Newsgroups: alt.music.deep-purple
Subject: Encounter with Steve Morse 
From: manishk@bnr.ca (Manish Kumar) 
Date: 17 Oct 1995 11:13:27 GMT 

Hi all,

I took a small step into fulfilling my dream of seeing DP live when I met Steve Morse at the University of Connecticut on Oct 14 '95 (Saturday). The event was a Guitar Summit featuring four different guitarists. Each guitarist played for a half hour and then all of them played one piece together. Steve played unaccompanied, which was a slight disappointment for me, because I'd wanted to catch the Steve Morse Band live. Steve did add variety to his playing by hooking up a synth to his guitar. He was relaxed, and clearly enjoying himself, talking and joking with the audience during song breaks.

The big moment of the evening was of course meeting the great man himself. He is just so cool, so down-to-earth and without any airs about him. We talked while he autographed my CD's. I asked him about his experience playing in India, and whether the audience related to the music. He said he loved playing in India, and the crowd was really into it, only that the police were shoving and pushing them around and giving them a hard time. I then asked him about the feeling in the band, and his immediate reponse was, "Intense". He said the band had recorded about 16 songs, and that some were a bit different, and some just "straight rock'n'roll". "Jon is playing with his Hammond cranked through a Marshall again", he observed. How was it like to write songs in a lyrical context, was my next query, and he said it was exciting. Though he didn't answer the question directly, he did give some insights on how'the band were writing songs. "If I play something and Ian goes this way", he said, stretching his arms out in front of him and moving his shoulders, "I know it's good. Ian has the best sense within the band of what is going to work, not that the others don't have it, but Ian is the best indicator of whether an idea is workable.", he continued. [I assume he was talking about Big Ian, because he referred to Paicey as Ian Paice. He also had this to say about Roger, "Roger has the best overall sense of things. He doesn't want it, but he is the leader." I asked him about a possible Purple tour in the US, and he said that a set of dates were planned in Europe. "He knows it all", said Steve looking at Brandon, "There's a shitload of gigs in the UK". US dates would depend on how the album did in the States, about which he said, "Nobody knows how an album would do in the US". But there would be a domestic release.

Many thanks to Brandon Johnston (GillansInn@aol.com) for all his help in ensuring that we met Steve. He met Steve the previous night as well, so I'm sure he will have a lot more to share with us. Brandon, can you also e-mail me an account of your meeting with Steve that you post to AMDP? Thanks. When I have time, I will type the profile of Morse that appeared in a brochure at the venue. An interesting passage from it:

"Morse finds time in his busy playing schedule to enjoy his other passion: flying. For a while, back in 1987, Morse actually took a hiatus from his music to work as a commercial airline pilot full-time."

So that's it for now, thanks everyone for your attention, and rock on,

Mahesh Srinivas
Email: mxs@mvuts.att.com