Street of Dreams (Rainbow song)

"Street of Dreams"
Single by Rainbow
from the album Bent Out of Shape
B-side "Anybody There", "Power" (live)
Released 1983
Format 7" single, 12" single
Genre Rock
Length 4:28
Label Polydor, Mercury Records (original US)
Writer(s) Ritchie Blackmore, Joe Lynn Turner
Producer(s) Roger Glover
Rainbow singles chronology
"Stone Cold"
(1982)
"Street of Dreams"
(1983)
"Can't Let You Go"
(1983)

Street of Dreams is a song by the English hard rock band Rainbow. The song was the first single from the band's Bent Out of Shape album, on which the band tried to repeat their previous success with their album Straight Between the Eyes and the single "Stone Cold". As a result Bent Out of Shape and "Street of Dreams" are usually considered to be more in the album-oriented rock style, instead of the hard rock sound of earlier Rainbow albums. The album was particularly aimed at the US market.

Ritchie Blackmore has stated that "Street of Dreams" is one of his favourite Rainbow songs.[1]

Blackmore's Night did two versions of the song for their 2006 album The Village Lanterne. One with Candice Night as a solo vocalist and another with both Candice Night and Joe Lynn Turner.

Music video

A music video was also made for the song and was directed by Storm Thorgerson. The video opens with a woman being gagged, strapped to a chair and being locked in a closet by a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist closes the closet door, before he takes the woman's boyfriend, named Mark, in as patient. Mark tells the psychiatrist about a dream he's been having. In the dream there's a street full of beds, and a rock n' roll band plays a song in a basement, while Mark is by a lake, seeing his girlfriend being kidnapped — and his girlfriend has disappeared in real life. The evil psychiatrist suggests that he hypnotise Mark. Mark agrees and he soon falls asleep and the song starts playing, while we see everything that Mark described. Soon Mark starts waking up upon hearing the sound of his girlfriend kicking the closet door. Mark pushes the psychiatrist aside and frees his girlfriend. As the two flee, the psychiatrist tries to stop them, but Mark knocks him out, and in the last scene we see the psychiatrist falling into the same lake as in Mark's dream.

According to Blackmore's biography on his official website, the music video for "Street of Dreams" was banned by MTV for its supposedly controversial hypnotic video clip.[2] However, Dr. Thomas Radecki of the National Coalition on Television Violence criticized MTV for airing the video, which would contradict Blackmore's claim.[3]

Personnel

References

  1. http://www.dprp.net/specials/2007_blackmore/
  2. http://www.blackmoresnight.com/ritchie_bio.html
  3. Denisoff, R. Serge (1988). "MTV: Some People Just Don't Get It". Inside MTV. Transaction. p. 284. ISBN 978-0-88738-864-4. Retrieved October 13, 2009. 'Street of Dreams' by Rainbow has a psychiatrist dominating a man through hypnosis intermixed with male-female violent fantasies including a bound and gagged woman.

External links