BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

16/02/2009

Rainbow Back Together For Belarus Show

RAINBOW star RITCHIE BLACKMORE's son JURGEN took his father's place as band members performed as OVER THE RAINBOW for the first time in Belarus on St. Valentine's Day (14Feb09).

Former Rainbow musicians Joe Lynn Turner, Tony Carey, Bobby Rondinelli and Greg Smith joined Blackmore's boy for the sold out Palace of Sport show.

According to rock news website Blabbermouth.net, the band performed a string of Rainbow classics and finished the show with rousing versions of I Surrender, All Night Long and Since You Been Gone.

Frontman Turner recently told AntiMusic.com how the reunion came about: "I was sitting in Russia after a tour with a few promoters and what not and they were like, 'It would be great to have a Rainbow reunion... Do you think that'll ever happen?' I went, 'Well, you know, you're not going to get Ritchie... He's really happy doing what he's doing and so on.'

"So they said, 'Well who would you get?' And I said, 'It wouldn't work...' (but) then it hit me... I said, 'I think I have an idea... Blackmore's got a son.' And they went, 'You're kidding. Really?' Nobody knows that. Not many anyway... because he's German, half German. And his name is Jurgen Richard Blackmore. And he's been playing guitar for like 30 years, and he's great.

"I was in Germany, and I started to get this bug about it, and I called Jurgen and said, 'Look, can we meet for dinner?' I knew him when he was, like, 16, 17 and he would come to the shows... He was a kid.

"Anyway, I called and we had dinner and he loved the idea. So I said, 'Now once I got Jurgen in place here, I got Blackmore on guitar, now I can start lining up the other guys, and of course I wanted to try to represent the incarnations of Rainbow as best we could."

Turner immediately rules out Rainbow musicians with drug and alcohol abuse problems and set about putting the new Rainbow together.

He adds, "We've got friends and family and actually we call this a family project. That's how we refer to it in emails. It's really strange because we've all known each other for over 25 years.

Source:

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/rainbow%20back%20together%20for%20belarus%20show_1095051

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