Vocalist Joe Lynn Turner (OVER THE RAINBOW) has launched an official Twitter.com page for real-time updates. Go to this location to check it out.

As previously reported, Ryan Sparks at Classic Rock Revisited recently spoke with OVER THE RAINBOW vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, keyboardist Tony Carey and drummer Bobby Rondinelli. An excerpt from the story is available below.

Joe respects the decision of his former boss (Ritchie Blackmore) not to cooperate on the reunion front even though he tried at least once to kickstart one himself.

“Ritchie is never going to have a reunion, he’s done. He’s married and he told (son/guitaris) Jurgen himself ‘I’m tired and I don’t want to do this, I just want peace in my life. I’m happy what I’m doing with Blackmore’s Night’. Candace wants a solo career and Ritchie just doesn’t want to kill himself anymore on the road. You’ve got to respect the guy and I always have. I tell people ‘Just leave him alone’ because I know he loves what he’s doing and if you’re a friend of someone then you’re happy for your friend you know? Yes, I did try in the early days to push him to do something, this was when he was putting the first Blackmore’s Night album together and he wasn’t locked into anything at that point. I just figured let’s give it a shot, we had Chuck Burgi and these other guys together on the phone but we couldn’t get past the mother-in law,” Joe says with a laugh.

What about Ritchie’s feelings towards Over The Rainbow, did Jurgen get his father’s blessing?

“Yes he was really happy for Jurgen” says Joe. “He said it was about time that he came into the world arena and he told Jurgen he was very happy that he was doing this. I’ll be honest with you; Ritchie isn’t too thrilled about anything with the Rainbow name in it because he always feels that people have stolen from him all his life. Whether it was with Purple or whatever he always feels that he’s being kicked around. I don’t think that’s entirely true because he’s not exactly the easiest guy to get along with as we all know, but at the same time we just said ‘Look we’re not calling it Rainbow’ and this is exactly what I thought it would be, Over The Rainbow and we are Over The Rainbow, maybe we’re way over it. This is not a tribute because we were all in the band, so if it is a tribute then it’s a tribute to ourselves”.

Go to this location for the complete story.