Fireball 25th Anniversary Edition.
Release date : 30/9/96, on CD (EMI Premier CDDEEPP2),
double vinyl (DEEPP2).

Track listing :

  • Fireball
  • No No No
  • Demon's Eye
  • Anyone's Daughter
  • The Mule
  • Fools
  • No One Came
  • Strange Kind Of Woman 96 (remix)
  • I'm Alone
  • Freedom 96 (remix)
  • Slow Train (unreleased track)
  • Demon's Eye 96 (remix)
  • Medley : Midnight In Moscow, Robin Hood, William Tell (studio jamming,
  • known as "The Noise Abatement Society Tapes")
  • Fireball Take 1 (instrumental)
  • Piano Insert (Backwards Piano Forwards)
  • No One Came 96 (remix)

16 tracks in all, I've not yet heard it, but it all sounds very promising! As reported before, there's all the tracks on the original release, plus the single, and 7 bonus tracks. Slow Train is a completely unreleased studio master from the sessions, a song that "we obviously felt was not good enough for the album", says Roger Glover in the sleeve notes. "The fact that it has remained unknown and unexploited until now is nothing short of miraculous, given that years dredging the archives for more and more unreleased 'product' was a consuming passion for both management and record company". Freedom had first surfaced in the 1985 "The Anthology" double LP, appears here in remixed form. There's also 96 RG remixes of Strange Kind Of Woman, Demon's Eye and No One Came, plus a medley of studio fooling around based on, to judge from the title, classical works. The "Piano Insert" thing is obviously taken from the multi tracks to No One Came, right at the end where there's that backwards piano solo.

What I think is a real treat is the booklet : 36 sides including notes from Simon Robinson and Roger Glover (aparently Ian Gillan "couldn't remember anything"! :-), an exhaustive discography (did you know there are 37 different official editions of the album?), lyrics, cuttings, rare pictures and so on. The CD is going to be packaged in a slipcase, while the vinyl is a lavish gatefold affair, as befits an album of Fireball' s stature. Roll on Machine Head 25!"

Stathis N. Panagiotopoulos
Deep Purple Appreciation Society, Greece
P.O. Box 50322, Thessaloniki 54013,Greece