![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse7.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/gillan2.jpg)
Riding on the moonpath – April Fools
This was kept under a tight lid for a while, but with the official announcement now imminent, we were given the green light. Remember, you’ve read it here first.
Iron Maiden did a bold move with their Flight 666 project, but let’s face it — Sydney, Tokyo, Los Angeles and Rio are hardly unique places for a band to play. Deep Purple are known to boldly go and play where no band of such calibre has played before, be it on the snow high up in the Alps, at 8 o’clock in the morning on a London street, above the Polar circle under the midnight sun, or inside the communist China.
This coming New Year’s Eve the band will play under the midnight sun once again. yes, that’s right — in one of the most inhospitable places on the face of the Earth — the South Pole. The project is financed by an anonymous benefactor and sponsored by the Airbus Industries, who are giving them the use of one of the brand spanking new A380 Superjumbo jets in exchange for publicity. During one of the breaks in the busy touring schedule, Steve Morse will go to Toulouse to undergo training on the gigantic airliner that can take up to 800 passengers.
On December 31, Captain Morse and the band, accompanied by all their gear, press entourage and a film crew, will board Purple Air Flight 001 (freshly painted in appropriate colours) in Australia and fly to the South Pole. Once there, a portable stage will be unloaded from the cargo bay and set up on the ice, and the band will perform an open air gig for the staff of the the Amundsen-Scott Polar Station, toast the New Year, pack everything up and fly back. It is also our understanding that a very special guest will be joining the band on stage. The concert footage will be used for the upcoming muti-DVD box set Live Around The World Vol.2: Where No Band Has Gone Before.
There will be very limited number of seats available for the fans. They will be sold on a first come first serve basis. Watch this space for further details.
Next year the band will start training for a flight to space to perform on the Moon. NASA and the European Space Agency are already busy at work on reducing the weight of the Hammond organ.
Thanks to Hubert Jesslilt for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Ha.I have made contact with the local penguin colony and they are not aware of any such concert but have their wings crossed it might be true. Not a bad effort for April Fools Day
April 1st, 2009 at 03:32Cheers
Phil
NZ
April Fools is always lovely around here…. gotcha!
April 1st, 2009 at 04:57Hihi – for a split second…
If there is one band on earth I could believe to do such a thing, it’s certainly them 😉
Monika
April 1st, 2009 at 05:00April – A bird has flown – and “DEEP PURPLE ARE NOW IN 7th HEAVEN BECAUSE OF A TERRIBLE FLIGHT ACCIDENT”.
Be cool guys and girls:
This is only another “official announcements” on this D A T E !!!!
Gooooooooooood moorniiiing THS readers 🙂 🙂 🙂
April 1st, 2009 at 07:16Good one 😉
April 1st, 2009 at 07:38My sources say Steve is undergoing shuttle training (not Airbus)and they will be playing the international space station, especially now that it has full power.
Good one though I was half way through before it twigged!
April 1st, 2009 at 07:52hahaha 😀
great joke. btw, ‘It Would Be Nice’ if it was real…
DP’s upcoming DVD box-set called : Deep Purple – Around The Universe Live. Including band’s one-off shows at The Southern Polar,at The Moon and at The Mars.
Unfortunatelly the band won’t tour The Universe twice, or 3 times a year, as there’re no Luna Park & Via Funchal, or Zenith, or Shleyerhalle outside South America, France and Germany 😀
April 1st, 2009 at 08:09Hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 1st, 2009 at 08:52uhhh “you fool no one”
April 1st, 2009 at 09:05That was a good one.. you had me there for awhile. ;-))
April 1st, 2009 at 09:22My coffee is sinking in
Ok, april the 1st it is……
Zoe s birthday….
1 4 92
April 1st, 2009 at 10:38Deep Polar. Ice On The Water. No Burn then.. By all means do the gig on the plane, but for God’s sake don’t land the bird on the South Pole. You’ll never be able to take off again. Steve, you ought to know 🙂 Do a tour of North Korea instead. Oh yes, where can I buy tickets for the space truckin’ ?
April 1st, 2009 at 11:12Hahahahah you fooled me 😀 April Fools, Greeting from Moscow
April 1st, 2009 at 11:27You almost fulled me, till I got to the stuff about NASA and the Moon. Nice one 😀
April 1st, 2009 at 13:09The North Pole would have been better anyway…..Santa, the Easter Bunny, Frosty, the elves……what a gig that would be…
April 1st, 2009 at 13:13I just went: but how are they gonna land an airbus down there …
Believe it or not, I really … believed this until the NASA episode, where I had to laugh (mainly about myself …)
Fools die laughing still …
April 1st, 2009 at 14:16For a very brief moment I thought -wow the South Pole that’s close to New Zealand. Maybe they’ll stop in for a concert! Nice joke!
April 1st, 2009 at 15:50hahahah, I was trusting this… until the moon cocert is announced :)))
April 1st, 2009 at 16:37Ha ha very good! i got halfway through before even thinking an A380 surley couldn’t land in the south pole, and then it didnt twig what day it was until the moon bit! oh dear i’m gullible.
Is Steve actually a pilot or is it all lies?
April 1st, 2009 at 17:29Yes I believed it, until the moon bit too! Haha! You got me THS!
April 1st, 2009 at 17:34I think they should do it, knowing Gillan he might be up for it,
April 1st, 2009 at 17:51But they should definitly get to work on “Around the World box 2” I’m sure there’s plenty of footage
I heard the flight was cancelled due to a broken johnson rod.
April 1st, 2009 at 18:50Andy Worthington:
the ISS idea was touted for a while, but eventually abandoned when the band were told to bring their own chamberpots.
April 1st, 2009 at 19:19Nice one.
April 1st, 2009 at 19:24Rock on!
hahaha 😀
ths.com, you’d better not to have included the Moon episode, so believe that all of us would be happy of Deep Purple playing at the South Polar, really… I really believed it was truth (before the Moon episode) and I thought “wow, great, those [Deep Purple] guys are the crazyiest ones in the world”…
unfortunately, then I discovered to be the 1st april joke 😀
April 1st, 2009 at 20:44You can’t have an April fools joke every year and expect any one to believe it. Try it every 3 years or so then maybe some one will buy it. I was wondering what you would come up with this year. Not bad, but not really believeable.
April 1st, 2009 at 20:53Gillan would most surely be “barefoot”!?!
April 1st, 2009 at 21:50Good try, almost believeable until the Captain Morse line.
Contact Lost…….what a great tune for them to jam to while in Orbit…….
Steve is a pilot and does have contact with the folks at Kennedy Space Center……
April Fools today………maybe real in the future…
Cheers
April 1st, 2009 at 22:25Nice. Some years ago THS post a notice about MOrse singing Burn on the tour, and this fool bought it… shame on me, I haven´t realised it was april 1st…
April 1st, 2009 at 23:24Burp!!!
April 1st, 2009 at 23:27Hahhahahah, until i read the moon stuff i thought it was true, n1
April 2nd, 2009 at 03:27BUT
I fact —-> These are great ideas for a gig-locations !!!!
April 2nd, 2009 at 06:37Priceless…thanks for the wonderful bit of pulling the leg
April 2nd, 2009 at 18:08So when do the tickets go on sale?
April 3rd, 2009 at 12:17Who’s the special guest……..Blackmore?
April 3rd, 2009 at 14:00Let’s see if I can close this thread…..(What is going on here on this site? Have the Sensor Police been given the military rule as the KGB and are now in charge of expression?”
Here’s an April Fools for ya…..
“Ritchie and Candice are with Child. The little bugger’s name is going to be Ian….they are going to train him to sing (non monotone like his mum), and soon after Mummy is gone, he will frolic in the forest like his Mum and Dad, pulling on his Lute, till his one eyed Blind Man Cries, and shoots an Evil Louie……”
Cheers
April 4th, 2009 at 02:17