ARTICLE ABOUT Rainbow FROM New Musical Express, May 29, 1976

A great, and in parts, very funny review of one of the greatest albums in rock history. The journalist could not at this time imagine Blackmore`s Night, and neither could the rest of us. But the medieval experimentation or maybe we should call it flirtation, started around this time for Mr. Blackmore.
I don`t know why the title of the album (“Rising”) isn`t mentioned in the article, but maybe he didn`t have the cover at the time of his review or something.
And, I must also say, that this version of the band was one of the best ones. A really rocking band full of talented musicians. Unfortunately, three of the five musicians recording this album is not with us today. But what a legacy they left behind. Just playing on “Stargazer” is enough to be remembered forever. What a melody! What a song!

Blackmore`s Rainbow
Oyster (Purple)

By Bob Edmands

Ritchie Blackmore, the world`s loudest musician, sees an amazing new role for himself – as a medieval minstrel.
Hard to believe, right? Like Lou Reed campaigning in support of Real Ale: or George Harrison opting for atheism; or Tony Blackburn playing music; or Bob Harris shouting.
Well there it is in black and white. “An interest in medieval music… reflected in the Rainbow sound,” says the press handout. “Many of the songs make use of medieval modes.”
You gotta be joking. If Ritchie had to get the Sword out of the Stone, you can be sure he`d use a pneumatic drill.
Blackmore pours out the notes like burning oil from battlements. The band`s menace suggests the rack rather than the maypole. Their unhinged attack is enough to dissolve the monasteries all over again. The sound is fat, powerful and brutish, like Henry the Eight. Domesday Book? Doomsday machine, more like.
Medieval modes or not, the important thing is that with one album, Blackmore has transcended anything he did with Deep Purple.
It was Blackmore, with Ian Paice, who kept Deep Purple from being Shallow Sepia. Paice is sadly still with Purple, but on hand (and feet) is the great Cozy Powell, hammering away like the sort of octopus that could inspire a new Peter Benchley bestseller.
The combination is the hottest heavy in years. Lots of snarling riffs snapping at you, compelling, ferocious presence.

Blackmore is never gonna be a new Hendrix. He`s not into that sort of frenzied inspiration. It`s a sense of dramatic effect and dynamics that he`s built his reputation on, and those instincts have rarely been put to better use than here.
“Stargazer” is the track that says it all, taking up half of one side, with a satanic majesty and a perverse epic grandeur that make it a classic.
Blackmore turns in one of his most stunning solos on “Stargazer”, precise, calculated, soaring and shimmering over the melee. And the song thunders for the exits with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra taking up the riff. Well done Koncert Meister Fritz Sonneleitner, you and the boys sound just like a rampaging synthesiser. It`s amazing what they can do with orchestras these days.
Not content with one goldplated monster cut, Rainbow turn to “A Light in the Dark,” the sort of crazed, flat-out blitzkrieg the Purple tried for on “Machine Head”. When this baby rumbles out of the speakers, there`s not a grey cell left intact within a five-mile radius. No matter. Who needs grey cells to review this kind of mind-mangler?
Rainbow is different to Purple, and it`s not just the range of musical colours they produce. Most of those are varying shades of black, anyway. What this band have created is a bad guys` mutant of orchestral rock, the perfect antidote to the pious mysticism of Yes and other yesmen. Proof at last that rock music doesn`t have to be twee to be ambitious.

I have personally transcribed this from the original paper. Any errors in the text from the original magazine may not have been corrected for the sake of accuracy. If you have a music-related web-page where this fits – please make a link to the article. With credits to the original writer of the article from all of us music fans!

This number of New Musical Express also contains articles/interviews with these people: Average White Band, Chuck Berry, Rolling Stones, Todd Rundgren, Steve Miller Band, Streetwalkers, Gram Parsons, Dr. Hook, Joe Higgs, Sonny Rollins.

The original music paper this article came from (pictured at the top) is for sale!

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ARTICLE ABOUT David Bowie from New Musical Express, October 25, 1975

This one points the finger on a well-known phenomenon; the love that critics have for the latest fad. It is still a problem today. One of the reasons that I love rock is that it is music that doesn`t follow any trends. Rock is rock – whatever the year and whatever is the latest style of music in fashion among radio DJs. Apart from maybe a short period in the 80s, rock musicians didn`t play rock to conquer the single lists. Rock is a universe of feelings and expressions that a lot of people might like if they got the chance to listen to it. Rock is eternal. I think the one thing that radio programmers totally don`t understand, is that there are several generations and millions of people out there that never get to hear their favourite music on the radio. Instead, they find other outlets, specialised radio channels playing “their” kind of music, concerts and YouTube. Some of us still buy records on vinyl and CD. And we are not only people aged 45+, there are lots of people in the younger generations continuing this great tradition of listening to rock. Eternal music like Bowie`s music – not the latest nursery rhyme appealing to 16-year old girls. Rant over!

Pssst! Wanna know a secret?

By Bob Edmands

Forget about the fact that his six-year-old “Space Oddity” is back in the NME Charts for the third time round, do you wanna know a secret about David Bowie? A real juicy, lip-smacking, all-revealing, red-hot chunk of inside info?
You were intrigued when Bowie revealed he was AC/DC, right?
Wait till you hear this. This`ll knock ya over. Gather round.
The thing is: Bowie`s just had a number one single in the States. With “Fame”. You know that soul riff tucked unobtrusively at the back end of the “Young Americans” album, partly attributed to John Lennon? The same.
Okay, so you can read the Cashbox charts for yourself, wise guy.
But if it ain`t a secret, it`s the next best thing.
Bowie knows about it. America knows about it. But if the British rock establishment, the DJs and the rock press, know about it, they`re not exactly shooting their mouths off.

How else do you explain the widespread indifference towards Bowie`s success? The fact that RCA need to reissue a six-year-old single to get positive chart action in the UK?
Not to mention ignorance of the calibre found in the Sunday Times guide to rock currently on offer in their colour supplement.
Quote from same: “Once instrumental in reactivating the ailing careers of demi-gods (sic) Lou Reed and Iggy Stooge, Bowie now finds himself paradoxically in decline”.
If a number one single in the States is decline, then that certainly is paradoxical.
Alright, so you don`t expect a quality Sunday to be a thousand per cent accurate with ephemera like rock music. But what about yer actual rock press?
When Pete Wingfield`s “Eighteen With A Bullet” was indeed 18 with a bullet in the soul chart, this fact was duly recorded. But what about Bowie? No less remarkably, “Fame” was also on the soul chart. At the time of writing, it moved from 20 to 18.

It used to be that you couldn`t open a British rock paper without Bowie looming large.
Thousand of words of interviews, reviews, analysis, gossip, and abuse poured hot from the presses every week. Quite apart from crotch shots of the Bowie hot pants and the like.
Those days, it was saturation coverage at its wettest. And Bowie was a smaller star, then, too.
So, how come the romance is over?
The superficial answer is simple, if dumb.
Bowie`s in America, see. And the British DJs and the British rock journalists, they`re – well – they`re in Britain.
Get me? Which means that essential rapport is no longer there. See?
In other words, outta sight, outta mind, outta favour. Rock fans are as fickle and parochial as teenyboppers.
Think back: what was the pop music story that Fleet Street covered the week Bowie went to number one in the States? Yep, the Rollers being ignored in New York.
The logic is this: The Rollers are what`s happening in the UK now. Bowie is over the hill in Britain, and regardless of what he`s doing in the States, he`s no longer news.
And, as much as the rock press and the DJs pay lip-service to American music values, that logic applies with them, too.

But this explanation is not entirely adequate.
UK rock acts with American chart action usually gain in prestige back home; success there means more press coverage and airtime and sales here, Robin Trower and the Average White Band being recent cases in point.
It can hardly be claimed that Bowie`s success in the States took people by surprise. “Aladdin Sane” was Top 20 there. So was “Diamond Dogs”. “Ziggy Stardust” has sold steadily enough to go gold. The “Young Americans” album has been on the charts 30 weeks. That went gold, two months ago.
So is there another reason why Bowie is getting an unprecedented cold shoulder at home?
No doubt the hordes of Bowie sycophants felt betrayed when he departed to the States. He was their boy. The creation of their reviews and airplays, their labours of love at the typewriter and the turntable. So screw him if he was jilting them.
One record company theorist put it this way: “There was no longer any point in sucking up, with no one here to suck.”
Was it merely coincidence that the really bad reviews of Bowie product began with his departure to the colonies?
(This writer wasn`t overfond of Bowie in the first place. But, in all honesty, “Bowie Live” sounds like one of the raunchiest live sets since “Get Yer Ya-Yas Out”, and “Young Americans” an even more perfect marriage of rock and soul than the Average Whites).
It`ll be interesting to see the reaction if, say, Bowie tours here next year with his hot new band, his hot new product, and his hot new movie.
All his artistic and career ambitions will have been fulfilled.
Will the prayer mats be dusted off, ready for the lapsed faithful to prostrate themselves again?
You betcha.

I have personally transcribed this from the original paper and you are free to use it as you like. If you use it on your own webpages – please credit me or put up a link to my blog.

This number of New Musical Express also contains articles/interviews with these people: Black Sabbath, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Roxy Music, I Roy, Steve Hackett, Milt Jackson, Mason, Larry Coryell.

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