In 1998 I received my first CD player as a Christmas gift, and at last began to upgrade my music library from cassettes to compact discs.\u00a0 At the time, I was in the midst of discovering classic rock, with Led Zeppelin being my band of choice at fourteen years of age.\u00a0 The first two albums I added to my CD collection, in the form of accompanying stocking-stuffers, were Aerosmith\u2019s Done With Mirrors<\/i> and Rainbow\u2019s Long Live Rock And Roll.\u00a0 <\/i>The Aerosmith disc was relegated to being a coaster substitute after a few spins — but Long Live Rock And Roll <\/i>was an instant favorite.\u00a0 Ten-plus years later, it still holds up well, with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, vocalist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Cozy Powell offering a high-energy riff-fest without a single throwaway track in this album\u2019s 40-minute running time. <\/p>\n
In some ways, Long Live Rock And Roll <\/i>was a return to the more meat-and-potatoes songwriting approach of Rainbow\u2019s debut album.\u00a0 With the success of 1976\u2019s Rising <\/i>and 1977\u2019s live effort, On Stage<\/i>,\u00a0 the band quickly gained a reputation for the grandiose scale of songs like \u201cStargazer\u201d and their twenty-minute live renditions of \u201cCatch The Rainbow,\u201d vaulting Blackmore and company into borderline progressive rock territory.\u00a0 Long Live Rock And Roll <\/i>sees them scale things down considerably.\u00a0 The title track in particular, with its banal lyrics and anthemic chorus, hint at the commercial direction that Blackmore would take the band following Dio\u2019s departure.\u00a0 That said, it is an ideal single.\u00a0 Cozy lays down a solid groove, Dio\u2019s bellowing voice is as powerful as ever, and Ritchie offers a delightful, trademark solo. <\/p>\n
The majority of the songs though, still bear Dio\u2019s stamp, despite Ritchie\u2019s efforts to push the band into radio-friendly territory.\u00a0 \u201cLady Of The Lake\u201d is something of a forgotten gem in the band\u2019s catalogue.\u00a0 In most cases, a verse such as \u201cThere\u2019s a magical sound slidin\u2019 over the ground \/ Making it shiver and shake \/ And a permanent cry fallin\u2019 out of the sky \/ Slippery and sly like a snake\u201d would inspire snickers. Coming from Dio though, it sounds majestic.\u00a0 The man was at his peak, vocally, and he shines on a number of these tracks. <\/p>\n
A surprise star of the album is drummer Cozy Powell.\u00a0 The average fan will make reference to his introductory solo to \u201cStargazer,\u201d but what about some of the great performances on this album?\u00a0 From his blistering take on \u201cKill The King\u201d to the heavy beat of \u201cL.A. Connection\u201d or \u201cThe Shed (Subtle),\u201d Cozy is a perfect foil to Blackmore on Long Live Rock And Roll<\/i>, showing that there\u2019s plenty of room to decorate a song with tasteful fills in four minutes as opposed to eight. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to pick a highlight as far as Blackmore\u2019s playing goes on this album, as he has ample room to tear it up on every song.\u00a0 But a review of Long Live Rock And Roll <\/i>would not be complete without mention of \u201cGates Of Babylon,\u201d the closest that Ritchie would ever get to recording a successor to \u201cStargazer.\u201d With a full-out string ensemble in tow, the band takes the Eastern motif to a new level.\u00a0 The song is a fine example of the chemistry this lineup had, with its fantastic lyrical imagery, exotic guitar solo and sheer atmosphere<\/i>. Who needs Led Zep\u2019s \u201cKashmir\u201d when you have a song like this?<\/p>\n
Long Live Rock And Roll <\/i>would prove to be the final collaboration between Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio — a short, if outstanding, partnership that produced a trio of classic albums.\u00a0 While none of the songs here had quite the same staying power as \u201cMan On The Silver Mountain,\u201d it is arguably their most polished and satisfying work, devoid of filler or drawn-out epics.\u00a0 Blackmore, in particular, would never recapture the sheer fire he had on this record, traveling a woeful path through radio rock and half-baked Deep Purple reunions before settling on a life as a minstrel.\u00a0 Dio, on the other hand, would move on to better things, with Long Live Rock And Roll<\/i> proving to be but a dress rehearsal for his classic debut with Black Sabbath in 1980\u2019s Heaven And Hell. <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":30532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8648],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-42199","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-rainbow","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42199"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42199"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}