During studio sessions in Tampa Bay, Florida on 12 December 1974, Blackmore originally planned to record the solo single "Black Sheep of the Family"- a cover of a track by the band Quatermass from 1970 – and the newly composed "Sixteenth Century Greensleeves", which was to be the B-side.

[5] The other members of Elf, keyboardist Micky Lee Soule and bassist Craig Gruber, were used for the recording of the album in Musicland Studios in Munich, West Germany during February and March, 1975.

[14] However, the reviewer for the American magazine Rolling Stone disparaged the album, describing Blackmore's playing "listless and bored in relation to past performances" and the band "a completely anonymous group.

"[10] Canadian journalist Martin Popoff noticed that on this album Blackmore "confirms the creative vacuum that was much in evidence towards his last years with Purple", offering a "boring, dated, diluted and largely illogical smorgasbord of guitar rock stylings, all inexpressively played over".

He also criticized Martin Birch's dull and inexpensive production, "which ruins what is already a limp noodle of a record" and saved only by the songs 'Man on the Silver Mountain' and 'Sixteenth Century Greensleeves', "which approach the worthiness of Rising".