Rainbow Can't Happen Here — Rainbow Can't Happen Here

JUL 01 1981 · 12:00

Rainbow Can't Happen Here — Rainbow Can't Happen Here (1981) Director: Norman Smith Era: Early MTV Era (1981) - Among the first videos aired on MTV (52nd clip broadcast); early British hard rock transitioning toward AOR accessibility under Polydor Records. Extremely high. As the 52nd video ever broadcast on MTV, this clip is a primary document of the network's founding content library and the early grammar of music video as a commercial art form. It also captures Rainbow at a commercially significant transitional moment and demonstrates early Cold War visual rhetoric in hard rock promo filmmaking, making it valuable for both genre history and broader media studies. Context: Released in 1981 on Polydor (catalog POSP 251), Can't Happen Here arrived at a pivotal juncture: Rainbow under Ritchie Blackmore was softening its progressive hard rock edge toward AOR commercial accessibility with vocalist Joe Lynn Turner, while simultaneously the newly launched MTV was hungry for promotional clips. The video's intercut imagery of tanks and weaponry directly mirrors Cold War anxieties of the early Reagan/Thatcher era. Its status as the 52nd video played on MTV places it among the foundational texts of the music video medium itself, making it a primary artifact of the transition from album-rock radio culture to the visual-media dominated pop landscape of the 1980s. The song was produced by Roger Glover and engineered by Flemming Rasmussen at Sweet Silence Studios, Denmark. Director notes: Directed for Polydor Records in 1981 as a promotional clip for the single Can't Happen Here, taken from the album Difficult to Cure. The video was recorded at or around the period of the album's release. Per IMDB, the visual approach opens with still photographs of the band before transitioning to darkened-stage performance footage intercut with imagery of weaponry and tanks — a politically resonant aesthetic choice reflecting Cold War anxieties embedded in the song's lyrical themes. The clip's rapid editing pace (avg shot ~1.93s) and archival war-footage intercuts were adventurous for a 1981 hard rock promo. Notably, this video became the 52nd clip ever broadcast on MTV when the channel launched in August 1981, cementing its historical position in early music video culture.