Jimmy Bain Story Page 3
The chemistry between Ritchie and Ronnie...
"At that point I think they were pretty happy with each other. Ritchie was definitely happy with
Ronnie's vocals and the fact that Ronnie had a really down to earth personality. And Ronnie could
handle doing a bunch of interviews, which Ritchie didn't really like doing. He had this image of
not talking to the press, and he worked on that really hard. Ronnie's lyrics were also important.
Absolutely! In essence, that is probably what he loved as much as anything about Ronnie. Because
that medieval thing was really where Ritchie was at also."
Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and Rainbow Rising...
"I like the first album, but I think Rainbow Rising was more of a band effort. I mean, the first
album sounds like it gelled and everything, and the songs are good. I thought Rainbow Rising was a
little bit short in terms of tracks. We always did the absolute minimum, never anything left over.
But I really liked being involved with it. It had great potential and I would have liked to have
been around a little longer because I had just started getting into writing with them on a couple
of songs that didn't make it until the album after that, 'Kill The King' for one. I was involved
with the writing of that with Cozy. That was the first band thing that we did. But by the time
that came out, it was just Powell, Blackmore and Dio. If I had been in the band I think, I would
have gotten credit for it. But we were starting to do things like that. But unfortunately, I don't
know, Ritchie would wake up one day and he wouldn't hear Rainbow on the radio, because they
weren't playing anything as hard as that, and he would decide to change one of the musicians. When
I got fired, I was in shock. I went over to see him and he really couldn't give me a reason why he
got rid of me. He just sort of looked every which way but at me. I had gathered from that that he
had made a decision and he had to stick by it. Because, you know, the management had got hold of
me and fired me, and then I went to see him. I don't know if he had second thoughts about it. I
know they had a bit of difficulty replacing me because the guy that they got, Mark Clarke, didn't
work out. They gave me a call, and I said, 'I don't really think so. After you got rid of me once,
it would be quite easy to get rid of me again, so why should I bother?' So I went on to do Wild
Horses with Robo."
Rainbow on tour and On Stage...
"Pretty well everything that was in the live show went on On Stage. I don't think there was any
doctoring at all either. I don't think Ritchie would ever consider going in and overdubbing or
anything like that. It's quite a long record. It was just a lot of fun to do. That came out after
I was out of the band, so that was kind of a bonus for me. In terms of touring, it was all funny
at the time, because Ritchie, at the best of times, was pretty neurotic to say the least. All
kinds of stuff went on, but not on stage. You'd come back and your room would be completely gone.
You'd come back to the hotel and there would be nothing there, just a light bulb, no dresser or
anything and it was all in the bathroom. They would spend hours and hours and hours trying to keep
you away from your room so they could do all this stuff to you. And there were a couple of
instances where we got kicked out of hotels in the middle of the night because of something one of
the guys had done. I remember Cozy at one time scaled up the side of this hotel in Germany. I
think he was on some kind of medication at the time (laughs) and he had a fire extinguisher and he
let it go. But unfortunately he had gotten the floors mixed up. He was supposed to be letting it
off in Ian Broad's room, Ritchie's roadie at the time, but he misjudged the floors and he let it
off in some German salesman's room. Then we were all woken up and ejected from the hotel. It was a
lot of crazy stuff. You'd wake up to somebody axing your door down. It was crazy, but it never
really affected your performance or the records. It was always done on the side."