JOE LYNN TURNER Says RITCHIE BLACKMORE's New Band Is Not RAINBOW Unless They Do An Album And A Tour

Greece's Rockpages.gr recently conducted an interview with legendary hard rock vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (RAINBOW, DEEP PURPLE, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN). You can now watch the chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the setlist for his solo shows:

Joe: "I've been getting a lot of requests, and a lot of negative feedback sometimes from people saying, 'Oh, why don't you do your own solo songs?' I'm, 'Oh, okay.' Here's the big thing: I plan to change the whole program. After I get off tour this year, I'm changing the whole program. I'm going all original; I'm going all my stuff. I don't even know if I'll play RAINBOW or PURPLE; I don't think so. But people always wanna hear 'I Surrender'. You know, they always wanna hear 'Can't Let You Go', they always wanna hear 'Stone Cold', 'Street Of Dreams'. So, I mean, you can't get away from it. And I think it's terrible when artists have a hit with their songs and they refuse to play them; they get tired of it. Of course we get tired of it. But you must play it for the fans. They are the important ones."

On his upcoming projects:

Joe: "I'm currently writing for another project of mine that is pretty secret, and I can't divulge too much of this now. It's with a very famous Swedish producer, and it's gonna change my sound completely, which is really interesting to me, because I believe that it's time for me to be born again, in a way, and I have so much material. So I've been busy writing with this producer and recording some things. We're nowhere near done, but we're in the beginning stages."

On the demise of his OVER THE RAINBOW touring project, which consisted of former RAINBOW members performing some of the band's most classic songs:

Joe: "Well, bands are like bad marriages sometimes. And the egos fly, and people get full of themselves and everything happens. The guys are great guys; they're all still my friends. But it was getting out of control, and I was getting very tired of the attitudes that I was hearing. I made everybody a full member, and maybe that was my mistake, being a generous person. Because then I could have just said 'no,' and controlled it all. But everybody had a vote, and the votes were getting crazy. So, to make a long story short, I just said, 'Look, I'm gonna drop out, okay? You guys want the project? You can keep the project. You can get another singer, whatever.' But not promoter would have it. They tried [another former RAINBOW singer] Doogie [White], they tried Graham [Bonnet], but nobody wanted to buy it after that. So that says a lot for me."

On Ritchie Blackmore's decision to go out and perform classic RAINBOW and DEEP PURPLE material with a new group musicians instead of reforming RAINBOW with a more "authentic" lineup:

Joe: "I think Doogie said it best to me. He said, 'You know, Joe, it's not RAINBOW unless they do an album and a tour.' And I said, 'I have to agree with you, Doogie,' Because that's the truth. Until you can write the songs, make some sense out of it all, do some greatness to earn the name RAINBOW… Otherwise, our legacy, whether it's Ronnie [James Dio] — God bless him — or Graham or myself, or even Doogie, our legacy comes down in stature. Because then anybody can be in RAINBOW like this? So I don't agree with it. And I'll answer probably another question of yours right now. I wanted to create an authentic RAINBOW reunion. I was talking to Carole Stevens, [Ritchie's] management, over a year and a few months — no kidding. Everyone called me delusional [because I said] that Ritchie would rock again; everyone called me this, that… I took a lot of crap in the press. I'm pretty sick of that, by the way, 'cause you're a bunch of idiots if you don't realize that. And she didn't wanna go along with the multi-million dollar deal that I had set up, with UMG — Universal Music Group, if you don't know who that is — with Rock Fuel Media for an HD 3D DVD, who just went to No. 1 with the Axl Rose 'Appetite For Democracy' DVD. So it's great people. We were gonna have repackaging of our box sets, etc. And I was talking to Rick Franks over at Live Nation, and he wanted to put us on the biggest festivals going. And to my surprise, and to my shock, I found out [Ritchie] didn't wanna do it. Why? I'll never know. I have my suspicions, and I've read a lot of fan comments on their suspicions, and some of them, I think, are correct. But I really don't know why. It's a shame. Because I believe the fans deserve it. I believe RAINBOW deserves it. I wanted to do something like an extravaganza — you know, sing Dio songs, Bonnet songs… you know, everybody. Get Bob Daisley on bass… And I talked to people. And they were all into it. So I don't know. It's a shame, really."

Frontiers Music Srl will release SUNSTORM's fourth album, titled "Edge Of Tomorrow", on May 13. SUNSTORM is Joe Lynn Turner's successful AOR/melodic rock project, something that came about for the first time in 2006 when Frontiers president Serafino Perugino wanted to dig up some unreleased gems that Turner wrote during the late '80s and early '90s.