Songfacts®:

• The name of time-serving musician Russ Ballard is not that well known in contemporary music, but he has penned a surprising number of hit songs, including "Since You've Been Gone," the ninth single release by Rainbow, which was the band's first big chart success; "I Surrender" was the 11th single, the band's third Top 10 single in a row and their biggest UK hit.
• Running 4:10, "I Surrender" was produced by bass player Roger Glover, who along with lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had served time in Deep Purple. It was released on the Polydor label backed by the grand instrumental "Maybe Next Time." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
• Joe Lynn Turner replaced Graham Bonnet on lead vocals for the Difficult to Cure album. Bonnet lasted just one album with the band: Down to Earth (1979). He recalls "I Surrender" being the only one they had during the painstaking rehearsals before he was replaced on Difficult to Cure. "That's the only song we had. So we're sitting around looking at each other and Ritchie [Blackmore] would come in for like half an hour and plonk on his bass pedals or whatever the hell, and then he would go. It was unproductive. The thrill had gone, so to speak.
  
  Bobby Rondinelli [drums] really wanted to fix it and get on with it, but we just didn't gel and nothing was happening, so I went home. I went back to LA and the management called me and said, 'What do you want to do?' I said, 'Well, nothing's happening.' I'd put down some backing vocals to the song 'I Surrender,' that's all I'd done on this album, because it was not going anywhere. So he said, 'Do you want to sing the songs you like and have another singer sing the songs you don't like?' I said, 'Well, there's no songs there. And two singers - no, that won't work for me.' So I left the band. That was it." (Here's our full Graham Bonnet interview.)
• In his autobiography Never Surrender (Or Nearly Good Looking), Biff Byford of Saxon says that Russ Ballard offered "I Surrender" to John Verity (who produced Saxon's debut album) before it was recorded by Rainbow.