The Band That Time Forgot Featured Several Future Rock Stars

In 1967, a band came together in Cortland in Upstate New York, which would help alter the face of heavy metal as a launching pad for Ronald Padavona and the birth of the group Rainbow. They were originally called the Electric Elves, then the Elves, and finally, by 1972, Elf. While time may have forgotten this band, it had an outsized rock 'n' roll role. If Padavona doesn't ring a bell, his stage name certainly should: Ronnie James Dio. He was a rock star chameleon who played in a series of bands before Elf but would find fame as the first lead vocalist for Rainbow, then as Ozzy Osbourne's replacement in Black Sabbath, and finally in his own band, Dio.

His fellow band members in Elf — keyboard player Mickey Lee Soule, drummer Gary Driscoll, and bassist Craig Gruber — would also make their mark as the initial lineup in Rainbow, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's band after he left Deep Purple. It was the confluence between Elf and Deep Purple that led to Rainbow. Roger Glover and Ian Paice, the bassist and drummer, respectively, for Deep Purple, had seen Elf's audition for Columbia records and were so impressed they produced the band's first self-titled album in 1972, with Glover going on to produce the band's final two albums. Deep Purple also tapped Elf to open for them on several tours before Blackmore commandeered the band as his own.

In 1968, a year after Ronnie James Dio founded the Electric Elves when his earlier band, Ronnie Dio and the Prophets, disbanded, a tragic car accident in Massachusetts killed the band's original guitarist, Nick Pantas, with the rest of the band suffering various injuries. They eventually continued on with a few member changes along the way before they connected with Deep Purple and Ritchie Blackmore. But this shot at rock 'n' roll glory came with a cost, at least for everyone in Elf but Dio.

After absorbing Elf for his first solo album, "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow," in 1975, Blackmore promptly fired everyone from Elf except Dio. Elf played hard rock with elements of boogie and R & B, while Blackmore was headed in a different direction (or he may have always had plans to poach Dio and jettison the rest of the band). Dio stayed with Rainbow until 1978, when he left due to creative differences. Rainbow was a band that would famously burn through a long list of lead singers. 

Drummer Gary Driscoll was tragically murdered in 1987 in Ithaca, New York, a killing that remains unsolved. Soule went on to play with the Ian Gillan Band and his own Steaming Pile Of Mick. Bassist Craig Gruber later played with guitarist Gary Moore and formed a short-lived band with Driscoll, Bible Black, in the 1980s. Although Dio died of stomach cancer in 2010, he and the rest of Elf's members left their mark on rock.