Songfacts®:

• "Since You Been Gone" was written and originally recorded by the guitarist Russ Ballard, who included it on his 1975 Winning album. In an interview with Songfacts, Ballard said he wrote the song for himself, but the best-known version was recorded by Rainbow for their 1979 Down To Earth album, with Graham Bonnet on vocals and Ritchie Blackmore on guitar. It was produced by Roger Glover of Deep Purple.
  
  Released as the first single from the album, it became one of Rainbow's most popular songs, reaching #6 in the UK and #57 in America, where it hung around on Classic Rock playlists. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England
• The upbeat melody belies the heartache in this song, as the singer is losing his mind now that his girl has left him. He can't stop thinking about her, reading her breakup letter under the streetlight and wishing for her return.
• The Illinois rock band Head East was the first to chart with this song, taking it to #46 US in 1978 (it was the band's biggest hit).
  
  In 1979, Cherie & Marie Currie took the song to #95 US. Their version, with the gender flipped, was issued with the grammatically correct title "Since You've Been Gone." This was the only chart appearance for the twin sister duo, who formed after Cherie Currie left The Runaways.
• Rainbow's version plays during the trailer for the 2023 Guardians of the Galaxy 3 movie. The MCU film series is renowned for resurrecting classic rock gems.
• One of the most distinctive musical moments in "Since You Been Gone" sat in Russ Ballard's head for nearly a decade before he finally found a home for it. In 1966, 20-year-old Ballard was touring Europe as a member of The Roulettes, the backing group for pop star Adam Faith. After doing TV work as session musicians, a promoter invited the band to accompany a French singer on tour. What began as a run of shows in France expanded into Spain, Italy, and Corsica. "It was wonderful," Ballard told Songwriting magazine. "We spent months there."
  
  The spark for "Since You Been Gone" came at their very first stop in the south of France. While based in Saint-Tropez, Ballard found an upright piano sitting right next to the dressing room. He sat down and started playing a chord progression that would eventually become the song's unexpected middle section. The unusual sequence immediately struck Ballard. The Beach Boys had just released Pet Sounds, and he thought the passage sounded like something right off that album. He loved the phrase, logged it in his memory, and carried the musical idea around for nearly nine years before writing the rest of the track in 1975. When Ballard finally slotted the progression into "Since You Been Gone," he worried it was "a bit extravagant" for a hard-rock track, but he knew it felt right. That unexpected bridge ended up giving a straightforward rock song its secret weapon: an element of surprise.
  
  The lyrics were just as personal. The line "I get the same old dreams, same time every night, fall to the ground and I wake up" was drawn directly from a recurring night terror. "It's probably an anxiety dream," Ballard said, pointing out how the surrounding lines mirror the feeling of a panic attack. "With 'These four walls are closing in,' the whole feeling is insecurity, and 'I'm out of my head, can't take it' is the feeling of panic."