![The Influence of Rainbow Bassist Craig Gruber]](https://backingtracksfullcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/The-Influence-of-Rainbow-Bassist-Craig-Gruber-758x426.jpg "The Influence of Rainbow Bassist Craig Gruber] 1")
In 1974, when Ritchie Blackmore finally became disillusioned with Deep Purple‘s growing love of funk, he jumped ship – taking most of Purple’s opening act, Elf, with him and forming Rainbow.
With his new band, Blackmore claimed: “We’re going to have much more emphasis on melody. In other words, everything isn’t going to be hung on a riff.”
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Aside from extensively touring with Deep Purple, the members of Elf had a pseudo-audition for Blackmore when he enlisted them to record a cover of Black Sheep of the Family, a Quartermass song that Purple had rejected.
With the session deemed a success, Blackmore had the confidence to part ways with Deep Purple, the band he helped form in 1968. In August 1975, Blackmore and Elf solidified their partnership by releasing Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow.
A self-professed blues guy, Gruber learned to play bass with the help of a neighbour who was a jazz bassist. These early lessons served him well.
“Absolutely underrated and essential listening for any would-be rock bass player,” said bassist Freddy Villano of the new album. “Craig Gruber’s bass playing is simply outstanding and ranks among the titans of rock.”
“Just listen to how he is able to improvise on a motif and continually develop an idea as he does with the bassline during Blackmore’s guitar solo in Snake Charmer. It’s the kind of playing to aspire to. Simply brilliant.”
Classic songs included Man on the Silver Mountain, Sixteenth Century Greensleeves, and Catch the Rainbow, all of which illuminate Gruber’s bass brilliance. But none epitomized his virtuosity as completely as Snake Charmer.
When Gruber passed away in 2015 at age 63, Bob Nouveau, was tasked with learning the bass parts when Blackmore decided to revisit the material.
“Gruber was a professional bassist,” said Nouveau in a 2017 interview with Bass Player. “He played a variety of rhythms and syncopations, and he’s funky! I’m sure he listened to some disco or funk music. From the mid-’70s, disco was pushing rock off the radio, and he seemed to pick up on a lot of that.”
Snake Charmer is in the ambiguous land of rock harmony, not E minor nor E major, but more an E blues tonality.
“Gruber played very well within that genre. You don’t have to know much harmony beyond the minor and major chords. Ritchie doesn’t play 6/9 chords or altered chords, and by his own admission he likes to keep the 3rds out of it. But just listen to Dio singing a G on the E – there’s your tip-off. What we’re doing has a very simple harmonic structure.”
The track begins with a unison intro figure, after which Gruber sets up an interesting gallop part off the open E (with a cool little A-B-G turnaround first heard at 00:14); this continues into the first verse. His use of 16th-note pickups and subdivisions alludes to his aforementioned ear for funk.
“You’ve got these 16th grace-notes in front of the strong quarter-note downbeat. That’s what you have to understand about copping the feel. He broke it up a little, but the gallop sets the tone for the verse.”
For the pre-chorus at 00:33, Gruber shows his knowledge of harmony in playing through the chord tones. “Craig knows how to make a song lift going from a verse to a chorus, here using the root, 3rd, and 5th, as well as approach notes. His instincts keep the song and the feel moving forward. You can also hear the lock between Craig and drummer Gary Driscoll, who worked together for years.”
Interestingly, the IV chord is not the expected A5 or A7 with no 3rd, but instead a full-on Am, which the successive C and D chords support.
The true creative high-point of Gruber’s part occurs during Blackmore’s guitar solo at 01:57. For each of the six four-bar phrases within the solo, he improvises a new idea in the first two measures, before climbing through the G and D chords and playing the fourth-bar turnaround.
“Craig played with both a pick and his fingers throughout his career, but I’d advise using fingers here. It sounds like that’s what Craig did, given his round tone. I don’t hear a higher-edge attack coming through at all; fingers tend to round it out. And learn how to gallop – that’s what’s driving this whole song.”
