As is obvious from the video, the song still adheres to the constraints of a basic pop song.  It is slightly less than 3 minutes.  As is also obvious, the Japanese invented text scrolling on TV long before the U.S. cable networks made it standard fare after the September 11 terror attacks.

From the 60’s to the 70’s

Ten years later, Ritchie Blackmore leaves Deep Purple and takes over the band Elf, renaming it Rainbow.  On the debut album, they record an instrumental version of “Still I’m Sad.”  Blackmore has cooked up a more hard rock backing track and taken a few liberties to give him more opportunities to play his leads.  But, there is still nothing special going on.  The song seems more like filler on an album that features some strong tracks like “Sixteenth Century Greensleeves” and “Man on the Silver Mountain.”

For Rainbow’s second album, Blackmore replaces the drummer, bassist, and keyboard player from Elf, retaining only the lead singer, Ronnie James Dio.  Rainbow is now Blackmore on guitar, Dio on vocals, Cozy Powell on drums, Tony Carey on keyboards, and Jimmy Bain on bass.

It may seem odd to say this about a band that continued to change members every album, but this is the definitive line-up for Rainbow.  While Bain is not of the quality of the other four, he holds up his end.  The album Rainbow Rising (released 1976) is musically and lyrically better than the debut.  The production is better.  The diversity of music is better.  The band undertakes a world tour that gets documented on a live album.

Rainbow “On Stage”

Rainbow’s 1977 double LP live album is unusual for a couple of reasons.

• Most bands don’t record a live album after only two records.  Generally, a band builds up a back catalog and then does the live album either to satisfy the fans or to satisfy a record company contract for an album when they don’t feel like writing songs and recording a real album.
• The album opens with a song, “Kill the King,” that Rainbow had not yet recorded.  Imagine that.  Opening a concert with a song no fan has heard before and then topping it off by putting it on a live album.*
• While it is a double LP album, it only contains six tracks.  Sides 2 and 3 each contain only 1 song.  This is where the self-indulgence comes in.  Almost every song is filled with extended soloing, mostly by Blackmore.  The good news is that unlike many 70’s live albums, there is no drum solo.

“Still I’m Sad” Live

The last song on the album is Rainbow’s cover of “Still I’m Sad,” clocking in at 10 minutes.  Given what I have written above, you might think that it is just the instrumental version with much more of Blackmore’s soloing.  But, that’s not even close.  This version of “Still I’m Sad” roars with powerful vocals by Dio and an arrangement that takes the listener on a truly interesting tour of what live rock music can be.

The core of the song is pretty much the instrumental version Blackmore cooked up on the debut album.  Dio does change the lyrics a bit.  Sped up compared to the Yardbirds’ version, Rainbow blasts through the two verses and choruses in a minute and a half.  Then the fun begins.

From ~1:30 to ~3:00, there is an aggressive instrumental section where Blackmore plays a frenetic lead over a start and stop rhythm, complete with breaks where the only sound ends up being drummer Powell calmly using his hi-hat.

At the ~3:00 minute mark, the song quiets down to a section where Blackmore and keyboardist Carey play a two-man game with the original vocal melody.

At the ~4:00 minute mark, Carey is given free reign with a keyboard solo.  He does a really nice job.  Given Blackmore’s ego, it still seems odd to me that Blackmore conceded the time.

At the ~5:45 mark, the keyboard solo is over.  Often, it is hard to transition from a stand-alone solo back into the song in a way that feels natural.  I like what Rainbow does here: they simply choose not to care.  Tony Carey fades his keyboard out and Blackmore seems to shrug his shoulders and say, “Screw it, I’ll just start at the beginning again.”

By the ~6:30 mark, they have sped through another verse and lock in on repeating a pattern of chords that have always been fun to solo over.  In this case, it is a downward minor key structure using the chords are Bminor, A, G, and F#.  Interestingly, Blackmore minimalizes the chords to only the root note played on the E and D strings.  Musically, it is this:

 

Hard rock and metal bands of the late 60’s and 70’s had popularized minimalizing chords down to just the root and the fifth notes (omitting the third), playing just the E and A strings.  Blackmore is one of the few guitarists who would routinely get rid of even the fifth note so that he in fact is no longer play a chord.  But, with the keyboard playing a very full sound (a carryover from the Deep Purple days), it works really well.  There are numerous Rainbow songs where he does this.

For the minute and a half from ~6:30 to ~8:00, Blackmore and Dio play another two-man game with the original vocal melody building up to Dio’s now impassioned pleas of “I’m so sad.”  The pace of the music and the power of Dio’s voice turn these pleas into something that gives energy rather than takes it away.  Who wouldn’t want to be sad this way?

At the ~8:00 minute mark, the pace begins to slow and the downward chord progression is made fuller when it is counterbalanced with an upward progression of notes resulting in the first part of the song wind-up on the F# sharp chord and then break that “must” exist before returning to the root Bminor.

In the break, Ronnie James Dio pauses a bit and then a bit more and then maybe even a little bit more to disorient the audience for dramatic impact.  He then seems to recognize the power of all that has come before by singing, “But…” (after all that energy, “but” has to be there for this make sense)… “Still I’m sadddddd!”  The band roars into a wind-up on the Bminor chord with Blackmore now playing the heavier 5^th chords down to a G and an E rather than the normal leads that most hard rock acts play at this point.

The song should be over but it, in fact, is not.  Blackmore fires up one more riff, pounding and somewhat militaristic.  They spend another minute with Dio screaming more about being sad and Blackmore playing some simple leads and eventually syncopating his guitar parts ska-like (but with no dance quality to it at all).  They then work their way to the wind-up that will be the true final wind-up.  At this point, it is time to move along.  But, unlike the policemen who tells you there was nothing to see, there was a lot going on here.

Was This Really Self-Indulgent?

I think what makes this song great is that even though it is 10 minutes long, it actually is made up of about 8 sections.  Some are solos, some are repetitious.  But, because none by themselves are long and they show a diversity of loud and quiet, aggressive and subdued, each carries us along so that the 10 minutes flow by and build to a natural conclusion.

I really enjoy listening to this song.  I also enjoy that Rainbow were able to evolve all of this from the original Yardbirds song which really isn’t all that special. 



*Ani DiFranco’s 1997 “Living in Clip” live album also opens with a song, "Gravel,” that she had not yet recorded.  It subsequently appears on her “Little Plastic Castle” album.