Rising (Rainbow album)

Band leader Ritchie Blackmore retained only Ronnie James Dio from the previous album line-up, and recruited drummer Cozy Powell, bassist Jimmy Bain and keyboard player Tony Carey to complete the roster.[5] Recorded in Munich in less than a month, the album was overseen by rock producer and engineer Martin Birch. The band was originally billed as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow in the US.[2] In 1996 Cozy Powell told Record Collector magazine that much of the album was recorded in one or two takes, with some subsequent overdubs, which explains why no alternate or demo versions exist, just the original or rough mixes.

The album showpiece, the 8-minute and 26 second piece "Stargazer", which features the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, originally had a keyboard intro, as evidenced on the 2011 Deluxe Edition's "Rough Mix" version.

Few of the album tracks made it into the band's live set: "Stargazer" and "Do You Close Your Eyes", written prior to the inaugural US tour in late 1975, featured in all the 1975 and 1976 shows, while "A Light in the Black" was dropped early in the 1976 tour, although it was reintroduced into the set during the Japanese dates. "Starstruck" was played in shortened form, usually as part of "Man on the Silver Mountain".

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[6]
Rolling Stone	(mixed)[7]
Sputnikmusic	[8][1]

Rising peaked at number 48 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. In the UK it would peak at number 11. The original vinyl release was a gatefold sleeve, containing a photo of the band inside, with a generic Polydor inner sleeve.

The first CD issue had a slightly different mix to that of the original LP, including, for example, a longer delay before the band entered after Carey's opening solo in "Tarot Woman", a longer play-out on "Run with the Wolf", and the track "Stargazer" had the vocals mixed without the delay, the extra synthesizer deleted and some of the phased sounds deleted. When remastered in 1999 the original vinyl mix was restored.

According to AllMusic, Rising captured "Blackmore and Dio at the peak of their creative powers...(it) chronicled both the guitarist's neo-classical metal compositions at their most ambitious, and the singer's growing fixation with fantasy lyrical themes – a blueprint he would adopt for his entire career thereafter."[6]

Musicians Rob Halford of Judas Priest and Snowy Shaw have paid tribute to the album in recent years, with Shaw describing it as "a masterpiece and pretty much a milestone" and saying that it "introduced a more Dungeons and Dragons type fantasy heavy rock to the masses."[9][10]

All tracks are written by Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio.

Rainbow

• Ronnie James Dio – vocals
• Ritchie Blackmore – guitar
• Tony Carey – keyboards
• Jimmy Bain – bass
• Cozy Powell – drums

with

• Munich Philharmonic Orchestra – strings, horn
• Fritz Sonnleitner – concert master
• Rainer Pietsch – conductor

Production

• Produced and mixed by Martin Birch
• Recorded at Musicland Studios, Munich, Germany, February 1976

Album

• Chicago metal band Bible of the Devil covered the song "Starstruck" on a 2004 split EP with The Last Vegas.[21]
• Dream Theater covered the song "Stargazer" on the album Black Clouds & Silver Linings (2009).
• Faroese folk metal band Týr covered the song "Stargazer" as well on their album The Lay of Thrym (2011).
• The 2014 tribute album to Ronnie James Dio "This Is Your Life" featured covers from "Starstruck" by Motörhead and Biff Byford and a medley of the songs: "Stargazer", "Tarot Woman", "Kill the King" and "A Light in the Black" called "Ronnie Rising Medley" by Metallica.