It was my mate Andrew who first played me Rainbow Difficult To Cure one night when I stayed over at his. He told me that the guitarist had been in Deep Purple and that Rainbow were excellent, although not as good as Stryper and that I just WOULD NOT BELIEVE their best track was actually ‘a Beethoven cover’.
Young mind = blown.
Older mind = blowing raspberries^
I needed a good time Wednesday listen and this was provided yesterday by Rainbow Difficult To Cure and bloody hell it did the trick, loud parping rock capturing that exact moment where Mr Blackmore, for a few dollars more, led his band of hired tired hands up to the precipice where proper hard rock skirted the fearsome valley of AM radio mush. This 1981 offering walked a very difficult line, almost perfectly.
Headline personnel news was the hiring of Joe Lynn Turner to add his pipework to a bunch of readymade cuts* following Ritchie Blackmore’s decision to instigate a process of conscious uncoupling with Graham Bonnet. Personally I think the departure of the ever peripatetic Cozy Powell was far more impactful, his flashy, dashing style would have jarred with the more commercial direction here, the blameless Bob Rondinelli^^ fitting in a treat.
The Russ Ballard-penned ‘I Surrender’ was a heart-seeking missile aimed squarely at the big radio dial in the sky. It is as timeless and brilliant a slice of radio rock as anyone ever concocted and I unashamedly love the way Turner tames the song right from the off, by the time Don Airey adds his little plonky bits at the edges and Blackmore glides in I’m in AOR heaven.
Then comes the superbly bonkers brilliance of ‘Spotlight Kid’^*, with that utterly bizarre keyboard solo from Airey that half wrecks, half makes the entire song, very eighties; regardless Blackmore plays an absolute blinder here and the lyrics are the best on the LP. I love how they encapsulate the lived experience of an occasionally amusing music blogger:
Jokers and women they hang 'round your door They're all part of the scene Just like a junkie you've got to have more It's a pleasure machine
If you were looking for an underrated gem on Difficult To Cure, or in Rainbow’s discography for that matter, ‘No Release’ would be my call. There’s something pleasingly Zeppelin-shaped about the song’s structure and rhythm, without playing copycat. Turner excels again and the Queen-style breakdown mid-song is a pleasant surprise every time I hear it. Top draw.
As a connoisseur*^ of badly translated German I would be a fan of the instrumental ‘Vielleicht Das Nächste Mal (Maybe Next Time)’ even were it silent. It’s great though, corny and affecting as hell, just the sort of thing to soundtrack a compromised detective staring moodily out to sea in the end sequence of a low-budget continental TV series; in a good way.
There’s something great about the default Purple Rainbow boogie of ‘Can’t Happen Here’, again JLT really sells it as Airey plinks his plonkers and the Glover/Rondinelli rhythm section lock right in behind them. ‘Freedom Fighter’ isn’t a good song but it does contain some great low end guitaring from Blackmore, let’s leave it at that.
I am also a fan of the low-down blues-oogie of ‘Midtown Tunnel Vision’ although the lyrics really are a bit smelly the music is great.
Then it … I mean … just FFS Blackmore! Maybe ‘Difficult To Cure (Beethoven’s Ninth)’ is what happens if you have snorted far too much of your own ego for too many years and people are far too frightened to tell you that your last idea was shite. The beginning of it sounds like someone taking the piss out of Ralph McTell’s ‘The Streets Of London’.
Sorry Andrew.
Hubris aside Difficult To Cure is tremendous fun, as only really well played hard driving tuneful rock can be. Just surrender.
I really love the fact that the Hipgnosis originally offered the unsettling sleeve art for Difficult To Cure to Black Sabbath for Never Say Die three years earlier. I really couldn’t imagine them being switched now, given how iconic they both are.
1200 Down.
PS: what an excellent guitar solo, played by a man who really looks like he’d rather be at home painting his garage door:
^as befits jaded old fart.
*interestingly at a slightly higher pitch than was comfortably within his range.
^^a man I’ll swear I never heard of before yesterday, which is really weird for a nerdy rocker such as me.
^*I should stress that this song is absolutely no relation to the Captain Beefheart cut of the same name.
*^pretty sure that’s one of those fancy foreign words, possibly German.
