Rising (Rainbow album)

History

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. 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 Blackmore's Rainbow in the US.

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".

Release and reception

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-bag.

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."

Musicians such as 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."

2011 Deluxe Edition

After several reschedulings, the album was finally released in Japan on 5 April 2011 as a 2 SHM-CD (Super High Material CD) Deluxe Remastered Edition. This limited edition reissue will only be released in a cardboard gatefold sleeve (mini LP-style paper jacket) featuring the "high-fidelity" SHM-CD manufacturing process (compatible with standard CD players) and is part of a two-album Rainbow cardboard sleeve reissue series featuring Rainbow Rising and Down to Earth. Both feature the unique-to-Japan obi strip and an additional insert. The 2011 Deluxe Edition has gone Silver in 2013 in the UK.

Track listing

All tracks written by Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio.

Personnel

with

Charts

Cover versions

In other media

The song "A Light in the Black" was featured in the 1994 movie S.F.W. The song is played when Cliff 1st enters his bedroom after he comes home for the first time in 36 days.