Ritchie Blackmore recently talked with Radio Veronica in Denmark about his recent shows with Rainbow and the possibility of more shows in the future. When he was asked if there were offers for more shows he said: “Yes. Many. But I wanted to see how the three went. If they were disastrous and we had accepted more, it was gonna be awkward. We might do a few more shows again.” About which show of the three he enjoyed the most Blackmore commented: “I enjoyed especially the last one in England. The first two were a little bit intense; because we hadn’t played together… we hadn’t done a lot of rehearsing, so the first two shows were a bit hectic and chaotic. But the last one in Birmingham was… obviously, we’d played two shows at that point, and that seemed to work, to me”.
As for the crowd’s reaction what he said is a bit awkward: “it was great to see all the old people… I mean, it was so weird how… I think it was twenty thousand people… It sold out in fifteen minutes. And I kind of wondered who they thought was playing, ’cause when I got to the auditorium, it was so vast that I thought, ‘Maybe somebody else is playing this show tonight.” As far as the setlist is concerned it wasn’t hard for him to come up with the songs that were played: “We had about fifteen songs that were very obvious songs to play, like ‘Catch The Rainbow’. And we incorporated a few Deep Purple songs — ‘Black Night’, ‘Smoke [On The Water]’, ‘Highway Star’ — of which some of the fans said, ‘Why did you do those Deep Purple songs?’ And I would say, ‘Why not?’ And they said, ‘Well, we thought it was just gonna be Rainbow. We would prefer to hear [more] Rainbow songs.’ Which I thought was kind of ironic again. I’m thinking, ‘Wow! We just threw three songs in by Deep Purple when they wanted more [Rainbow].’ And I noticed when they clapped, they weren’t clapping so hard for Deep Purple [songs]. They said, ‘We hear that every year,’ ’cause [the current lineup of] Deep Purple goes around [on tour]. So the next time, if we go out and we do anything, I would do probably ninety-five percent Rainbow songs; that’s what they seem to want to hear. And it didn’t occur to me. I just naturally assumed they wanted to hear everything.”
