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Innovative & wonderful – Paris
Deep Purple came and brought the magic on this cold winter Tuesday in Paris.
Just before 9 pm, the lights turned out, and on the big screens, we can see the five guys coming out of a big case and going on stage getting the enthusiasm of the audience.
The classical ‘Pictures of Home’ opens the show, with a great Ian Paice at his best. The audience is quiet and the band, like the spectators, is getting warmer slowly. Then come ‘Makes me Wonder’ and ‘Wrong Man’ of the last CD.
‘Ted the Mechanic’, with its particular riffs, brings some speed to the show, but ‘Living Wreck’ from Deep Purple In Rock, even if it’s pleasant for the oldest, is a little too hard and hermetic to bring a total enthusiasm. These first songs are not at the top, but the audience welcomes them and waits for better moments.
Purple offers us three songs of the new cd Rapture of the Deep: ‘Rapture of the Deep’ where Steve Morse shows how gifted he is, then the classical ‘Back to Back’ which fits perfectly to the stage, and the superb ‘Before Time Began’ which is wonderful on the CD but seems not so good when it’s played live.
Then Steve Morse begins his long and technically perfect solo where we can listen to ‘Contact Lost’ and that ends in a wonderful ‘Well Dressed Guitar’ that brings the audience in a perfect state of euphoria.
Now the spectators are hooked and the five musqueteers won’t leave them, especially with a great and powerful ‘Lazy’, just before Don Airey technically brilliant solo. Last time we got ‘Star Wars’, today it is Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ that ends on the French anthem ‘La Marseillaise’, getting the audience happier and happier.
‘Perfect Strangers’ begins the last part of the show and, even if it is well played, we can prefer, on this particular song, the way Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord used to play it, in a stronger and more efficient way than Steve Morse and Don Airey. However, these two great musicians are back with superb duets on the last album ‘Junkyard Blues’: this song is really perfect live and shows how gifted are these musicians and how happy to play together they seem. Happy is the band, so happy are the spectators that welcome the new ‘Kiss Tomorrow Godbye’ of the last CD.
Magical trio at the end, in front of a totally hysteric audience, with ‘Space Truckin’’ that Roger Glover introduce to us, then ‘Highway Star’ with a particular intro of Roger Glover and Steve Morse, and at the end, last but not least, the famous ‘Smoke on the Water’ in a powerful way.
Classical encore where we can enjoy Ian Gillan voice on ‘Speed King’, where we can listen to Ray Charles’ ‘I Got a Woman’. Then Roger Glover brings us to the classical ‘Black Night’ where all the Paris Zenith audience sings and shouts.
It’s over, the five guys seem to be happy and to have enjoyed the show, so did the spectators, and our friends leave us under many cheers. On the screen we can watch the musicians going back in the big case that a roadie takes away.
We got a classical, sometimes innovative but wonderful Deep Purple show. The technical capacities and gifts of the musicians gave us a great two-hour show that we did enjoy and that we hope to see again, at the Paris Zenith or anywhere else !
David André
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