Saturday 28 February 2015

Chris Rainbow

Chris Harley, who metamorphosed into the Rainbow for the short few years of his career in mainstream pop, has died before he could extend his album Home of the Brave (which contained two of his singles) into the body of work we listeners and friends so eagerly anticipated, although there is  The Best of Chris Rainbow, 1972–1980, which has appeared in single and double CD sets and includes radio spots, and rare and unreleased material.  Back in the early 1970s as his pals and fellow musicians in Glasgow agonised interminably about what they would do when they hit The Big Time, he just quietly sneaked off and became  a successful singer/songwriter, working with Stevie Wonder's producers and gaining expertise as a producer in his own right. He started out as a member of successful Glasgow band Hopestreet, and soon moved on to run Vital Spark Studio on the Isle of Skye. He is now widely seen as inhabiting the same territory as Brian Wilson. Among his friends, he was as famous for his stutter as much as anything, and adding that to his sense of humour leads to the name of his own record label "Stutter Music". More here: