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Warhorse – Live At Woods
Another new(ish) release courtesy of letters to our better-late-than-never department. A Warhorse live album was quietly released some time in January 2025 via SingSong Music (a company founded by George Harrison himself). It is a recording of their one-off reunion gig from 2001.
A founding member of Deep Purple, British music veteran Nick Simper left after recording on the band’s first three albums to form hard rock act, Warhorse.
Along with Uriah Heep, Black Sabbath and Juicy Lucy, Warhorse settled quickly into the ranks of embryonic cult record label, Vertigo.
Initially counting Rick Wakeman in its ranks, the line-up settled down with Simper (bass), Ged Peck (guitar), Ashley Holt (vocals), Mac Poole (drums) with Frank Wilson replacing Wakeman on keyboards.
Warhorse’s 1970 self-titled debut was well-received and the band became a popular attraction on the live circuit. A return to the studio in 1972 for ‘Red Sea’ with Pete Parks replacing Peck showed musical development and assured direction.
While a bolt from the blue came with the band’s sudden dissolution, the line-up reunited for one night in January 2001 at Woods Club in Borehamwood near London to play a memorable note-perfect set that reached back to the glory days of three decades prior.
Recorded for posterity by BBC producer Tony Wood, the tapes have languished until now and their first ever release in “Live At Woods”.
Warhorse’s albums, copies of original LPs selling for vast sums on the collector market today, have never been out circulation.
“Live At Woods” serves to complement them admirably, reviving some of the band’s favourite compositions in an incendiary set that measures Warhorse’s reputation as a devastating live act – at full gallop!
Track list:
- Woman Of The Devil
- Chest Fever
- The Ritual
- No Chance
- Just Looking
- Confident But Wrong
- Burning
- I Who Have Nothing
- St. Louis
- Back In Time
- Shakin’ All Over
- Hollywood Nights
- I Can Tell
- Lucille
Apparently there is no physical media on offer so far (although Nick Simper’s website is hopeful for a CD release “out soon”). The album is available for streaming and download only via this link. Physical aficionados will have to burn a CD themselves or wait for “out soon” to materialize.
Thanks to Arch for the sharp eyes.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I dread this happening one day with DP – a significant release without accompanying physical media. 😱
July 4th, 2025 at 12:22@1
That won’t happen! (I hope…)
July 4th, 2025 at 13:45Dein Wort in Gottes Ohr!
July 4th, 2025 at 22:14@3
Track 14 ‘Lucille’ is ok decent (hadn’t I heard this first):
https://youtu.be/oxKJwyRv_1A?si=dlsyKy6NyiGY70iT
Because Purple is beyond everything that is good and decent 🤩
July 6th, 2025 at 05:25Warhorse always sounded like the pedestrian version of DP from the special-needs-school. Lumbering, weighed down, dull and completely out of time, unlike Purple the music lacks any form of espirit. For me of all the pre- and post-bands in the Purple Universe, Warhorse (although a good name) is the one only a very compassionate soul can generate some positive feelings for. I need to muster all my completist urge/compulsion to buy their product.
July 6th, 2025 at 12:23@5
“Warhorse always sounded like the pedestrian version of DP from the special-needs-school.”
– well, well, well, you’ve got a point there! 🤭
But anyone and any track compared to Purple will end up like that, won’t they?
July 6th, 2025 at 16:45No, I don‘t agree, Karin, there are moments on Trapeze, James Gang and Captain Beyond albums that can hold the ground with DP, but I‘ve never heard anything by Warhorse that wasn’t done a lot better by DP. Haven‘t met too many wholehearted Warhorse fans either, they are always exiled DP aficionados (like me). There is something sluggish-krautrockish to Warhorse and the theatrical vocals of Ashley Holt are a strictly acquired taste.
July 7th, 2025 at 12:51@7
Ok, I disagree ☺️
No one, in my very humble opinion, can remotely do what Purple have done all along their career (at least when Ian was the vocalist)!
July 7th, 2025 at 17:18Agree that Warhorse’s music was hard to love!
Especially the first LP. Undercooked arrangements, nasty unpleasant lyrics, horrible pitchy bellowing vocals. Holt actually sounds better on this recent live record.
Some make allowances for the band’s debut based on how little time the band had to record it… But “Shades Of Deep Purple” was made in even less time and blows “Warhorse” away.
The band could have benefitted from an outside producer, perhaps Derek Lawrence himself. Someone who could have have trimmed the flab, excised the bits reprised from DP songs, and sent Holt back to his lyric notepad for some rewrites. Plus, spent a little time getting some in-tune vocal takes.
Second LP “Red Sea” was admittedly better…
Still, thought Nick’s later band Fandango was altogether much more musical.
July 7th, 2025 at 20:16That‘s not the point, the music of Trapeze, Bolin-era James Gang and Captain Beyond
https://youtu.be/rlGLgZCUFzw
https://youtu.be/ILFXuNLgIvw
https://youtu.be/BnJfzPhTxSE
never emulated DP nor tried to compete with it, it stood on its own.
The same cannot be said about Warhorse however:
https://youtu.be/tFlival8uOc
If this doesn’t try hardest to sound familiar, I don‘t know what does! Oafishly rendered, true, but the aspirational goal is clear as mock purple soup.
July 7th, 2025 at 20:46Songwriting again or lack of it. Warhorse were obviously a product of their time, that Iron Buttlerfly early Uriah Heep sound. But who is writing the songs. Also it was pretty evident from the outset, Rick Wakeman left to join The Strawbs and the guitarist eventually left to study Classical guitar and then the drummer left to join Gong. Obviously moving forward in their respective journeys and getting away from that dated sound and style. It was obvious too that Nick was trying to emulate that by the sound of it. Plus they were signed by Vertigo, say it all doesn’t it. That wonderful Hammond organ did overstay its welcome in that period. We know why certain bands moved quickly on to other keyboards. It does date music to that late 60’s to early 70’s, too much perhaps, it was good and not so good, depending on the situation. Cheers.
July 7th, 2025 at 22:42I have no issues with Nick Simper’s Fandango (nor with Joe Lynn Turner’s Fandango) at all, Skippy, I like both albums, the production work is tame and budget, but the songwriting is there on tracks like Candice Larene, Only Time Will Tell or Pull Out & Start Again. I actually like Pete Parks as a guitarist (though Ged Peck was more like Blackmore), that sparse, yet melodic style and the percussive sound of his guitar.
And Red Sea did show some development over the debut which in its unmusicality reminds me of the sort of stoner rock pre-Schenker UFO did, but with more ebullience.
July 8th, 2025 at 04:24Yes, Iron Butterfly and early, rudimentary Heep are signposts for Warhorse’s sound. If you listen to Red Sea and Machine Head, you get the feeling the two albums are a decade apart and not – as they both were – released in the same year and month! Mk II progressed in leaps and bounds from album to album, refining both their sound and their songwriting, but Warhorse was somehow stuck. Machine Head was in March 1972 a sleek- and fresh-sounding album that jumped at you from its grooves while Red Sea harkened back badly and sounded archaic.
July 8th, 2025 at 13:40Now the other Fandango … I know they were as Yank and as New Jersey to boot as a Cracker Jack box, but man it was musical and well-sounding like only Americans can be:
https://youtu.be/IXQ7___4chE
https://youtu.be/NSQtgsXIpYc
https://youtu.be/it37PUhlkw0
https://youtu.be/v8ePwz0jvo4
Don’t know about you, but soundwise, compositionally, harmony vocals and -guitar-equipped as well as groove-infused this creams Warhorse into the ground.
It’s also a lot less hüftsteif than US-sanitized Rainbow was which always had this weird discrepancy of a very American-sounding singer with Joe, yet the instrumental backing was strangely rigid, neither Ritchie nor Roger were good at emulating an American groove try as they might. Wouldn’t have lasted very long in The Doobie Brothers these two. 😂
https://youtu.be/XQEwiWboKlg
Never underestimate Yanks excelling at their own music, I tell you, I really admire them for that.
July 8th, 2025 at 23:08