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The Springs Hotel closing down

The Oxford Mail reports that The Springs Hotel in North Stoke, Oxfordshire, (the one with the guitar shaped swimming pool) once owned by Ian Gillan is closing down. Current owners cite increasing costs of upkeep the 1874 “mock Tudor” building and increasing comissions from the internet booking agencies that cut into the bottom line. The […]

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Wait for the ricochet

A new book by Simon Robinson and Stephen Clare, Wait For The Ricochet, detailing the history of In Rock has been published by Simon’s Easy on the Eye Books. This has been several years in the making, but the copies are finally printed, in stock and being shipped. You can preview pages and order the […]

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Mary told Johnny not to write such trash

Classic Rock has a feature story on Mary Long, based on interviews (which may or may not be from the archives) with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover: If there’s anything likely to upset Ian Gillan more than a self-styled moral crusader with a viewpoint diametrically opposed to his own, it’s two of them. Back in […]

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Splendid time guaranteed

Fancy yourself a Deep Purple show on a New Year’s Eve? You’d have to buy yourself a time machine first, because (to our knowledge) the only time the band did such a thing was on December 31, 1968, at the Electric Circus in New York City, a legendary nightclub that at one point had The […]

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The story of Captain Beyond

Classic Rock has a feature story on Captain Beyond, based on two interviews with the band’s guitar player Larry ‘Rhino’ Reinhardt and drummer Bobby Caldwell, who kept remembering things slightly differently from each other: Looking for bright new horizons, Evans moved to Los Angeles. He soon found himself jamming with Captain Beyond. The results, according […]

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The moody bastard

Cameron Crowe’s official site The Uncool has a reprint of his article in Rolling Stone #184 from 1975, based on an interview he did with Ritchie Blackmore just a couple of days after the first Rainbow single was penned in the studio. Jacksonville, Florida – Ritchie Blackmore’s face fell into a tortured grimace. “Fucking hell,” […]

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40 years ago today…

David Coverdale writes on his webstite: It was 40 years ago this very day, December 9, 1973, when I had the indescribable honour of walking onstage with the extraordinary talents of Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice & Glenn Hughes at the KB Halle in Copenhagen, Denmark for the very first time.The ‘Burn’ album had […]

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Dance on the thunder again

Stormbringer cover art looks like hand drawn (because it is), but it is actually based on one of the most famous photos in the history of storm chasing. The dramatic picture (shown above) was taken on July 8th, 1927 (or 1928, depending on whom you believe), near Jasper, Minnesota, by a schoolgirl called Lucille Handberg. […]

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Voices from the past

An interview with Nick Simper was posted a couple of weeks ago (although it is not clear when it was recorded). Nick talks about his work with The Good Old Boys, Nasty Habits, the days long gone with Jonny Kidd & the Pirates, and of course Deep Purple. Listen to the interview on Mixcloud (warning: […]

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Purple for a day

About a month ago The Guardian interviewed musical duo Chas & Dave (the Chas part is none other but Chas Hodges of The Outlaws fame). He recalls an episode that happened in 1971 while supporting Deep Purple on tour: And then lightning strikes Chas. “I forgot all about it, but we did a tour with […]

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