Rainbow

Rainbow is a British rock band founded by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in 1975 after he left Deep Purple, initially built around the American band Elf with Ronnie James Dio on vocals. The Blackmore–Dio partnership produced the band's early, mystically themed neoclassical hard rock sound, marked by Blackmore's baroque-influenced guitar runs and Dio's powerful, operatic vocals, on albums considered landmarks of the emerging heavy metal genre.

Following Dio's departure in 1979, the band brought in British musicians including singer Graham Bonnet, keyboardist Don Airey and former Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, shifting toward a more commercial, radio-friendly hard rock sound. This lineup produced the band's biggest hit, «Since You Been Gone», and marked Rainbow's peak commercial success. Later years saw further lineup changes with singers Joe Lynn Turner and Doogie White fronting the band through different eras.

Rainbow's catalogue spans two distinct eras — the mystical, guitar-driven proto-metal of the Dio years and the more streamlined arena-rock sound of its later lineups — and the band remains influential on generations of hard rock and metal guitarists and vocalists. Blackmore led further iterations of the band into the 1990s and briefly revived it in 2016.