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The Original Deep Purple Web Pages
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Between the hard rock and a beautiful place

This is equally both educational and heartwarming. In November 2024 Ian Gillan invited a group of aspiring young musicians from his home town of Lyme Regis on the Southern coast of England to the Deep Purple gig in Birmingham. He gave them the full tour of the backstage, they got to meet the band and […]

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So much coffee

Deep Purple’s drum tech Cimi Mezzano posts a vlog summarizing his day on tour with the band.

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A day in the life of a roadie

A fascinating article from the April 17, 1976, issue of Sounds. They’ve sent one of their journalists to be embedded, as we might say now, with the crew of one established band and the crew of an upcoming one. The established band happened to be Deep Purple Mark 4 playing a couple of gigs at […]

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Support the crew

Behind every band is a hard working crew. And Deep Purple’s one is quite a few steps above the average. The band trusts them to have everything set up so perfectly that they rarely do the soundcheck themselves. Unfortunately, the current global pandemic means there is no touring and no touring means many in the […]

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Skoots Lyndon RIP

Skoots Lyndon, a long time Steve Morse’s guitar tech, who worked with him in both Deep Purple and Dixie Dregs, has passed away. Steve wrote yesterday, June 1, 2020: Just found out that our beloved Skoots Lyndon has died. He just did the last Dixie Dregs tour and worked many years with DP and as […]

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Trying not to make too many mistakes (and the tech that helps)

Deep Purple’s monitor company HK Audio interviewed Ian Paice during the last German tour: Band’s monitor engineer extraordinaire Rob Hodgkinson speaks about the nuts and bolts of the job. Most of you would not be familiar with his work, as he is the man responsible for members of the band hearing each other on stage. […]

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John “Dawk” Stillwell R.I.P.

John “Dawk” Stillwell has passed away unexpectedly earlier this week. He was a musician and electronics engineer from Ithaca, NY, who started working with the local band Elf in early 60s. When Roger Glover and Ian Paice started producing Elf in 1972, Roger liked the sound of Ronnie’s bass so much, that he commissioned Dawk […]

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Colin Hart interview revisited

The official YouTube channel has posted an expanded version of the video interview with Colin Hart. Colin started working for the band as a roadie back in 1971, then became tour manager for Elf, Rainbow, and post-reunion Deep Purple. It was probably recorded shortly after his retirement from the band circa 2001. Many of what […]

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Everything louder than everything else

Darker Than Blue has very amusing recollections from Ken Flegg, a former Marshall engineer, who accompanied the band on the trip to Japan in August 1972: The third gig at the Budokan in Tokyo on the 17th August went well with no significant problems, other than the acoustics of the hall could have been better. […]

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Blackmore’s tech shares anecdotage

Clif ‘Cooky’ Crawford was Blackmore’s guitar tech between 1981 and 1988. A couple of months ago his reminiscences started being posted on Facebook and elsewhere. They are, for the most part, an amusing read. Quotes below are unedited for extra flavour 😉 Making of Bent Out of Shape: by the end of 1982 it was […]

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