That dynamic voice, so expressive and soulful, that graced classic material by Rainbow, Deep Purple and Yngwie Malmsteen could only belong to one man: Joe Lynn Turner.

Mostly known for his work in the hard-rock arena, Turner started out with the eclectic late-’70s outfit Fandango, singing and playing guitar on the group’s four albums. After Fandango broke up, a call from a representative of legendary guitarist Ritchie Blackmore led to a stint with Rainbow that lasted from 1981-1984. 

His smoldering vocal treatments on such Rainbow smash hits as “Stone Cold,” “Street Of Dreams” and “I Surrender” left an enduring mark on the more melodic realms of heavy metal, and Turner, today, shows no signs of slowing down.

Belting out classic tracks like “Power” and “Jealous Lover,” Turner and his band deliver a hard-charging, electrifying performance that rocks as hard as any Rainbow show ever did on Turner’s first solo concert album, Live In Germany, recently released on Blistering Records via the Frontiers label. Coming off a life-altering trip to Iraq in the fall with Big Noize — a collection of veteran metal and hard-rock performers — to visit with and play for soldiers stationed there (see the World’s Forgotten Boy blog for more reaction from Turner on the trip), Turner turned his attention to a new Sunstorm album, expected to be released in 2009.

Then, not long after this interview was conducted, word came of a Rainbow reunion of sorts — with Blackmore’s son Jurgen filling in for his father on guitar, along with Turner, Greg Smith, Tony Carey and Bobby Rondinelli  — that goes by the name of Over The Rainbow. The group is now touring overseas.

About a year ago, you headlined the United Forces of Rock festival in Ludwigsburg, Germany, performing all of your hits with Deep Purple and Rainbow, plus some outtakes from your solo album, Second Hand Life. And tapes from the show ended up becoming the Live In Germany CD. When did it become apparent to you and your label, Frontiers, that they were good enough to make a live album?

Joe Lynn Turner: Well, I’ll be honest with you. We didn’t know we were being recorded. We had come from a tour in Spain and were pretty washed out to be honest with you. We were like, OK, we got one more gig in Germany, and it’s a great gig and all that stuff, but we’re going on so late, and the crowd is going to be so tired, because they’ve been there ever since like noon.

And we didn’t go on ’til like midnight, so that’s like 12 hours of nonstop bands and rock ’n’ roll and drinking beer and God knows what else. And we just went like, OK, so let’s just go on and give ’em a great show and do what we do, but we had no idea we were recorded until we got backstage, and we were toweling off. And I think it was Ted Poley from Danger Danger ... he came down and just said, “Did you guys know they have this on hard drive?” And I went, “What?”

And then I started talking to guys from Frontiers and everybody, and they said, “Yeah, we want to make this a live album.” And we kind of all looked at each other and went, “Were we OK, you know? How did we play?” We felt good about it. 

Tell us about the band that performed with you.

JLT: This band has played together for a while. I think we had one rehearsal before we went overseas, you know, just to brush up on the endings and tighten up things, but we pretty much really got tight right throughout Spain by the time we hit Germany. So in that respect, it was good that we had that Spain tour beforehand.

Karl Cochran on guitar and vocals, Greg Smith on bass and vocals, you got Mike Sorrentino on drums, Carmine Giglio on keyboards and myself, and this is just a kick-butt band. I mean, all these guys have been from other major bands. I mean, Greg’s out with Ted Nugent, and he’s played with Alice Cooper, and he was in Rainbow, and so on and so forth.

You know, Karl’s been with Ace Frehley and a bunch of other notables. Sorrentino’s played with everybody from, believe it or not, Billy Joel, to a whole bunch of rock acts, and Carmine is Trans-Siberian Orchestra and what have you, so these guys are all seasoned players. They are all my friends, and it’s much better to play with your friends than a bunch of strangers.

I always loved the Rainbow album Straight Between The Eyes, and hearing “Power” and “Death Alley Driver” were two really strong, driving rock highlights for me. What were some of the highlights for you during that performance?

JLT: We made this live set pretty much chock full of the Rainbow stuff because that’s really I think what people haven’t heard from me in Europe for a long time.

Also, we padded it with three or four original songs from two different albums — original albums, my solo albums, which I think have done quite well, and, of course, promotion is always good ... and then we threw in a classic Purple song, just because for us, we love doing it and we pay tribute to it.

But I mean, you know, we really try to keep the set in that ... a lot of people say, well, what about this song or what about that song. I mean, there’s so many songs to choose from that it’s very difficult in a situation like this, unless you want to play two and a half hours, which was impossible at this point, so we had, I think, an hour and 15 minutes, or whatever it was, and that was it, you know, because we went on late to begin with, because everybody was backed up all day long.

So I think we cut out one or two songs actually that night, just to bring the set down into a bit more fashionable time line. So again, what you hear is what you get, you know? We fashioned it that way, purposely, so that, you know, the Rainbow crowd and everybody would be satisfied, and that’s really what I think our thinking was.

With Fandango, you cycled through a number of genres, from country to jazz to pop and R&B and melodic rock. What did Fandango do best?

JLT: Well, what happened in Fandango was, I was pretty much fed up with the heavy metal at that point in my rock band Ezra. We were the biggest thing in the tri-state area here. We made a lot of money. I probably, at 19 years old, had my own sports car, and we had our own band house and a truck and our own lighting systems.

It was amazing the success this local band really gathered in this tri-state area, but at that point, we had sort of hit a wall, and I was looking to do new musical things. So, this Fandango enterprise came up, and the Eagles were big and Poco and all of these kind of five-part harmony bands and double guitars, like the Allman Brothers, and all of that kind of stuff.

So Fandango started out in the bars that way. But what we did on record was a whole different story because we had five writers in the band and five singers in the band, two guitars, two keyboard players ... we had a percussion player who played with Weather Report, so as you could tell that the thing was pretty eclectic. And we never really had a great producer/manager, and that was a big downfall ... If you don’t have the right guys in the right spots, they could lead you in all bad directions. And that’s kind of what happened to Fandango.

We were so eclectic on record, and we never really captured our live sound. If you hear live Fandango tapes, they’re amazing. The band was stellar live, just five-part harmonies, the musicianship, but on record, it kind of fell flat. It was never really produced properly, and I really blame [that on] the band’s lack of power and knowledge about what to do and what to say and how to put our foot down. And we were just taking this lame direction from these producers and managers, who were arguing all the time about what this band should be. And it turned out that the band was a total of many selves. It was pop, and it was country, and it was rock, and it was this and it was that, and it was too eclectic for anybody to really ... for any genre, to fit into any genre.

So I think that was a big part of our downfall, that we were just all over the place. So if that helps anybody out there, it’s just pick a direction in this business, because unless you’re an amazing solo artist, and you can get away with murder, doing all kinds of eclectic genres, then that’s fine, but .... like Kid Rock. Kid Rock does anything from hip-hop to country, you know. I really applaud him for doing that because it’s about time somebody came along and just broke all those barriers — that you do what you do because that’s who you are, you’re all of those things.

But for a long time, it was either you were heavy metal or you’re rock, or you’re pop, or you’re classical or whatever. But Fandango just had so many opportunities that were blown. We had our equipment stolen from us at the Chicago Fest, and it was about $100,000 [worth of] personal racks and amps and guitars. And that really took the wind out of our sails. And even though RCA Records tried to help us out, supplement us with some gear and some money and things like that, we never really got back off the ground.

Would there ever be talk of playing again?

JLT: Yeah, we’ve always wanted to, you know. We’ve always said, “Let’s do a reunion, and let’s re-do some of the songs because those songs are so good.”

The writing was so stellar, honestly ... you know, we lost one of our members, Ricky Blakemore, which a lot of people thought was Ritchie Blackmore on the albums. It’s kind of strange how I ended up playing with Ritchie Blackmore, and yet Ricky Blakemore was my brother and mentor.

He died in a tragic car accident — not his fault. Somebody jumped the divider and crashed into his car, and we lost him, but he was my mentor, and if you read [the liner notes of] my solo albums, you’ll see that he’s part of my dedication on every album, because he’s one of the guys that I really still am so spiritually in touch with.

You know, he just guides me through my writing processes, and my playing processes, and things, you know. He’s not on this earth anymore, but he’s still in my heart. And it’s funny how everybody thought Ritchie Blackmore was Ricky Blakemore, on the name part alone. But that’s the magic of life, you know. And it’s a major story in itself.

But anyway, yeah, I’d love to do that as a tribute to Rick, you know, and maybe get the guys together, and if somebody was smart enough, we would record this and come up with a whole new thing.

What do you remember about that call from Ritchie Blackmore that led to your audition for Rainbow?

JLT: Well, that was a story in itself, again. I mean, I was living in a one-bedroom ... not even a one-bedroom. It was a studio apartment in Greenwich Village, New York, and flat broke. Fandango had broken up; all looked like it was lost.

I kept persevering, going to auditions, playing guitar and singing background, and I was never getting any gigs. And I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but honestly, I realized that I was better than most of the artists that these guys were trying to develop. And I was just outshining them from the back line. So I said, “You know what? I’ve got to get my own band. I’ve just got to get my own band and do this, because I’ve got too much experience to be on the back line. I’ve got to be on the front line.”

And I swear, as if providence, an angel of mercy, came down or something, I got this phone call, out of the blue, from Barry Ambrosio, god rest his soul — Barry just died of cancer two years ago — and he was Ritchie’s personal [assistant] at the time, and he was grilling me with all these questions, and he said, “Well, I’m sitting next to Ritchie Blackmore, and he wants to speak with you.”

I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. What kind of joke is this?” You know, somebody is playing a joke on me, one of my friends, you know, is playing a joke, and he says, “No, no, no. Nobody’s playing a joke on you. This is true. I’ll put him on.”

And Ritchie gets to him, and he says, “Hello, mate,” And all this, and I’m like, “C’mon. Who is this, really?” You know, I just couldn’t believe it. And he said, “Look, we are auditioning people, and we really want you to come down, and check it out.” So, I said, “Okay, I’ll get on a train and go out to Long Island, and you know, see what’s up here. But this better not be a wild goose chase because I swear, whoever it is, is going to have trouble with me.” — Because I thought it was one of my friends goofing on me. So I got on a train and went to Kingdom Sound ... I don’t even know the studio. But there he was. It was Roger Glover and Ritchie; Colin Hart, our tour manager; and Bruce Payne, the manager, and we did a few handshakes and hellos, and boom, I was right in the studio. And I started singing ... well, they checked me out on a whole different bunch of songs on the Difficult To Cure album.

And there was a whole bunch of songs that weren’t written yet, and they asked me if I could write, so I had what Ritchie later termed “my magic bag,” and I opened it up, and I had all these lyrics, and I started singing .... oh, “Freedom Fighter,” and you know, bits and pieces of “Midtown Tunnel Vision” and things like that, and they all looked at each other and just said, ‘You want the job?” And Ritchie opened a couple Heinekens, and I said, “Yeah.” We toasted, and he said, “Now, get back to work.” And the next thing you know, I was doing all the background stuff for “I Surrender,” and the rest is history.

What did you feel you had to do to knock them out?

JLT: Oh, well ... I mean, you know, this was, you know .... I was singing lead vocals for Fandango, but I also had our other lead vocalists around me that were doing harmonies. And, of course, sometimes they would take a song or two, as well, but you know, this was like my first experience without a guitar in front of me or anything like that, and I knew there was a lot of pressure on me. And I just really had to prove myself, and I think that’s the main thing I’m talking about is that you gotta rise to the occasion, where opportunity is so important ... and this was something that when the door opened, man, I just ran right through it.

And of course, you have to just be great. I mean, I think you can hear it on the first album ... the funny thing is, I had a cold. But my voice teacher taught me to sing above a cold, which people may say, “Well, what does that mean?” Get some lessons and you’ll find out, because if you’re going to build a house, you’re going to need a hammer, right? So when you learn this technique, you can hear that I was a bit throaty, but I think that added kind of to the sound, you know. But I can still hear it today. I can still hear the cold.

Talking about that first album, Difficult To Cure, was there a sense that the band was maybe having trouble transitioning from the Dio Rainbow to what you guys would become?

JLT: Well, yeah. Ritchie was, at that point, trying to become more commercial. And he was looking to break into a commercial market in the sense that all the bands around us that had opened for us, including Metallica, were becoming bigger and bigger — Def Leppard, everybody. And Rainbow was kind of still sitting there, you know.

They did have some success with “Since You’ve Been Gone,” and you know, “All Night Long” and all that stuff with Graham [Bonnett]. But at the same time, they really were looking to do something even bigger.

You know, they just knew they needed somebody who was going to front this band that I think had that right head space. And as far as writing ability, they needed that as well.

And with regard to the next record, Straight Between The Eyes, it seemed like a more cohesive, maybe a more band-oriented record.

JLT: Well, sure, that was like the first record that I ... well, not the first record that I wrote on, but I was involved in the writing right from the start. And whether people like it or not ... because there are a lot of hard-core Dio freaks out there and all that, and look, I love Ronnie and I love that era, and I sing those songs my way, and all that stuff, but I mean, you’ve got to be open-minded. People are so closed.

So, let me answer this question: yes, I was involved in the writing right from the start, whether it was “Back Alley Driver” or any of the songs. I mean, this was a great cohesive album. The band started to pull together, you know. We started to really have an identity. “Stone Cold” hit the Top 10 in the United States. We knew we had something. And that, I think, was the start of where we were going. To make a long story short, whether everyone agreed with it or not, for every fan we lost we picked up two or three, you know, in a broader market. So this was really achieving what Ritchie had set out to do. And after all, Ritchie was the leader of the band. It was his band, and you know, you have to respect the boss.

And you eventually got to be the lead singer of Deep Purple for Slaves And Masters. How was that experience?

JLT: Well, let’s back that up. First of all, I got the call at the 11th hour. They did have a singer. It took ’em so long to find a singer because Ritchie just didn’t want Gillan. They just don’t get along. I know that’s all history. It’s in the books.

But to make a long story short — and I just want to preface this by saying, Ian and I absolutely have no problems; every time I see him, it’s a big hug and a beer, we have a great time; we never had any problems and we still don’t; we were never at odds in any way — anyway, I got a call to go up to Vermont to “audition,” and I walked in and Ritchie started playing “Hey Joe” and then we started playing a riff that later became “The Cut Runs Deep” and I just started singing the chorus, right there and then. I don’t know what it was, but it just came over me, and it became the chorus. The guys looked at each other and well, this guy can write, this guy can sing, and he can front the band. And Roger and Ritchie both supported me at that point, so, you know, it was a done deal.

As far as the fans, I have to say that not all fans reacted that way. But there was a certain group, especially from the Deep Purple fan club, who I think really overreacted. It was an emotional reaction, a knee-jerk reaction, that really ... you know, people who opposed to change a lot of times, which I can never understand, because change is inevitable in everyone’s life.

Change is the only thing we can be sure of. So, change is always a good thing. Now, what gets me is this knee-jerk reaction started to spread, and everybody was like listening to the album but just being emotional about it and “oh, no, Joe,” and all these headlines, and what have you, but if you listen to the album, that’s a damn good album. This thing is solid Purple from start to finish.  Is it Deep Rainbow? Maybe. Look, you’ve got three guys from Rainbow. You’ve got four guys from Purple. What do you expect it to be? Hello? You know, I mean, what’s your first clue?

But it was, I think, pretty much the last great Purple album. It’s one of Ritchie’s favorite albums. He’s said it many times in the press. You can go back and check that. It’s one of my favorite albums, and it’s [for] a lot of fans out there one of their favorite albums, as well.