the classic Rainbow era. »No Time To Lose«, on the other hand, is a fairly simple hard rock number with a forgettable chorus and Ritchie’s characteristic guitar phrasing. Airey’s organ improvisations come off all the more interesting, but they’re simply too short for the song as a whole to leave any deeper mark. »Makin’ Love« has a lovely guitar intro with a Celtic touch and a galloping rhythm, while the vocal harmonies nicely support Graham’s spirited performance. Despite the promising opening, this love confession sadly goes nowhere, and even with some fun guitar variations, it soon gets pretty repetitive.
With the evergreen and arena rock anthem »Since You Been Gone«, Ritchie finally managed to land the big hit he’d been after, briefly breaking into the American charts and onto radio stations, even though he didn’t write it, since it was a cover of another songwriter’s work. The classic was written for his solo album »Winning« in 1976 by the legendary English musician and songwriter Russ Ballard (Argent), who also contributed quite a few hits for other acts (Uriah Heep and Judas Priest, for example). Regardless of that (or maybe precisely because of it), »Since You Been Gone«, along with »I Surrender«, became the biggest hit in Rainbow’s history and one of their most recognizable songs ever, one that plenty of people who have no clue who Rainbow or Ritchie Blackmore even are have heard on the radio by now. The recipe for success lay in a simple but damn clever guitar riff and a pompous, arena-rock chorus where Bonnet, with the help of gorgeous backing harmonies, works unforgettable magic.
»Love’s No Friend«, anchored in a slow rhythm, has a bluesier pulse again, which suits Graham’s voice quite well, sounding cleaner this time than his usual, traditionally raspy approach. This is one of the few forgotten gems of »Down to Earth«, with its main lyrical strength (once again) lying in the melodic chorus. In the closing stretch, neoclassical guitar improvisations briefly take over, deepening the melancholic atmosphere even further.
The belligerent »Danger Zone«, dominated by mighty layers of synths and irritated guitar passages, is an interesting hybrid of ‘classic’ and ‘American’ Rainbow, a successful mix of punch and melody. The short instrumental section with Ritchie’s pentatonic scales is especially fun. »Lost In the Hollywood«, a classic hard rocker running on ‘rocket fuel’, makes for a solid close to the album, even though Rainbow fans were used to far more epic epilogues by then. Here too there are a few brilliant improvisations from Ritchie and Don, which nicely crank up the already heated atmosphere of this closing classic.
»Down to Earth« is far from a bad album, especially through today’s eyes, but it had the bad luck of coming out after Dio’s extraordinary, unrepeatable run, which makes its music and its overall significance for Blackmore’s later career fade a bit. The only Rainbow album with Graham Bonnet on lead vocals remains a completely unique entry in their discography that has held up decently over time, and, even though apart from »Since You Been Gone« it has no songwriting peaks, it can safely be counted among the hard rock classics. Even today it will appeal to many fans of AOR, which Ritchie started flirting with more and more after Bonnet’s and Powell’s departure.
Line-up
Ritchie Blackmore – guitar
Graham Bonnet – vocals
Roger Glover – bass, producer
Don Airey – keyboards
Cozy Powell – drums
Production
Roger Glover
Track list
1. All Night Long
2. Eyes of the World
3. No Time to Lose
4. Makin’ Love
5. Since You Been Gone
6. Love’s No Friend
7. Danger Zone
8. Lost in the Hollywood
