BLACKMORE -- growing up in a town called Heston in Middlesex, England -- was exposed to music early on in his life. His first fascination was Bach's music which he heard at his grandmother's place, before starting to study guitar at the age of thirteen with top British guitarist Jim Sullivan. He started touring Europe with Gene Vincent at seventeen, and backed up artists like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis before becoming a member of the infamous OUTLAWS, which also featured Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page. It wasn't until he teamed up with DEEP PURPLE, though , that his name became synonymous world-wide with brilliant guitar playing.

Founding RAINBOW was a welcome opportunity to escape the ongoing and well-documented disputes within DEEP PURPLE -- a way out that proved to be not only musically satisfactory but also commercially successful. Stranger In Us All will be the thirteenth recording of RITCHIE BLACKMORE's RAINBOW , which over the years has seen a series of different line-ups. The musicians he chose for Stranger In Us All all agree that working with RITCHIE BLACKMORE has been a definite highlight in their musical career. "It's been a fantastic experience that has every emotion you can possibly imagine from anger to joy." It seems only natural then that the songs on Stranger In Us All reveal the wide array of a sometimes angry, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy, but always pure, Rock'N"Roll spirit.