Scorpions & Rainbow Verdun 1982

This blog is right out of left field as all of sudden I started thinking back to a Scorpions and Rainbow concert I saw with several of high school buddies at Verdun Auditorium back on June 12th,1982.

The thought for this blog came up as some Rainbow tracks started playing in the background as I was reading up on my Washington Nationals. I had YouTube on automatic play and "Stone Cold" followed by "Street of Dreams" came on the player.

The main reason we went to the show was because of the Scorpions who were opening for Richie Blackmore's Rainbow as they were supporting the release of their epic hard rock album "Blackout" which was getting major airplay on CHOM. Pretty sure Jeff, Jay, Joey and I were the ones that attended this show. LOL. It was 30 years ago. My memory isn't that precise. There may be a mistake in the list of attendees. I know Jeff and I were there. We were inseparable back then until he hit his Don Johnson stage. LOL. I will leave it that.

I was already a Scorpions fan from the Animal Magnetism album that featured the classic cut "The Zoo". To my knowledge this was the first time that the Scorpions were playing in the Montreal area and they were openers so they weren't getting a chance to play a full set list. I've come to appreciate Blackmore's Rainbow over time but back in '82 I was at that show for the Scorpions.

I am not sure if the Verdun Auditorium is still there so I looked it up and it is still there. Turns out it seats about 4000 people for hockey. It seats a little more for concerts. Not exactly a prime venue to hear music. It's kind of built like an airplane hangar. I know that we had floor seats for the show and it wasn't that crowded. Remember this was '82 just when the Scorpions started to hit their stride. The next time over they played the old Montreal Forum (the 18,000 seater).

Anyways back to the show. One thing the boys from Hannover always did well was write these air guitar anthems that often had these catchy singalong titles and choruses like "The Zoo", "Blackout", "Can't Live Without You" and "Dynamite". By the end of their set I had displayed my best air guitar talents and sang or yelled out to my favorite songs by the Scorpions.

Back then I didn't know much about Rainbow. I knew that the famed axeman Richie Blackmore was fronting the band and that the bass player was from Deep Purple. That being Roger Glover. I knew that Joe Lynn Turner was now the lead singer after the Ronnie James Dio and Graham Bonnet had left the band. MTV was playing Rainbow's "Stone Cold" video on heavy rotation and Blackmore and Turner were interviewed in studio by one of the MTV veejays. Funny what I remember.

At the time I knew two Rainbow songs. The aforementioned "Stone Cold" and the classic "Man On The Silver Mountain" track that featured the heavy metal elf Dio. I didn't even know the classic Bonnet cuts like "Since You Been Gone" and "All Night Long". I knew that Rainbow was about to release "Straigt Between The Eyes" which had been recorded at Le Studio in Morin Heights. We used to get all of this info on the bands from CHOM's Rock'n'Roll News which was on daily for 15-20 minutes at 4pm and if memory serves me correctly they had an hour long version on Saturdays.

So after the intermission on came Rainbow which was a bit of a letdown for this big Scorpions fan. My not knowing much of their material didn't help. Richie Blackmore teasing the audience with all these Deep Purple riffs at the start of the songs didn't help either. You get the opening riffs from Lazy or Highway Star or Smoke on the Water. Immediately recognizable riffs that would segue into some Rainbow. Ugh. What a letdown that was. LOL.

Now in 2012, I listen to Rainbow all of the time. I still the listen to the Scorpions and I am still a rocker.