![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan8.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/paice.jpg)
Product of the influences
BalcanRock, which is hailing from Serbia, has interviewed Simon McBride and publishes the proceedings (thankfully) in original English:
BR: When we talk about live performance, Deep Purple used to be known for a lot of improvisation during their shows, including guitar, Hammond or drum solos which lasted really long. Nowadays, everything is much more restricted with the tight schedule, production etc. Do you still think you have enough time to improvise a little bit when playing and spicing things up?
Simon: Well, you know, there’s always a balance of improvisation and construction. And there’s so many different factors which play a big role in this question. You know, if you look back to the ‘70s, people say they always used to improvise for long periods of time. And, you know, part of that is true and part of it is not, because sometimes the improvisation came out of necessity. Like, maybe somebody walked off the stage and was told they need to keep playing. Now with the current production, with lighting rigs and video screens and all that stuff, you kind of have to stick to your time that you set out between each song, because it’s not like the old days when there was one guy behind a lighting desk that’s moving lights around and is in charge of everything. It doesn’t work like that anymore. So, there’s a lot of things production-wise you have to take into consideration. But, you know, we always try to improvise. Some nights I’ll change things and some nights I won’t, because, you know, you always have to remember we are just human beings. We’re not machines. So, if I go on stage and let’s say, for example, Roger has a bit of a cold and he’s not feeling very well, there’s no way he’s going to completely improvise things because he just doesn’t feel like it, you know? Being on the road sometimes can be difficult and tiring. So, sometimes you’re on stage and you’re like – do I want to improvise this solo tonight or not?
Read more in BalcanRock.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
That was a good interview and Simon’s observations on improvising in the 70s were very… how does that word go again …ah, yes … s-s-sagacious!
The 70s were never as good as we now all like to believe they were.
September 5th, 2026 at 20:45Yo,
That was a good read !
@1 stated…”The 70s were never as good as we now all like to believe they were”…
Every decade will have its plus’s & minus’s, & for sure, touring was a tough life back then in the 1970’s, but the music that was recorded for us all remains sublime comparatively to what came afterwards. It’s the decade that delivered the most diverse music successfully, where you can still appreciate it now, since its aged so well & doesn’t sound as dated as say the 1960’s imo. There’s a more timelessness to the music, & with new technologies being applied to older recordings where possible, that timelessness is enhanced further since the sound is much improved / updated.
Ciao !
Ciao !
September 6th, 2026 at 00:10Who’s ‘We’? And we don’t believe, we KNOW they were! Everyone does. Uwe’s wonderment with his hindsight ‘vision’, oh hang on, that crystal ball of his again…………….I almost forgot abut that. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo, I’m all shook up! Cheers.
September 6th, 2026 at 06:46Ritchie Blackmore : “Whats taste? Its an opinion.”
IMHO the long extended renditions of songs went out of vogue but I never know according to whom this is so.
September 6th, 2026 at 13:07But there are tasteless opinions too! And opinionless taste.
September 6th, 2026 at 16:44When Mk II were first touring, they had dropped most of the Mk 1 material and were extending what they had to fill a concert. And Mk III threw out much of the Mk II material and did the same.
Now they have far more songs they want to play than time they have on stage – 90 minutes or so on the American tour.
There is obviously more improvisation when they have more time to fill than music to fill it.
September 6th, 2026 at 22:39But you‘re not allowed to say that here, Marcus, that DP‘s improvisation excesses in the 70s were also very much due to the dearth in number of songs they performed. Doubleplusnotgood crimethink that is!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Big_Brother_in_the_1984_film_adaptation.jpeg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original
It was of course only artists expressing themselves. Ritchie was never the person to prefer waffling a solo over a simplistic chord progression for a quarter of an hour to instead laboriously rehearsing four new songs with the band to play instead. How can people even assume that?! Folly the thought!
September 7th, 2026 at 15:59It was the late 1960’s through to the early mid 70’s, that is what a lot of the music that was being performed entailed. Many artists expanded their musical sets back then, it wasn’t just Deep Purple. Most fans had much more patience and understanding of a lot of the musical acts that they were following. Some didn’t enjoy it, it is the way of entertainment, is it not? It wasn’t top of the pops was it! The live music scene back then has never been surpassed and never will be. Also, a lot of fans had the capacity to actually listen and enjoy, not to wanting more short songs as in at a karaoke bar. “I am bored with this song, where’s the next one, oh, I am bored with that too”, next etc etc. It is a fine line, if people can’t understand it, tough. Today’s age is the age of the ‘throw away society’, everything is dispensable isn’t it? Next! Cheers
September 8th, 2026 at 22:248
Totally agreed.
Wasnt it Ritchie saying : ” You ve got to take the people with you.”
Pity he changed around 78
Maybe more accessibility after Dio was an outing of his words but I still imagine he had given it more time.
RAINBOW would have ruled among the NWOBHM
Not long after even heavier rock like METALLICA became big
September 9th, 2026 at 14:53Yo,
@9 stated…qt.”Wasn’t it Ritchie saying : ” You’ve got to take the people with you.” ?…
*It was Pete Townshend of the Who who recommended that to RB…Along with “keeping things simple” where possible.
Ciao !
September 9th, 2026 at 23:54Ronnie had his own agenda to no doubt. He was over being an ‘also ran’ so to speak. With both Rainbow and Sabbath. His ‘solo’ act was what he really wanted and he eventually had. Then look at how Ronnie treated certain musicians. It must have been something in the water back then, he he he. That ‘power’ struggle. Ian Gillan and Ozzy too, those ‘alpha’ males eh? Cheers.
September 10th, 2026 at 00:12As early as the final MKI tour in 1969, Purple were already being criticised for playing only a few songs and extending them into lengthy jams, even though they had plenty more repertoire from which they could have drawn a setlist. So that trend was there throughout almost the entirety of Blackmore’s original DP tenure, before he carried it over into Rainbow.
MKIII at least came out of the gate with a new album from which they took the majority of their set, retaining only two “Machine Head” numbers, as Marcus said.
MKII on the other hand continued to use a goodly portion the MKI setlist for quite some time.
“Hush” lasted until June 1970, when they finally had a hit of their own in “Black Night”.
Other MKI songs lasted into 1971, i.e., for half their career.
“Paint It Black” until superseded by “The Mule” as Paice’s drum showcase.
“Wring That Neck” until replaced by “Lazy” as the spot for Jon’s classical musings.
And “Mandrake Root” until the head / initial “song” part was replaced by “Space Truckin'” – though the latter, “jam” part was retained until the end.
Suspect that if the MKI live recording from April 1969 is ever released, it may not sound all that different from an early MKII show, other than the absence of Gillan’s screaming vocal and “Child In Time”. The idea for which was already kicking around during the MKI days but was supposedly nixed by Nick due to its plagiarised origins, as was the riff for “Black Night”.
September 11th, 2026 at 11:47Yo,
@12…
Very good points ! Also worth noting however, is that RB even in the Mk-III concerts always quoted Mk-I musical passages in the extended solo’s whether it was “Space Truckin'” or even “You Fool No One”…
Even some re-union shows have Mk-I musical quotes by RB played in different tunes if you listen-out for them…He always played a little phrase here & there for the early fans I think.
Ciao !
September 12th, 2026 at 02:50The MKI live recording from April 1969…..
What was that about?
There should at least be a boot flowing around after all that time.
September 12th, 2026 at 12:52@14 – Rock –
comment #35 on this page gives some details about the April 1969 soundboard recording of show in canada:
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/thsblog/2022/12/20/live-archive-1972/
“This recording was ‘mislaid’ during a sale of masters from the company which had it to another company, which themselves have now gone bust. All I have are short extracts which the original owners did for me when we were negotiating for the rights. Simon Robinson”
It has never been bootlegged / released to the public… However a private collector or two claim to have copies of the entire show, made before the master tape was lost. On the Steve Hoffman forum, IIRC.
Supposedly most if not all shows at the Fillmores East and West were recorded as well, so perhaps a full Purple show from late 1968 might still surface. A decade or so ago, It’s A Beautiful Day, with whom Purple shared a bill at the Fillmore West in November, belatedly released a live album recorded earlier in ’68 at the same venue.
Bands were required to play two one-hour shows with no repeated songs, so if a Fillmore show were to come to light, it might offer a more extensive setlist than the truncated Inglewood set opening for Cream – the only MKI live recording released to date.
Someone has posted a supposed setlist from the early show at one of the band’s Fillmore East nights: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/deep-purple/1968/fillmore-east-new-york-ny-43d85f57.html
As well, FM stations often broadcast live concerts in those days. If any Purple broadcast was done and still survives, perhaps an enterprising grey-market Italian record company might be able to locate and release it, now that more than 50 years have passed.
September 13th, 2026 at 09:45Yo,
@15…
Awesome post 🙂 !
Ciao !
September 13th, 2026 at 22:34My God, that Mk I set list, with the exception of Wring That Neck it was all covers! 😂
I wonder what Jon thought who had seen the demise of The Artwoods due to their inability to come up with own material.
September 14th, 2026 at 13:09@17 – Presumably they were saving “And The Address” and “Mandrake Root” for the second set, since bands were not supposed to play the same songs during both their early and late Fillmore shows.
And less than three weeks later, they would record the first single which featured band-written songs on both A and B-sides: “Emmaretta” and “Bird Has Flown”.
It’s not like they hadn’t already written and recorded several satisfying and sophisticated numbers by that time, such as “The Shield”, “Anthem” and “Listen, Learn, Read On”… As well as Jon & Rod’s pocketbook-pleasing “One More Rainy Day”.
So maybe they were still having difficulty translating their studio creations into live performance? In an interview, Nick recalled that the “The Shield” was never attempted live. Were the other afore-mentioned numbers?
“Love Help Me”, also, played during the band’s debut tour, seems like it may have been dropped by the time of their first American jaunt.
Perhaps Ritchie was already expressing a preference for performing simple songs suited to jamming, rather than rehearsing more complex material.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see if any further MKI live recordings – or at least, full setlists – emerge to get a better picture of what tunes they did and didn’t attempt to perform live.
September 14th, 2026 at 19:22Skippy
Thx
The thread is from 2022
I did nt alway around like I did decades ago and recently.
Will dive into it later
September 15th, 2026 at 14:30I can very well imagine the lavish big arrangements of Taliesyn giving them issues live – at the time, the available public address technology was only starting to scramble to its feet to credibly project music like that and severely lagging behind studo wizardry. Kentucky Woman is basically the only straightforwaed arrangement on the album. It’s all a bit Sgt Peppery in places.
Taliesyn is by far my favorite Mk I album, but I always had serious doubts about its transferabilty to stage in 1968/69.
Another thing is Ritchie’s lack of discipline live, the Taliesyn arrangements, detailed as they were, didn’t offer much room for his shenanigans live. The album is on the verge of Prog, naive Prog, but Prog just the same. There is almost a Cantebury Scene vibe to it.
September 16th, 2026 at 00:09Skippy
Checked it
Appearantly my memory was wrong
I was still trying to to hold on!
But I think I skipped loads over the years once I crashed.
September 16th, 2026 at 18:55