News of a Rainbow reunion — minus the most famous member, guitar sorcerer Ritchie Blackmore, but including Blackmore's son Jurgen (or J.R.) — arrived last month to some fanfare. Vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, whose soulful singing graces such band favorites as "Street Of Dreams" and "Stone Cold," is a part what's being called Over The Rainbow that also includes keyboardist Tony Carey, drummer Bobby Rondinelli and bassist Greg Smith.
But, a far more rewarding experience in September gave Turner a whole new perspective on life. As reported here in this blog, Turner went to Iraq to entertain the troops with the band Big Noize, an assemblage of rockers from '70s and '80s heavy-metal acts like Deep Purple, Rainbow, Quiet Riot (guitarist Carlos Cavazo), AC/DC (Simon Wright) and Ozzy Osbourne's band.
It was a long time coming for Turner, who had approached USO.org two years ago about performing for soldiers stationed in the war-torn land "... because I'd heard that they were having trouble getting artists, celebrities, or anything else to go over there. People were obviously afraid and what have you."
He got a form letter back saying, in so many words, that they were not interested.
"I just wanted to do something; I wanted to do my part for the troops," says Turner. "This is not a political move. This is just completely for the troops. It's not about red and blue, it's about red, white and blue. It's for our guys and girls over there. This has nothing to do with for or against the war. So, I was kind of disappointed in that."
The story doesn't end there, thankfully. A friend of Turner's, Jeff Thornton of Lone Wolf Productions, had an idea for a tour of Iraq that grabbed Turner's attention.
"I had done two Naval tours with him, and what they are basically, on the Pacific Rim, is doing Seoul everywhere from Japan all the way down through the Diego Garcia, which is an island in the Indian Ocean, where we have a lot of heavy artillery," explains Turner. "I don't know. I might be talking above most peoples' heads, but having been there twice, you know, I'm really familiar with what's going on, and where all the heavy artillery comes out of, to go into the Middle East, and that's Diego Garcia. So, to make a long story short, I've done two tours with them doing that, and he'd been to Iraq 23 times, with other acts, local and otherwise. So, I jumped on the chance, and I felt that this was a really great opportunity for a project that I'm involved with called Big Noize, which features a lot of infamous guys from big groups, and if anybody's not familiar, it's
bignoizemusic.net."
Six months of briefings and organizing proceeded the tour, and Turner remembers "... we kept getting briefed throughout the time about what we could expect, what we had to bring, what we had to wear, how we had to act... everything, because it's a different world when you get over there."
It lasted two weeks, with Big Noize visiting a number of out-of-the-way outposts.
"We primarily went to the smaller camps, because most of the bigger camps... although we went to Baghdad twice, we didn't really play Baghdad; we played Camp Taji, which is outside of Baghad, which is a huge camp," says Turner. "But we went to the smaller camps, like Shield and Falcon, and things like this... because these guys never get anything out there. They're right on the perimeter. They're still fighting out there. They're taking an inch, a foot back every day, for Operation Iraqi Freedom."
The trip left Turner a changed man. "This [was] just an amazing journey, and an amazing experience, and a life-changing one at that, because when you do finally come back, you start to look at life differently, you start to look at yourself differently, people... everything changes for you because you've been through something that is extremely difficult, extremely different, and eye-opening. So, it's hard to return to civilian life and just see everything the same way it was. I mean, you'll never complain about anything again. Never complain, you know, because these guys, they're in 140-degree heat, eatin' sand, in the dirt, you know, every day, gettin' shot at and mortar fire and everything that happens over there. Even though the fighting's down about 60 percent, it's still dangerous. And on the perimeters, we were up north and on the edges of where the fighting still is; it's still going on, pretty hot and heavy. We experienced mortar fire, machine-gun fire, and all that kind of stuff. So, I don't know where to begin, except it's just an amazing, amazing experience... the band was amazing on this. We all joined forces and just said, 'Look, we want to do this for unselfish reasons. It was really an amazing feeling to go over there and a very bonding experience."
Turner and company hope to go back in March, because, as Turner says, "... once you've got it in your blood, you really don't want to let it go."
The same, evidently, goes for him with regard to Rainbow. Not content to stop there, Turner also is out promoting his new concert album, Live in Germany, and says that a new Sunstorm record is in the works. An AOR project of Turner's that includes Survivor's Jim Peterik and Giant's Dan Huff, Sunstorm, according to Turner, was supposed to begin work on the album in late October.
About the new album's direction, Turner says, "What Sunstorm is really is like kit-oriented songs from the '80s. And I think it's pretty much in the same style, whereas these songs are hook-line-and sinker type songs. And Jim Peterik wrote a couple more. I've got about four or five in there. You know, just good writers, great songs, great production, and that's what Sunstorm is about. It's not supposed to be hard-rocking; it's supposed to be more of a commercial enterprise, you know. But it's so well-done; if you checked out the last one, it's so well done, you can't help but like it. You know, even the hard-core aficionados, you know, they kind of dig it, so I'm hoping that we have the same success with this one."