For me, as a fan of Rainbow, this was an essential purchase, although I took a gamble on it at the price. The price still hurts, but it is something I am pleased I got.

1. Lady Of The Lake (keyboard intro) 2. Sensitive To Light (bassline different) 3. L.A. Connection (different vocal line during playout. Lacks vocal & keyboard overdubs during playout, eg. no ‘Woo!’s from Dio. Longer playout.) 4. Kill The King (different bassline) 5. The Shed (Subtle) (No guitar solo, either at beginning or during song) 6. Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll (The only one on which I hear NO difference) 7. Rainbow Eyes (different guitar & vocal take, incl lyric. Different keyboard. No strings.)

There is a photo of the Ampex tape box, and handwritten is “4th July 1977″. Going by the Rainbow Family Tree http://www.deep-purple.net/tree/rainbow/rainbow-1.htm, Carey left ‘in the middle of the sessions’, so is this Carey or Stone on this tape?

Question posed to Bob Daisley on his FB page, on April 12 2010

mr. blackmore claims that he did around 75% of the bass playing on “long live rock’n'roll” himself…
do you know for sure how much your contributions …on this album was actually on the final release?

Bob Daisley responded later that day, @ 10:45: “I played on ‘Gates of Babylon’, ‘Kill the King’ and ‘Sensitive to Light’ but I think ‘Light’ was dicked with by Ritchie later. ‘Rainbow Eyes’ didn’t have bass so Ritchie played on four of the eight tracks before I’d joined, making it 50%. Cheers squire, Bob.”

Now, since Babylon isn’t on this tape, and the two songs that I had already determined to have a different bassline (ie before I read Bob’s comment) are Kill The King and Sensitive To Light, it would seem that this is before Bob joined. The fact the other basslines match up to the released versions suggests that this is Blackmore on bass, and that Mark Clarke is not featured. It also seems likely that Bob replaced the bass parts on King and Light, rather than, as I had once thought, Blackmore overdubbing Daisley’s part on the other tracks.

Deep Purple fanzine Darker Than Blue reviewed an ‘advance tape’ of LLRnR in their issue #14, Feb/ March 1978, commenting that it was ‘laid down in June 1977′ and mentioning that the tape lacks Babylon. So, the question begged is, is this Ampex tape the source tape for the DPAS review copy?