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That big and meaty sound
Ultimate Guitar has a short interview with Simon McBride, where he explains modifications he made to his sound for it to blend better with Don Airey’s Hammond organ.
Is it tough for a guitar player to “compete” with the sound of a Hammond organ in the band?
Yes, because Don is so frickin’ loud. He keeps saying to me, ‘Am I too loud?’ ‘Yeah!’ Because the Hammond and the guitar are on a similar frequency range, which is one of the things I got ENGL to tweak for me and my amps.
I wanted a bit more of the lower mids. Because that was different to the Hammond. The Hammond, there’s a lot more high mids than the guitar. But they’re all in there. It’s similar. So I just want something that would cut through a bit more.
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Have to laugh as the hearing jokes rear there heads again. ‘Don: is that too loud, I can’t tell these days as I can’t hear anything” – “McBride: really, I wouldn’t have guessed”. Ian Gillan from the other side of the stage, “can we have everything louder than everything else”. Glover: ‘Why, I can’t hear anything over here either” Meanwhile Ian Paice is still shaking his head in bewilderment “after all these years these guys still haven’t learnt anything, I can hear everything perfectly back here”. Cheers.
September 9th, 2024 at 22:45Yup, I’ve noticed that too: Don became louder and louder in Mk VIII and Steve wasn’t the guy to put up a fight. Simon, however, does, so you now have both battling for sonic supremacy and I like that!
Don is often overshadowed by Jon’s legacy and fame, but for modern Purple he’s essential and a more pivotal component than even Jon often was once Purple’s 70ies heydays were over. Don has his own individual sound (like Jon had), solos like hell and does weird things (Jon became more laidback with age) and contributes a lot compositionally (Jon withdrew from that more and more as the years went by).
September 10th, 2024 at 00:06Yo,
Here’s 2 x simple solutions…
1. Move guitar & keyboards to opposite sides of the stage, like the band once was, eg guitar one side, keyboards the other.
2. Play a Fender Stratocaster, simple.
Peace !
September 10th, 2024 at 01:04Ahhh as a Hammond player myself I used to joke to our sound tech (long close friend of mine) that for every person that told me they couldn’t hear my Hammond, he would lose a finger. Sadly I have experienced live music where I couldn’t hear the keyboardist. As my mother would say a pet peeve of mine. Skynyrd was one, most ridiculously. Yes three guitarists on stage but this isn’t rocket science. Billy Powell playing a concert grand piano and I couldn’t hear a freaking note he played. Also there is Bonnie Raitt’s keyboardist. Good luck hearing him at her performances.
Ok to get a bit techy? I found a technical document on Captain Foldback or another such site years ago (20 or more) about using Lavalier mics on Leslies. I have used Shure SM11s one for the treble driver one for the bass. These work great.
September 10th, 2024 at 02:10Compared to other bands, the Hammond within DP has always been hysterically loud (so much the better!), the only major bands with a louder organ (that weren’t keyboard-led trios like ELP) were Uriah Heep (although the keyboards were not as much a solo instrument there) and perhaps The Doors, but their music was of course a lot less heavy than either DP or UH.
I never liked the way Rainbow sounded because the keyboards there just didn’t sit as much in the mix as with DP (intros and solos excepted), there was something missing sonically, simply turning up Ritchie louder does not create the same instrumental might as the legendary two-headed Gorgan. Even with Whitesnake, Jon’s Hammond and other keyboards were more audible and sound-determining than anything in Rainbow. Colin Towns in GILLAN was quite loud too and knew how to get himself heard even with the piano.
September 10th, 2024 at 16:18Rick Wakeman loved hearing Jon Lord’s Hammond cutting through the mix back in the early 70’s. Hence his comment regarding the Moog synthesiser, it cut through like a razor & guitarists hated it. Something like that. The battle had commenced in that aspect & why not. Electric rock guitar was over the top back then in certain aspects and Ritchie with those Marshall amps was at the forefront of the blitzkrieg, for want of a better wording. We could blame Hendrix of course & why not. However as we all know he didn’t have a keyboard player to contend with, meaning orchestral colouring of the sound & someone else to solo at times. Interesting that 50 years later the guitarist is now having a problem of sorts in regards to the keyboards being too loud. Have to enjoy it all though. In regards to Rainbow, Blackmore didn’t want another ‘gorgan’ situation & why would he? Do something different & he did. The last thing we wanted to hear was some sort of replication of what had already been before. Cheers.
September 10th, 2024 at 22:51Grumpy Rick having a dig at guitarists for hassling keyboard players. Getting paybacks via the Mini Moog & loving it in the process. At 2.30. Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfxeE9QBMeU&t=174s
September 11th, 2024 at 04:29“In regards to Rainbow, Blackmore didn’t want another ‘gorgan’ situation & why would he? Do something different & he did. The last thing we wanted to hear was some sort of replication of what had already been before.”
Oh, I forgot. Rainbow was really a bold move by Ritchie to leave the shadow of DP behind rather than carry on what DP come Stormbringer did perhaps not wish to solely continue to do. Voilà, history rewritten! IGB’s Clear Air Turbulence, PAL’s Malice In Wonderland, the Coverdale solo albums, Glenn’s Play Me Out and, errm, Rainbow’s debut plus Rising naturally were all equally radical attempts to do something wholly different. That is why Ritchie stated after the Mk IV split in an NME interview: “But it doesn’t matter, all their fans would have been eventually assumed by us anyway.”
No drinking before 5 pm, Herr MacGregor, I told you! 😎
PS: Ritchie didn’t want the ‘Gorgan’ for Rainbow (or at lest not as prominently), true, but what he failed to realize was that the sound he had created with Purple relied on just that and that a ‘Ritchie without Jon’ did not carry the same sonic clout and magic. A whole bunch of consumers agreed.
September 11th, 2024 at 15:54@ 8- “A whole bunch of consumers agreed”. Oh dear, I forgot that that is what it is all about. You may as well say then that the golden arch manufacture exquisite food for the masses then, if ‘consumer numbers’ are what it is all about, the be all & end all. Cheers.
September 11th, 2024 at 22:38You must be doing something wrong if you lose that many of your former key audience!
I think Ritchie never fully realized what he had with Purple. He might today, but not back then.
September 12th, 2024 at 07:18@ 10 – Such is the fickle market of rock ‘n roll attendees at times throughout an artists career. It isn’t necessarily doing something wrong Uwe, it is doing something different that usually has certain fans calling for the guillotine, so to speak. How many acts has that happened to over time. A changing market also can lead to that scenario as we have noted here many times. How many fans liked The Ian Gillan Band? Or Paice, Ashton & Lord? And it isn’t as if the band or brand Deep Purple hadn’t already lost many fans after Mark II imploded & especially after MK III is it? MarkIV certainly put the nail in the coffin & people move on with their musical preferences. Some move on totally from popular music all together. It happens. Most serious musicians usually create their own music for their own agenda, not for the fans. If people like it they do, if not that is ok also. We all have our preferences. Cheers.
September 12th, 2024 at 21:43Now the guitar player has to compete with the Hammond, because for once, the organist is too damn loud.
Ah, delicious irony. How I love it.
Doubtless that Jon would be amused to no end were he still with us.
September 13th, 2024 at 07:39To me Dio era Rainbow was essentially Mk III minus all those Blues, RnB and Funk influences that had crept in via DC and GH, the sword & sorcery stuff being the only new element. DP had begun (gently) shifting their music in a direction Ritchie did not like, so he did a reactionary insurrection by setting up his own nation state. And following that, Rainbow began to sound a little 70ies glam with Bonnet in search of commercial recognition before settling on being a second rate Foreigner with longer guitar solos and SOTW as the encore in the JLT era.
I fail to see anything “new” or “modern” Blackmore did during his nine years of AWOLness from Purple, his perfect musical foil. It was a regressive phase in his career. By 1983, Rainbow sounded anything but cutting edge – even by the standards of what other hard rock and heavy metal bands were doing at the time.
September 13th, 2024 at 13:48I didn’t realise we were talking about the AOR style Rainbow, I presumed that the Dio era was what we were talking about, as that seems to get the ‘raw end of the stick’ in regards to the post DP ‘takeover’ as such. Not my way of assuming anything & taking Blackmore’s comments on things, well we know not to take many things he says as being literal. The DP behemoth was left behind in 1976 for a while by all members & so it should have been. Heaven forbid anyone moving on in their respective lives. Of course it didn’t last that long, seven years approximately. Then of course we heard the AOR Rainbow & Gillan band influences in DP. The irony of it all. That is ok though, things can often travel a full circle at times. I never thought or hoped that Dio era Rainbow would or should be a replacement for the DP sound or formula. I never liked Mistreated being performed live by Rainbow. But lets face it, past members & their bands did or can if they want to perform certain songs that they were involved in, why not. IGB performed a few ‘different’ takes on a few. Just glad that Blackmore was rocking with gusto & to also hear Dio’s vocals for the first time. Similar to when Queen popped up, who is this band & that lead vocalist. And at that time even though I didn’t like it from what I had heard of the IGB, it was good to see Gillan himself out & about again. Horses for courses again. Cheers.
September 14th, 2024 at 01:17@13…
Perhaps true in many ways, but Rainbow also kick-started-off many peoples careers…And once a line-up started getting success, lies & deception via growing ego’s forced the early closure of that line-up.
It’s easy to see why he had enough, & look at the result all the years of damage caused with the formation of BN ! Tragic indeed for many, soul soothing maybe for Dwarves & Hobbits.
At least he hasn’t sailed away on the last ship into the West as yet I suppose.
Peace !
September 14th, 2024 at 10:37Yes, Blackers deserves recognition for lifting people from anonymity, he always had a good ear and could have been a talented A&R man and if he had never played a note on guitar.
He was great at discovering, not so great at nurturing talent. If only he had shown some more patience! I would have liked to have heard a third DO Mk III and a second Rainbow Bonnet line-up album.
September 16th, 2024 at 13:59@16…
Yo,
Perhaps…But Mk-IV DP wipes the floor with most of his output imo…And the Morse era recordings leave him for dead.
Simon’s efforts are going to be quite memorable indeed if the opportunity to get enough recordings down is granted.
Peace !
September 16th, 2024 at 22:53I can’t subscribe to the Gregster pet theory how DP was better with Steve than with Blackers, that is like saying Tom Hanks’ various movies were all better than The Good, the Bad & the Ugly with Clint Eastwood. From 1969-75, Ritchie was the right man for DP and DP were the right place for him to be. Ritchie grabbed the Zeitgeist by the scruff of the neck and ran with it, leaving an astounding body of work: In Rock-Fireball-Machine Head-Who Do We Think We Are-Burn-Stormbringer – if you can’t find anything on these albums you like, then hard rock maybe isn’t for you.
Blackmore was a diva and an enfant terrible for Purple, Steve more like the goodnatured, committed school principal who made sure all his pupils flourished.
And that is not knocking Steve.
DP and Tommy OTOH were mainly two things: sheer coincidental magic and at the same time an accident waiting to happen.
September 17th, 2024 at 14:47Yo,
@18…
Mk-I DP was a great band, but RB struggles to find the right notes on most of the recorded tunes during solo-time. He over-stretches to-say-the-least. Please listen to the albums before replying.
Mk-II is the most recognized & famous line-up for sure. “In Rock” would be RB’s crowning moment, when it all-came-together, & he delivered the goods at last, finally hitting the bulls-eye. The remaining studio albums don’t display this at all, as he slowly fades into the background in Fireball, with perhaps a bump being Machine Head. And that’s fine for myself, as I love a band-album, rather than a totally guitar focused / dominated album. This is where WDWTWA shines brightly, & everyone shines, yet very discretely.
Mk-III is well known to be, a construct pushed by management that actually worked, – for a little while. Certainly their “heaviest” period in the live arena, with 2 x opposite- sides-of-the-coin studio efforts delivered.
Mk-IV had the potential to not only revitalize the band, but Rock itself, with cutting-edge & dynamic, memorable tunes that should have been a spring-board to mega-success, not a spring-board to an early grave, RIP Tommy.
Mk-II(b) They came back better than anyone expected, & yet did it without revisiting the times-of-old, with pretty-good new tunes made across the 3 x albums delivered imo. Perhaps the difference here was the live arena, where the performances were based on playing the classic hits to sell tickets, whilst playing 4 or so new tunes in there too. A nice balance for sure, but albums like “Nobody’s Perfect” displayed a drop in musicianship, & though a modern recording, the band didn’t sound so great either. The Knebworth ’85 bootleg offered some highs at least.
JLT did a great job & delivered a pretty-good album designed to make it into the charts, but it remains clear that this time period was fraught with disillusionment & instability, with no-one being really happy, & the bands musical identity in question.
Mk-II(c) Sees the end-of-this-era, & set-of-circumstances that would finally be put-to-rest. TBRO is a great effort imo, & the Live in Europe box-set of CD’s reveals the band playing quite well together, & delivering the goods like a name band of DP’s legend should.
Beyond this time, the band evolved into something really special, & far better than any formation that preceded it. The quality of the music speaks for itself, & it would appear that RB moving-on was all that was ever needed.
The 1970’s was a guitar focused decade, & the better guitar-slinger you had, the better chance of success the band had. There’s no-doubt RB was a flash-in-the-pan player, but he was his own worst enemy, & that was detrimental to the band also.
I’d much rather discuss the successes of Steve & Simon, as they are worthy of time & effort, & not the pro’s & con’s of a selfish-spoilt-brat…
Peace !
September 20th, 2024 at 01:49For much of Mk I, Ritchie was still finding his feet. Jon’s solos back then were much more confident then his, but I believe that had to do with Jon’s years with the Artwoods which were a serious musician’s band on the circuit while Ritchie played with a lot of novelty acts when he wasn’t playing on singles as an anonymous sessioneer. Great improviser he eventually became (dissenting opinion: that OTHER Tasmanian! 😎), Ritchie just didn’t have Jon’s live experience, after all his job with Joe Meek had first and foremost been to raise eyebrows with flashy riffs and licks in ultra-short solos and breaks to adorn whatever Meek cooked up in the studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z8vkrYX2lQ
I also think that the (obvious) Hendrix influence on Blackmore took a while to gestate fully. That said, there were highlights in Ritchie’s work already back then: The guitar solos in Kentucky Woman and Anthem were real crackers and in the way they were worked out beforehand already indicated what we would hear a few years later on Highway Star in full bloom.
September 20th, 2024 at 14:16I stumbled upon a Joe Meek documentary last week. I was really hoping to come across some rare footage containing Blackmore as there were other acts featured. Alas it wasn’t to be. A good one hour documentary though. Cheers.
https://rarefilmm.com/2021/12/the-very-strange-story-of-the-legendary-joe-meek-1991/
September 21st, 2024 at 02:41