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Creativity and volatility in equal measure
Guitar World has a feature on every Deep Purple banjo player, from Ritchie Blackmore to Simon McBride.
Deep Purple’s longevity is remarkable on a number of levels. Aside from a relatively brief split between 1976 and 1984, they’ve been a working band since 1968 – a striking achievement, attributable in part to their willingness to forge ahead creatively rather than coasting on past glories, and to adapt in the face of personnel changes.
Anyone familiar with their history will know that these two elements have not only worked in parallel on many occasions, but have often sparked fresh, innovative Purple patches.
Continue reading in Guitar World.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
That was nicely balanced on all five banjo players. Goes to show that you don’t have to put the other four down to elevate one of them. I’d go see a DP-G5 summit of them all (with Tommy on leave from wherever he is) in a heartbeat. DP has yet to feature a bad guitarist in its ranks.
July 20th, 2026 at 06:20Unfortunately I can’t pull up the entire article. I agree Uwe, DP has never had a bad guitar player. In fact, every member of this band, past and present, has been SUPERB (Yes, even JLT). They were at first going to be called Roundabout, and it sure fits. They’ve been my favorite band since 1973 when I bought the Purple Passages Album, and always will be!! I may not give every album a totally positive review but, hey, even a less than great album by them is better than most new music in the States (only exception is Suzanne Vega) but it’s always exciting waiting for a new album!!
July 20th, 2026 at 19:06Purple Passages is an unusual way to start in 1973! If you were looking for SOTW, you probably had a hard time finding it there! 🤣
I even have a Japanese CD version of it (Purple Passages), cost me a fortune.
Ms Vega is no doubt one of the fine musical daughters NYC can be justly proud of.
July 21st, 2026 at 00:45What a stupid comment Uwe. Do you like making fun of people to prove you are smarter than them when, in fact, you aren’t! I heard the song SOTW on the radio a few times but only knew that it was by a band called Deep Purple as they never said the name of the song. I went out and bought the first album by Deep Purple that I saw and, in the record store was a rack full of the album Purple Passages. I bought it, put it on, was disappointed at first that Smoke wasn’t on it but grew to love that album and the band. The second album I bought was Made in Japan!! Any other stupid comments? Your Turn!!!
July 21st, 2026 at 10:05I’ve seen the Japanese Version of Purple Passages online. A fortune it is! Glad I still have record player and album. Same goes for the Best of album, Deep Purple MKI and MKII. When I was in Japan many years ago I did pick up some CD’s. The Battle Rages On CD came with a Guitar Pick. I guess they had to do something to get the CD to sell LOL. 🙂
July 21st, 2026 at 18:35Purple Passages was one of the first Purple albums I purchased as I started to get into them. I recall thinking that it was really eclectic and unique compared to the songs I already knew. It encouraged me to dig deeper into them as a band. I still have it on vinyl.
July 21st, 2026 at 21:33Yo,
There’s no doubt that all of DP’s guitarists have been top-notch, & the music both new & old allowed enough room for their own ID’s to shine through, without sounding like anyone else…The same is true of the keyboard dept. !
For my part here, it’s a little sad that their was no official recorded release that featured Joe Satriani, though there are many You-Tube videos you can download & savour, as the tunes played from “The Battle Rages On” album have never sounded better imo…And “When a blind man cries” is jaw-droppingly stunning…
The bootleg CD’s that feature this era with Joe can be hit & miss with varying sound quality & often with great expense outlaid to purchase. Without question, imo, the one to search out ( and it has been released with many titles & in many edited forms ) is the Radio Broadcast from Snakt Gallen Switzerland, 26th June 1994…This show is possibly the best I’ve ever heard the band live, no-bull…All versions are great, but the full-show is the one to get imo. You’ll know that you have the correct version / show, as the set starts with Ramshackle Man. ( I suggest that Highway Star was omitted as they were setting-up the sound for the broadcast, it was the test-mule tune ).
There’s also a new bootleg outlet that’s opened-up from Japan, that I’m quite happy with. I won’t give their name ( I once mentioned Disc Japan in here & they were shut down a few weeks later ), but interested people may find them if perhaps they search “Deep Purple Swiss Rage” or “Shades 279″…And if that doesn’t lead you to them, you will at the least find the best examples on CD available of this aforementioned show.
Be careful with the Japanese shows of this era…”Budokan DAT Master 1993” is a 4-CD set of 2 x shows that’s been recently released, namely the 6th & 7th December gigs that sound great. Others of the same dates are terrible. “Shades 1277” may help in your search. (I can say this here about this disc-set, as according to the website, I’m the only person to have purchased this disc-set so far lol) !
There’s also a 2-disc version titled “Budokan Night” of the December 6th show that’s going around at the moment, & though the sound is clear & flawless, it sounds like it was recorded from 200 rows back…You’ll need to dial-up the bass to 100% & EQ etc to hear anything pleasing…You’ve been warned !
Ciao !
July 22nd, 2026 at 00:05Thanks for info Gregster! The only one I have with Satriani is Spirit of Freedom from Genova, Italy 21 Jun 94. The sound is OK and it’s a great show.
July 22nd, 2026 at 10:49It’s strange that the article claims RB was thinking of LZ when wanting to go in a heavier direction. Haven’t RB and JL always said it was Vanilla Fudge they aimed for?
July 22nd, 2026 at 11:151. Leslie, calm down, my first four albums of DP bought within a period of three weeks when we were vacationing from Africa (where I lived with my parents at the time) in our original home town in Germany in the summer of 1975 were Shades Of, Taliesyn, In Rock & Stormbringer! You can tell by the wild mix that I had no idea and while I knew SOTW as a song already, I did not even know it was from DP until I bought K-Tel‘s Dynamite
https://www.discogs.com/release/867506-Various-K-Tels-Dynamite
around the same time. So I was no better or smarter than you – I just honestly thought it intriguing that you started collecting DP with Purple Passages, no slight on my part intended whatsoever I swear!!! (When I want to make fun of you, I‘ll let you know beforehand!)
2. Svante, one does not necessarily exclude the other:
When DP recorded Shades of in 1968, Vanilla Fudges‘s influential debut from August 1967 (#6 in the Billboard Charts) was all the rage and became DP’s first blueprint.
In contrast, Led Zep‘s debut came out in early 1969 (US: Jan, UK: late March, after DP had already toured the US (with Ritchie hearing that Rod had limits live) and had a hit with Hush, and when Blackmore heard it he had second thoughts about Rod Evans‘ being the ideal lead singer for a band aiming for 70s future success. Glover, btw, was a great fan of Led Zep I too.
Led Zep I was a guitar (and vocals of course) album just as the Vanilla Fudge debut had been an organ one – one replacing the other as DP‘s role model band was reflected in the change from Mk I to Mk II and the once totally dominant Hammond of Jon taking a (slight) backseat to Ritchie‘s emerging Strat sound.
July 22nd, 2026 at 22:38Sorry Uwe. I suggest YOU calm down and think before you type!! Especially when you make an ignorantly sarcastic remark about how it must have been hard to find a copy of SOTW. Rant Done! Now for my opinion of Zeppelin. I have all their albums and really don’t think they are all that great. My favorite is Zep II. I think their 4th album is vastly overrated and am sick of hearing Stairway to Heaven over and over on the radio. As for their live albums EGAD!! I remember rushing out to buy The Song Remains the Same thinking it must be of “Made in Japan” proportions. Was I ever wrong!! One radio station here in the States used to call the month of September “Zeptember” and play only Zep songs the entire month. Boring!! I e-mailed and suggested a “Purptober” but got nowhere. 🙂 🙂
July 23rd, 2026 at 01:27Yo,
@8, Thanks for the tip on the Geneva show, I didn’t see this one listed at my current source, though I’ll keep my eyes & ears open lol !
And thanks to admin. for allowing me to post about these bootlegs. My only interest is in having at least one quality live performance of each Mark of DP that’s come & gone over the years, as a musical document of their ever evolving career.
Ciao !
July 23rd, 2026 at 06:09@12 You are welcome! Now all we need is a proper release of a MKV show. They were taped on video at least once. I have bootlegs of some of the shows but still not as good as a proper sounding release.
July 23rd, 2026 at 11:28Funny to read all these comments about good bootlegs, best bootlegs, MK 2 till MK……i collected boots myself for about 35 years now, mostly of Grateful Dead as i have always been a Deadhead and a Purplehead but i never came across really fine Purple boots….but that is not my point here: of all my 300 plus Dead boots i actually listen to maybe a dozen..
July 23rd, 2026 at 12:36Banjoplayer took a hike…..
Probably not the inspiration for Gillan but still……
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeJTX8LSGsc
July 23rd, 2026 at 16:38That is why I gave up collecting DP boots at one point, I always listened to the same ones and those were only a few.
July 23rd, 2026 at 19:22Leslie, I didn‘t mean to say you couldn’t‘t find SOTW as a record, I meant to say it was kind of hard to find SOTW on Purple Passages as an Mk I sampler! Again, I find it more interesting to start with Purple Passages as your first Purple album rather than buying, say, the SOTW single at the height of the song’s fame. So you made a very individual choice and me observing that seems to inexplicably rile you. Jeez, and people wonder why they are not getting along in the Middle East … 🙄 I AM HAPPY YOU BOUGHT PURPLE PASSAGES FIRST AND STILL BECAME A DP FAN, IS THAT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND???!!!
Once I stop being sarcastic, I‘ll be dead – it‘s a family affliction and my main means of communication.
Re LZ, TSRTS was of course a flawed live release, I think even LZ realized that soon after it came out, they tried to make good decades letter with How The West Ws Won.
Zep were never as reliably excellent live as DP because (i) their studio productions were far more removed from their live sound than DP‘s, (ii) having JPJ cover both bass and keyboards and even occasional acoustic guitar live might have preserved the four-man-image, but it didn‘t do the live performance much good, (iii) JPJ is a fine, versatile musician, but he‘s no Jon Lord as a keyboard instrumentalist. Finally, Page as a guitarist could be mesmerizing, but also mundane, depending on his drug intake that particular evening. He didn‘t have Ritchie‘s killer instinct in impressing an audience from the first second onward.
July 23rd, 2026 at 20:31I have hundreds of bootlegs. One that no Purple fan should be without is Boston 1973. I like the performance as much as made in Japan and the sound is excellent. If made in Japan is a 9.5.( there’s always room for improvement right? )This one is a nine.
July 23rd, 2026 at 21:49Yo,
@13 & 18…
Agreed, a MkV show is needed in CD form, as I can only find some edited videos on You-Tube. I have yet to check on these at my newly discovered bootleg source, namely because of the expense involved. ( eg, Each disc-set is around $50-60:00 USD to purchase, but spend over $150:00, & you get a $50:00 discount…Free postage & some bonus’s are added however, as they threw in a free CD, namely DP Stuttgart 1974 (25th January show) that’s flawed, but still a great listen. Even GH is very-well-behaved putting in a solid performance with absolutely no falsetto singing or any hint of Georgia through SotW lol…Anyhow, it seems best to spend-up & choose carefully to be well rewarded )…
The purchase of a quality digital recorder will allow you to record & then burn on computer CD’s of anything you want via the internet, with great results. And most art-work is available too on-line that you can print-off, so long as you don’t mind home-made CD’s lol ! Used Boss BR800’s are available cheap from e-bay, that are amazing tools, & do much more than simply record.
I’m a Dead-Head too, & recommend searching the Internet Archive for all your Grateful Dead bootleg needs for free. There are thousands of recordings…
Ciao !
July 24th, 2026 at 00:41@ 17- “(iii) JPJ is a fine, versatile musician, but he‘s no Jon Lord as a keyboard instrumentalist.” Why does Uwe keep repeating the same inane comments that are totally irrelevant. John Paul Jones is a bass guitarist. First and foremost! He played a little keyboards at times in a much more simplistic filler type of role, an embellisher shall we say. He is NOT a keyboard virtuoso! That four piece scenario worked out well for Led Zeppelin, that is who they were. Not a five piece band. They would not have worked out too well (all views taken from hindsight of course) with a permanent virtuoso keyboard player. Now back in the REAL world, that may, just may, help to keep things in perspective. Jimmy Page is a totally different guitarist to Ritchie. For starters as you are well aware, he actually played rhythm guitar a hell of a lot compared to lazy old Blackmore with his attitude problem. Page also mixed it up much more with alternative tunings and multiple instruments and he was also a ‘producer’ of the bands music, so to speak. Blackmore, bless him, is a bit of a one trick pony is he not? And I don’t Mena that in put down way at all, he is one of my favourite electric guitarists. I am a Blackmore acolyte as you are well aware. Well, a Blackmoron is probably more along those lines, is that the one to use? Or even a Blackmorite wasn’t it. Either way, a studio man Ritchie was not, compared to Page. One thing they did have in common apart from their earlier career session work was, the live improvised take all risks approach to performance. They both had that occasional, ‘oh who gives a f..k’ attitude. Much to the detriment of a “polished” performance at times. J P Jones playing a mandolin and the acoustic ‘unplugged’ performance was a good thing wasn’t it. Well for anyone who appreciates that folk scene and those songs and it also mixes things up much more too. There you go Uwe, keeping it in perspective, it isn’t hard to do. Cheers.
July 24th, 2026 at 01:21Brother MacGregor, why do you always set out to intentionally misunderstand me when you know my realm is not of this Earth 🙏 but has a stairway that lies on the, uhum, whispering wind … (what a bunch of lyrical bollocks!)?
I agree with mostly everything you say, the problem being that my original post didn‘t claim anything else! But by now, when you read anything from me about LZ you think you need to go into largely unreflected defensive mode. I know that JPJ‘s role with the Zeps was not Jon‘s role with the Purps – duh! All I wanted to state is that the atmospheric lavishness of Pagey‘s productions of his band would have required more hands to replicate live, given his penchant for overdubs and alternative instrumentation and what not. Zep would have needed more musicians live to fully transport their music to the stage than DP, yet, ironically, had less, if that makes sense. DP might have had a preference for certain songs in their live set (or let’s say that Ritchie had a disdain for a lot of others 😂), but I honestly don‘t think that Mk II recorded a single number in the 70sin the studio they could not have gotten across live. That isn‘t the case with Zep, and not because Percy, Pagey, Bonzo and Jonesy were inferior musicians, but because the gulf between their ambitious aural landscapes in the studio and what they could replicate live as a quartet was too deep. Even you can‘t credibly disagree with that.
But you probably will in any case, my Tasmanian nemesis! 🙄
July 24th, 2026 at 11:14@ 21- it isn’t going on the defensive Uwe, although it can easily look like that. It is just me trying to keep things in perspective. Comparing J P Jones as a keyboard player to someone like Jon Lord is pointless, even if just in a figure of speech. Am I nit picking, splitting hairs, yes most probably. I know what you mean in regard to the LZ differences in studio to live performance, but I don’t hear a lot of that at all with what I have heard of LZ live. I have always enjoyed The Rain Song, No Quarter and a few others live in concert. There is plenty of space in those arrangements for the different required instruments when needed. I have never really noticed any drop off in those songs performed live. From about 1973 ish on they ended up with the ‘unplugged’ set up to accommodate that too, eventually. Page’s drug performance was, as you correctly stated an issue at times. Anyway, horse for courses as we often say. Most bands have a few compositions that they will never be play live, for different reasons. Some make a mistake in over embellishing in the studio, some create music that cannot or will not be over dubbed too much. I remember Greg Lake taking about an early ELP album that was far too studio embellished to attempt live. A mistake he personally never tried to be involved with again. Early to mid 70’s Pink Floyd suffered a little with that, on the guitar side of things especially, hence getting in Snowy White in the 1976, 1977 era for concerts. That fact that Gilmour was singing a lot then could have influenced that set up too. In fact everything there after including solo performances involving Gilmour or Waters had two guitarists on stage, even also with two keyboard players. The late 60’s to early 70’s music performed live by certain bands was a lot rawer. The Doors found that out without a bass guitarist. Being a five piece band naturally gets around that problem in that sense and as you say, Deep Purple’s music was never recorded that way, much more straight ahead like a few other bands, frig all overdubbing in the studio. Ritchie being a’lazy’ rhythm player also helped no doubt, keeping the sound much more open. Cheers.
July 26th, 2026 at 00:32Not forgetting the keyboard players surrounding themselves with extra keyboards too, that was a good idea from what I have always enjoyed. And it proved a good thing for grumpy Rick in Yes, then he had somewhere to hide to eat his curry onstage, he he he. Seriously though, they all had to do it to embellish the music much more and why not. And it also to gave the electric noisy guitarists something to think about, according to Rick. Those keyboard warriors, Lord, Emerson, Wakeman, Banks and even Richard Wright a little bit too. Orchestrating the music in performance. Yes dumped poor ole Tony Kaye in 1971 for not wanting to embrace extra keyboards. Kaye was a strictly Hammond only player in that aspect at that time. Cheers
July 26th, 2026 at 00:47I think Led Zep even had issues coming to grips with Whole Lotta Love live! The version on TSRTS is awful.
Other stuff – like In My Time Of Dying – they did well.
I credit LZ highly for being the first 70s hard rock stadium band to actually dare an acoustic miniset. Blackmore would have never let that happen though I wouldn’t have minded hearing DP’s Ennio Morricone tribute April (Part 1) played that way! With Soldier of Fortune added as the second song.
July 28th, 2026 at 00:51I was always a little disappointed that Deep Purple’s music didn’t have much acoustic guitar. Even Black Sabbath in the mid 70’s era had a little here and there from Tony Iommi. Mark I DP had a little, probably more than any other DP lineup. The sublime Anthem song, April has that acoustic bit in the early part of the song. Then we get to MKIII and Soldier of Fortune and then all the way to The Aviator with Steve Morse. In regard to Morse, that was one of the first things I thought of when I heard he had joined DP. Will there be an occasional acoustic song or instrumental. Are there any others that I have missed? I have always enjoyed artists that go acoustic, it breaks up the ‘rock’ sound nicely at times and brings in different genres to an artists repetoire. Cheers.
July 28th, 2026 at 10:30I’ve never had issues with acoustic guitars in rock. Pete Townshend once said that there are a lot more acoustic guitars on THE WHO albums than people think – albeit as additional guitar tracks BEHIND the electric guitar takes because he felt it lent the music more power and percussive oomph. And he is actually right. If you play in a band and someone plays a well-miked acoustic guitar, you realize its sonic might. Those things can be brutal. It is a melodic and harmonic percussion instrument all rolled into one, make no mistake.
That freakin’ drug-addicted, SS cap-wearing, minor age groupies-devouring and Satan-worshipping guitarist of that other you-know-who-group was actually excellent in integrating acoustic stringed instruments into his band’s sound.
I never said that. 😑
That a drummer like Herr MacGregor would succumb to the charms of acoustic guitars is no wonder, he bangs on the most primal acoustic instrument of all! 🤣
https://youtu.be/P-MCFmyYCTc
(And people say Phil Collins wasn’t great as a drummer … 🙄)
July 28th, 2026 at 17:25Yo,
It’s virtually impossible, even today, to get even a good sounding acoustic guitar sound ( yet alone a great sound ) on record, yet alone in the live arena…
All inbuilt pick-ups readily available on lots of new guitars for decades fall short of the mark sound-wise, yet alone the optional pick-ups that mount in the soundbox…
One solution has always been to use a quality microphone carefully placed in front of the guitar on a stand, but feedback issues typically always come forth…
The solution was / is & remains the development & creation of the solid-body electric guitar…Hassles eliminated, & once you overdrive the amp with one plugged in, you attain the sounds of Hendrix, Mountain, DP, LZ, Sabbath etc etc…
Ciao !
July 28th, 2026 at 23:40