Written by lead singer Ronnie James Dio and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, Temple Of The King describes a spiritual journey to the mysterious Temple Of The King, where he finds his answer.
Blackmore, who was into yoga long before it was trendy, said that he was watching a show called Yoga for Health when he got the idea for the song, which explains the vibe. “A lot of people like that one, a lot of older people like it because it’s more mellow, it’s not a full-fledged assault on the ears,” he told Jon Tiven in 1975. “I don’t like to do more than one or two songs like that per album. We probably won’t perform that onstage, because the vocal harmonies are very strange in the middle part – I don’t think it’s a proper stage number, we’d have everyone falling asleep.”
Rainbow did perform the song live, but not until after they reunited in the mid-’90s. Regarding his instrumentation on this track, Blackmore said:
“There are two classical guitars on that and one electric, but the electric guitar on that isn’t really audible. It’s got a medieval progression and a string ensemble/mellotron thing in the middle.”
Whether or not Ritchie Blackmore wrote the greatest riff in rock, he has certainly crafted some beautiful melodies.
“Temple Of The King” from his Rainbow days has a clearly recognizable Dio lyric, but there are also some fabulous recordings by his group Blackmore’s Night – which can’t really be called covers. A 1998 live acoustic recording from Olsberg, Germany has a young Candice Night sounding like Stevie Nicks – one of her acknowledged influences – while the Dancer And The Moon album sees a more full-bodied performance from Mrs. Blackmore, by then a mother of two. In an interview Parenthood, ‘Darkness,’ and Dancer with Dr. Music published after the birth of her first child, the Strawberry Girl, Candice, said:
“We always felt that within that song, it may have been the moment, in the 1970s that Ritchie’s fans may have realized that he was interested in medieval or renaissance style music. There were plenty of clues even before that song was created, but that song sort of brought it to the table in a more obvious way. Now, whenever we play onstage and ask for requests, after asking for Blackmore’s Night songs, ‘Temple of the King’ is one of the first ones that gets called out for us to play on stage.”
Temple of the King Lyrics (1975)
One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell
One day in the year of the fox
When the bell began to ring
Meant the time had cometh for one to go
To the temple of the king
There in the middle of the circle he stands
Searching, seeking
With just one touch of his trembling hand
The answer will be found
Daylight waits while the old man sings
Heaven help me
And then like the rush of a thousand wings
It shines upon the one
And the day had just begun
One day in the year of the fox came a time remembered well
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell
One day in the year of the fox
When the bell began to sing
It meant the time had cometh for one to go
To the temple of the king
There in the middle of the people he stands
Seeing, feeling
With just a wave of a strong right hand
He’s gone
To the temple of the king
Far from the circle at the edge of the world
He’s hoping, wondering
Thinking back from the stories he’s heard
Of what he’s going to see
There in middle of the circle it lies
Heaven help me
Then all could see by the shine in his eyes
The answer had been found
Back with the people in the circle he stands
Giving, feeling
With just one touch of a strong right hand
They know
Of the temple and the king
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