Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake and Gillan: Purple Rainbows

Elly Roberts reviews

Purple Rainbows
Various ArtistsDistributed by
EMI / Universal Music TV

• Year: 2004
• Rating: 9/10
• Cat. No: 9821194

Track listing:

Disc 1:

1. Deep Purple – Black Night
2. Deep Purple – Strange Kind Of Woman
3. Deep Purple – Fireball
4. Deep Purple – Speed King
5. Rainbow – Long Live Rock & Roll
6. Rainbow – Since You’ve Been Gone
7. Whitesnake – Fool For Your Loving
8. Dio – Rock ‘n’ Roll Children
9. Gillan – Restless
10. Deep Purple – Child In Time
11. Deep Purple – Highway Star
12. Gillan – Mutually Assured Destruction
13. Dio – We Rock
14. Rainbow – Kill The King
15. Whitesnake – Here I Go Again
16. Deep Purple – Woman From Tokyo

Disc 2:

1. Deep Purple – Smoke On The Water
2. Deep Purple – Burn
3. Rainbow – I Surrender
4. Rainbow – All Night Long
5. Graham Bonnet – Night Games
6. Whitesnake – Don’t Break My Heart Again
7. Whitesnake – Love Hunter
8. Gillan – Trouble
9. Gillan – New Orleans
10. Dio – Hungry For Heaven
11. Deep Purple – You Keep On Moving
12. Rainbow – Man On The Silver Mountain
13. Rainbow – Stargazer
14. Deep Purple – Knocking At Your Back Door
15. Deep Purple – Perfect Strangers
16. Deep Purple – Hush (1988 Version)

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Big hair – big riffs: Purple Rainbowsis a rocker’s delight. Like a hammerfrom the gods this 2 CD – 32 tracker goes retro, to an era when rock ruledthe world – well, musically anyway.

Featuring high voltage performances from‘ Rock Gods ‘ like singer Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore of DeepPurple, and various offspring’s like Rainbow, Dio, Whitesnake, Gillan andGraham Bonnet. These guys might seem like dinosaurs now, but in theirheyday they were the top singers and guitarists. Collectively, they amasseda staggering 63 singles in the UK charts. That’s pretty impressive as rockbands go. However, they still hold their own in the 21st century and thiscollection gives a colourful insight into music that has influencedgenerations of budding guitarists.

Somewhere along the marketing process theproducers got the formatting seriously wrong. One music critic gave themusic content 5/5, and 1/5 for the presentation of the tracklisting, which Ihave to agree with. It skips annoyingly from group to group in a haphazardmanner: just as your getting into one band – it wanders into anothertotally non-chronological track. The small bonus is, that it lifts fromboth the huge singles and albums back catalogue.

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Commercially, Whitesnakescored the most chart entries – 21 in all. Deep Purple had 15, Dio 7, Gillan8, Rainbow 10, and Graham Bonnet 2.Not all these entries are track-listedhere, but it provides a fair representation of their overall success.Classics include the great riffs of Smoke On The Water, Black Night,Fireball, Child In Time, – Deep Purple, Since You’ve Been Gone – Rainbowand Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again.

Deep Purple is still going strong with Ian Gillan back in the fold andoriginal drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover. Dio (Ronnie James Dio)made a comeback playing gigs in August, while Whitesnake are gigging inOctober. If you’re interested in their extraordinary family tree check outThe Highway Star.com

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