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An American virtuoso
This is our review of the new book The Aviator: The Life and Music of Steve Morse by Adrian Jarvis, due out on May 16, 2025 via Wymer Publishing.
A few words about the author: Adrian Jarvis is a fan of the band and not a stranger to the topic at hand. His credentials include several Purple books — Chasing Shadows: The Search For Rod Evans (the early version was featured on our pages), Sculpting In Rock: Deep Purple 1968-70, and Infinite and Beyond: Deep Purple 1993-2022.
This Steve Morse biography is (to the best of our knowledge) the first undertaking of this kind. It covers Steve’s life from birth to about the Summer of 2024. Numerous side projects of Steve’s career get various levels of coverage, but mostly adequate. Curiously, the book about a quintessential American virtuoso, is written from a uniquely British point of view. It declares so right on the opening pages by comparing Steve in Deep Purple to pancakes and maple syrup with black pudding and fried egg.
The book is well researched and sourced (including a couple of references to the truly yours website), with numerous quotes, and direct input from protagonist’s collaborators Andy West, Rod Morgenstein, Colin Hart, Paul Mann, and Stephen Bentley-Klein.
It is not without factual inaccuracies that surely will rile up the nitpickers. It must be said that most of said inaccuracies are fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. For example, the “Machine Head tour” was certainly not “abandoned after a couple of so-so gigs”, but proceeded from coast to coast and was well sold and reviewed. Ah, and Ahmet Ertegün most certainly was not the chairman of Capitol Records.
Now onto the good things. The book is well written, at times bordering on waxing poetic, and is an engaging read. To quote the last paragraph of Chapter 7 that takes full advantage of the poetic license:
And perhaps that equilibrium could have been maintained, with Morse’s career carrying on in the same old way for the foreseeable — and maybe the unforeseeable — future. But a glass of water thrown thousands of miles away by someone he had never met, at someone else he had never met, was about to change everything forever.
The inevitable opinions are full of rather astute observations. This is how the author describes the status of the band circa the Now What?! release:
Deep Purple, as a band and as an institution, were noticeably entering that old rocker territory marked ‘uncriticisable.’ In other words, it was now generally recognised that their fans were going to buy what they were selling regardless of its quality and the likelihood of the fan base growing or contracting was so low that it was frankly pointless to be too negative about it all. They were what they were.
All in all, we can recommend the book. We are pretty positive you’ll learn something, or, at the very least, enjoy reading it. It is being published in paperback, and a Kindle edition is also available through your nearest Amazon.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Sounds good. The maple syrup vs black pudding comparison is very apt.
May 15th, 2025 at 20:53I’ve just finished his Purple 93-present day book and it’s a really good read
May 16th, 2025 at 02:01Anybody heard from the ultimate Morse afficionado, one Mr. Gregster? I haven’t see him here for a few months. I’d have thought he might be back for this topic and able to provide some opinions on this book.
May 16th, 2025 at 15:54I believe Gregster has unequivocally severed ties here, which according to his own statements wasn’t the first time he did so in forums. In one of his last posts here he had announced that he would do so.
It must be my fault, I liked scream queen Glenn too much! 😂
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mlr61Plfl4Y
I have a hunch that with his occasional anti-Blackmore rants – wich even I found a bit too OTT damning and not giving Ritchie’s pivotal role in DP fair credit – he felt he painted himself into a corner. But I miss him too. Junge, komm bald wieder …
https://youtu.be/kSYblBKZ75Y
May 16th, 2025 at 22:55I don’t think Gregster was into Steve Morse and his music before his tenure with Deep Purple, from my memory. I could be wrong though, however we did not discuss anything like that when we caught up with each other. Too many other things in life to talk about. I am going off some of his Morse era Deep Purple comments here in the past. Thinking back I probably should have offered my collection of Morse music to him to see if he wanted to peruse through it all, but as I said it didn’t come up in any conversation as such. We probably discussed it more here at THS at times in certain comments, as others did. THS or I should say certain aficionados here at THS have a way of dragging some of us innocent people out from under our rocks and leaving us flayed and burning in the hot sun. A bit dramatic of course and I am not being serious at all, just another ‘humorous’ way to look at all the conversations, opinions and dare I say it, observations. The DP tree spares no one with its never ending tentacles spreading far and wide and latching onto all and sundry. A bit like The Day of The Triffids movie isn’t it. Oh the drama of it all. Cheers.
May 17th, 2025 at 01:49I strangely heard Steve Morse’s music first while studying law in Frankfurt in the early 80s. There was an unbelievably arrogant fellow student there with an absolute elitist “Music Nazi” attitude (we sparred a lot, but in a humorous way) and he had Dixie Dregs on his Sony Walkman listening to them all the time. So he, himself a guitarist, would taunt me: “You think your Ritchie Blackmore in your silly adolescent Deep Purple is any good? HERE, listen to this for someone who can REALLY PLAY GUITAR!” To be honest, I wasn’t impressed, instrumental rock music has never done much for me. Ironically, mz fellow law student and I would have both been similarly distraught (albeit for different reasons) that ten years later that same Dixie Dregs guitarist would take over from Ritchie in DP of all bands! 😂
When the SMB debut came out, he even dragged me to one of their first gigs in Germany, so I saw Steve early on, actually the one and only time I saw him solo (except on the Frankfurt Music Fair where Steve was a regular guest) because neither the Dregs nor SMB toured Germany often. He was of course all over the musicians’ magazines, the Fachblatt (later on Gitarre & Bass) editor board worshipped the ground on which Steve’s blond dandruff fell. 🤣
May 17th, 2025 at 14:40@ 6 – that chap from your early law studying days sounds like my friend from high school. The one who was a Slade fan and some of the disdain he held for Deep Purple was in a similar vein Uwe. It was all banter of course but sometimes it did get a little too close for comfort, if you know what I mean. ‘Silly adolescent Deep Purple’ I have never heard that one before. They are nearly fighting words for some rabid DP followers I could imagine. I doubt there would be any DP aficionados here that would be passionate enough to take on that challenge, or perhaps there could be one or two. We have to laugh though, as we did back then as youngsters. Cheers.
May 18th, 2025 at 05:42I never minded the “adolescent” tag, indisputably, DP had a headbang content to their music, I sure headbanged to it. I was never averse to DP being referred to as “heavy metal” either, it is an inaccurate statement but you get the gist and Purple certainly laid down the rules for some heavy metal ingredients such as classical guitar lines, wild soloing, volume as a style element and showmanship. No use denying it and, besides, worse things have happened to this world than bearing responsibility for the co-creation of heavy metal.
It is also fair to say that a lot of people grew out of DP once they turned from teenagers to young adults – I saw it happen in my social circle towards the end of the 70s. Also, since the band was then defunct, they were labeled as history and no longer current, people moved on to other things. Not every DP fan made the transition to Rainbow, WS or GILLAN. Obviously, the tribe members who frequent these pages here like me all suffer from stunted development. 😇
I think I would have liked to meet your friend from high school. In Germany, absolutely no one took Slade serious as a band, much to my frustration. People didn’t hear the prominent Beatles undertones in their songwriting,
https://youtu.be/7Z9wNL822T8
https://youtu.be/5_ntIYnqMi4
nor Jim Lea’s excellent bass playing which made even Uncle Frank (Zappa) listen up after he was dragged to a Slade live show. They were seen as a manufactured novelty singles act (in fact they were totally unmanufactured and never had outside songwriters like Sweet, though, yes, their focus on the singles market hurt their credibility in the long run).
May 18th, 2025 at 12:11I remember the term now: He called it “Halbstarkenmusik” which I thought was hilarious because by the early 80s that term already sounded kind of dated. 🧐
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbstarke
He had a strong lisp, spoke incredibly fast, but also had very rapid synapses (which showed also in his approach to studying law), a brain circuited for brilliance, by today’s categories likely an ADHD candidate. Frankly, I already appreciated him for knowing who Ritchie Blackmore was (most people studying law didn’t), even if he was scathing about him. Re all things DP, I thoroughly prefer opposition to ignorance, the latter is to me the ultimate insult (unless you are late Generation X, Y, Z or Alpha, in which case you are forgiven). 😎
May 18th, 2025 at 15:02