Retrospective: 35th Anniversary Of Rainbow’s ‘Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll’

By Andrew Bansal

35 years ago, classic hard rock luminaries Rainbow released their third studio album ‘Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll’, in what would turn out to be the late great Ronnie James Dio. Despite the short lived tenure of Dio as the frontman of this band, the partnership of Ritchie Blackmore on guitar and Dio on vocals as the creative force of Rainbow was simply magical, and gave us three fantastic albums that are still savored by hard rock fans, to this day. White the first two ‘Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow’ and ‘Rising’ certainly laid down the foundation for Rainbow, the band hit their creative peak and with ‘Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll’, they came out with their best album of the Dio era. It was released on April 9th 1978, and even though I wrote this piece on the 35th anniversary itself, I’m posting it today on April 14th to coincide with Ritchie Blackmore’s 68th birthday.

I discovered Rainbow mainly because of Dio, to be honest. Being a huge fan of the Dio-era Sabbath albums, I decided to delve into his past work with other bands, and in the process came across the likes of Rainbow and Elf. Rainbow’s music blew me away straightaway, and I arrived at the epiphany that this is classic hard rock at its purest and finest, and this realization is vindicated more strongly on the ‘Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll’ album, as it’s definitely a more ‘rocking’ set of tunes in comparison to the aforementioned previous two albums. Sometime in 2011, this album took on a whole new meaning for me when I found an original vinyl pressing of it at the Amoeba record store in Hollywood, for a mere $5. I could not believe my eyes. I went home and played it on my turntable, and there it was .. perfection.

The classic 8-track effort boasts of straight-up belters like the title song, ‘Lady of The Lake’, ‘Kill The King’ and ‘Sensitive To Light’. These are tunes no rock fan could ever get tired of. Same can be said about ‘L.A. Connection’ and ‘The Shed’ even though they are slower with mellow elements. Then there is the epic, exotic, progressive composition ‘Gates Of Baylon’ which explores newer territories but still keeps the rock ‘n roll vibe intact to a large extent. The album closes with ‘Rainbow Eyes’, a beautiful song to say the least, with Dio in top form. The guitar riffs and solos, the vocals, the rhythm section, the keyboards .. the album simply does not lack in any department, and its magic never ceases to amaze.

To conclude, I’d say Rainbow’s ‘Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll’ is 40 minutes of hard rock perfection. Below is a vinyl rip of the entire album. Rainbow’s rock ‘n’ roll lives on forever! \m/

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