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Rain all day, and no piano

Louder Sound reprints a Classic Rock feature on Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball that originally appeared in the magazine in June 2018. Of all the many Deep Purple offshoots and projects, there’s none more fanciful or just plain quirky than Roger Glover’s The Butterfly Ball And The Grasshopper’s Feast. A poem for children written in 1802 […]

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There is never a plan

German outfit RND has an interview with Ian Paice and Don Airey promoting the new album =1. And little concerts in little churches. All the usual caveats regarding reverse translations apply. The album title is “=1”. Does this stand for the unity and conspiracy(?) of the band in the new lineup – “Deep Purple = […]

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Where was the fire? A different perspective

Frank Zappa bassist Jim Pons was onstage performing with Zappa when someone in the audience fired a flare gun into the ceiling of the casino in Montreux and burned down the building in December 1971 – the inspiration for Deep Purple’s “Smoke On the Water.” Hear him tell his version of the story here. With […]

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Hopes and revelations

More Purple coverage in the press, albeit not quite on the magazine covers level. MOJO issue 369 (August 2024, with Stevie Nicks on the cover) has an extensive interview with the junior pole-vaulter-turned-vocal-acrobat Ian Gillan, covering his career from the first interests in music up to the present day. From Hounslow to the Lake Geneva […]

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We listen to the new album, part 3 =1

The fine folks at earMUSIC have kindly allowed The Highway Star to review Deep Purple’s new album =1 ahead of its July 19 release date. We’re looking at a couple of songs per segment, and this time we’re opening with a full blown ballad replete with strings and painful lyrical conflict. 6 – If I […]

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But now we’ve got a new machine

The second part of the Sound & Vision interview with Dweezil Zappa on his Machine Head remix. Part 1 was here. Mike Mettler: Did you reference, or at least get to listen to, the previous quad and 5.1 mixes of Machine Head as reference points for your Atmos remix? Dweezil Zappa: I didn’t have access […]

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Lazy Sod

A third single Lazy Sod from the new album =1 has been released. [Update July 3]: both audio and video are now online.

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Cover stories bonanza continues

Sweden Rock magazine has Messrs. Lord & Gillan on the cover of their #6/2024 issue. An 8-page feature based on an interview with Ian Gillan inside. IG: “Jon Lord was the godfather”… Bonus: a 3-page article on Black Country Communion, with Glenn Hughes’ interview. Goldmine magazine summer 2024 issue (pardon the shouting, the quote is […]

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Pulling out all the stops

German version of the Metal Hammer magazine has an interview with Ian Gillan and Simon McBride in their July 2024 issue, done on the occasion of the new album =1. Quote of the day: Like its four predecessors, created under the sound direction and with the co-compositional skills of Bob Ezrin, the band around singer […]

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Let the good times roll

Here is a trailer for the Access All Areas video that will be on the DVD accompanying some formats of the new album =1, once it is released on July 19, 2024.

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