Digging deeper into mu:zines archives, there’s this interview with Jon Lord from the time of Before I Forget, published in August 1982 issue of Electronics & Music Maker.

On the album ‘Where Are You’ it seems to have a Debussy type ending.

Jon Well, again, he is a composer that I used to play quite a bit when I was a kid. Of course, you can listen to Chick Corea and hear Debussy and Ravel floating around — all those French impressionist ideas have had a lot of influence in modern jazz.

Brubeck was obviously an influence, because I just used to love the way he played a solo. He just used to knock me out. He suffered from a loss of belief in people and the music seemed to come so easy to him, but people often did not respect his fertile imagination. In my early days I had a band with a line up of piano, bass, drums, vibes, alto sax and clarinet so we were able to do some quite weird things. The alto sax player was Jack Shepherd who later turned to acting. For me he was one of the best alto players and he introduced me to Charlie Mingus and that school.

My interest in the jazz idiom led me to find Jimmy Smith. Well, he found me! I heard ‘A Walk on the Wild Side’ and I really wasn’t too sure what the instrument was. I’d played church organ but I’d never heard that lovely percussive effect of the jazz organ and thought, what the hell is that, it’s wonderful! Not so long after I joined an R&B band who insisted on having an organist instead of a pianist, (this was in the mid Sixties), so I fell into Hammond playing. But I was still playing church organ at the time.

Haven’t you used a Hammond on your new album?

Jon Yes, it’s a split Hammond that’s been heavily modified. I’ve had it since 1968, although it’s about 25-30 years old and it is one of the original C3 models.

One thing they say about organ playing and organ technique is that unlike the piano, you have to make your own expression. It doesn’t matter how hard you hit the keys obviously, so you have to use a swell pedal, but I find that from a Hammond you do get something back. I have developed my own right foot swell technique, but nevertheless I do find I get a bounce back from the Hammond keyboard — almost like a piano although different in its way. And the fingering is different too.

Read the whole thing in mu:zines. Caveat: the interview is pretty long and gets rather technical at times — this is a music production magazine after all.

mu:zines is a website dedicated to digitally reprinting old music production magazines. It has quite a few Purple-related interviews of various vintage.

International Musician and Recording World issue from March 1975 had an interview with Ritchie Blackmore, where he mentions Tommy Bolin as one of the few worthwhile American guitarists, mere months before Bolin replaced him in Purple.

JT: What guitarists do you like?

RB: I like Jeff [Beck]. He’s my favourite guitarist. There are a lot of guitarists around that get overlooked. When you’re a guitarist yourself you tend to get so buried in what you’re doing. Mike Bloomfield is really good. Steve Howe’s always been a very good guitarist. I’m not too struck on Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, I never saw what was in Clapton at all. He’s a good singer.

JT: How do you view someone like Peter Townshend?

RB: He’s part of “the Establishment”… you can knock the Establishment but there’s not much point. There were days in ’64 when he inspired me, because he was the first one ever to use distortion, it was unheard of in those days, and he did a distortion solo in “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere”. That was really good, I thought The Who were great when they first came out. Townshend is not so much of a guitarist as an all-round guy — writer, all that. There are so many people who are good guitarists who aren’t even names.

JT: Are there any American guitarists that you find worthwhile?

RB: Tommy Bolin, especially. There’s a guy in a group called Stray Dog, and I was slightly listening to him outside the Record Plant door when he was recording, and he sounded great… I don’t know who he is.

The last sentence most likely refers to W. G. Snuffy Walden, who went on to make himself a successful career in film and TV music, winning numerous awards, including an Emmy for The West Wing theme.

Read the complete interview in mu:zines.

Thanks to Yvonne for the heads up.

Don Airey’s recent release Live in Hamburg is now streaming on Youtube in its entirety, courtesy of the record company. Continue Reading »

Dutch fingerstyle guitar virtuoso Thomas Zwijsen does covers of classic rock tracks for his Youtube channel, and his latest is a cover of Smoke on the Water. Smoke has never sounded more acoustic than this. Continue Reading »

Blabbermouth reports that David Coverdale was on the Eddie Trunk show on February 18th, and spoke about a possible reissue of the Coverdale/Page album. He said that he obtained the rights to the album from the record company (Geffen, now owned by the Universal Music Group behemoth) and is in discussions with his co-conspirator about what to do with it.

Among the ideas being kicked around is a luxurious box set for the 30th anniversary of the album in 2023, including a remaster of the original album, two complete album remixes — one done by DC and one by Page, some unreleased tracks from the original sessions, and possibly some new material “if we can write courtesy of FaceTime or Zoom”. It is unlikely, however, that the work will begin in earnest before the end of the pandemic:

At this moment in time, at his country estate, I don’t think [Jimmy] has a studio. And he certainly doesn’t wanna drive into London. He and I are target ages for this dreadful virus. So I completely support him in that scenario, ’cause there isn’t any rush. Nothing is gonna be going on this year. Even if we have the opportunity of recording, I can record stuff over here, send him the drive for him to do his part, and we can mix it through the technology now, which is something you couldn’t do before. But I have a studio at home, and Jimmy doesn’t. So I’m hoping we can get some new bits and pieces and ideas and put that into play next year when it will be safer to get around.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

In what may very well be a sign of things to come, Hellfest organizers have announced that the 2021 festival has been cancelled. This follows the last year cancellation due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Last year tickets were promised to be accepted for this year event and most of the bands from the last year confirmed their appearance, effectively moving the event for one year.

However, the newly issued regulations from the French government state that summer festivals will only be allowed to proceed with a maximum of 5,000 people in attendance, all seated, and all socially distanced. With Hellfest having sold in excess of 60,000 passes to a primarily heavy metal festival that is not exactly receptive of an all seated audience, the organizers decided to nix this year as well.

In a “final” meeting on Thursday, the 18th of February, the verdict was returned. Summer festivals will be allowed under drastic conditions : 5,000 seated people and social distancing. These requirements make the organization of our 2021 festival imposible and force us to postpone once again our anniversary edition. We do not wish to blame the government. We are well aware that the health situation requires everyone to be cautious. However, these measures are more or less the same as last year resulting in a “dead summer” for the festivals and culture in general.

As we offered last year, you can keep your 3-day or 1-day pass purchased in 2020 in a safe place. This pass will be valid for the 2022 edition, which will be held on June 17th, 18th and 19th 2022. You don’t have to do anything, just keep your ticket safely.

It should be noted that at the time of this writing (Feb 20, 2021), no festival lineup for 2022 has been announced, nor Deep Purple’s appearance have been confirmed or denied.

Don’t be surprised if other summer festivals will follow suit. Most developed countries have just started the vaccination and plan to run them all through the summer finishing some time in the fall. That’s the earliest we can hope for things to start returning to normal.

Blackmore’s Night has a promo video for the title track of their upcoming album Nature’s Light: Continue Reading »

Glenn Hughes spoke to Kiki Classic Rock some time earlier this year. He reminisced about joining Deep Purple, performing at the California Jam, meeting a 9 year old Lars Ulrich before the 1973 show in Copenhagen, the infamous Mark 4 visit to Indonesia, Black Country Communion, the then upcoming Dead Daisies new album, and a few other things.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Speaking of Ronnie James Dio, his semi-auto biography will come out on July 27, 2021, via Permuted Press. This is a book RJD started working on before his death, in collaboration with Mick Wall, who finished it after Ronnie’s passing.

The promotional blurb reads:

Prior to his tragic death in 2010, Ronnie James Dio had been writing his autobiography, looking back on the remarkable life that led him from his hometown in upstate New York to the biggest stages in the world, including the arena that represented the pinnacle of success to him—Madison Square Garden, where this book begins and ends.

As Ronnie contemplates the achievement of a dream, he reflects on the key aspects that coalesced into this moment—the close gang of friends that gave him his start in music, playing parties, bars, frats, and clubs; the sudden transition that moved him to the microphone and changed his life forever; the luck that led to the birth of Rainbow and a productive but difficult collaboration with Ritchie Blackmore; the chance meeting that made him the second singer of Black Sabbath, taking them to new levels of success; the surprisingly tender story behind the birth of the Devil Horns, the lasting symbol of heavy metal; his marriage to Wendy, which stabilized his life, and the huge bet they placed together to launch the most successful endeavor of his career…his own band, Dio.

Everything is described in great detail and in the frankest terms, from his fallout with Blackmore, to the drugs that derailed the resurrection of Black Sabbath, to the personality clashes that frayed each band.

Written with longtime friend of thirty years and esteemed music writer, Mick Wall, who took up the mantle after Ronnie’s passing, Rainbow In The Dark is a frank, startling, often hilarious, sometimes sad testament to dedication and ambition, filled with moving coming-of-age tales, glorious stories of excess, and candid recollections of what really happened backstage at the hotel, in the studio, and back home behind closed doors far away from the road.

What: Ronnie James Dio autobiography
Title: Rainbow In The Dark: The Autobiography
Authors: Ronnie James Dio, Mick Wall, Wendy Dio
Format: hardcover, 352 pages
When: July 27, 2021
Where: Permuted Press
ISBN: 978-1642939743

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Louder Sound (nee Classic Rock magazine) has a feature on Rainbow’s Long Live Rock ‘N’ Roll album, and it’s a good read.

There is, however, one chink of light in the bleak, drowsy fug of that UK chart in May 1978. Straight in this week at No.7, pop pickers, it’s Rainbow and Long Live Rock ’N’ Roll. The third album by the band formed by former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and previously unknown American singer Ronnie James Dio, Long Live Rock ’N’ Roll is proof that, far from dead, rock with a capital ‘R’ is alive and well, and in exile no more.

“I don’t think any of us paid any attention whatsoever to punk,” Ronnie Dio would tell me years later. “I still saw what we did as being more unique, what Ritchie and I called ‘medieval blues’.”

But where the unpredictable Blackmore had originally seen his collaboration with Dio as an upgrade on the rock-meets-classical format of heyday Purple, three years on he was now more interested in the colossal success of Foreigner – the US-based rock band built around the abundant talents of another English guitarist, Mick Jones.

Blackmore was by a mile the better player. Jones was by a mile the better hit maker. The result: two Rainbow albums weighted with accolades and plentiful sales in every country in the world – except America. In the same period were two multi-platinum Foreigner albums that no one outside America rated at all, but with combined sales of more than 10 million in the US, along with four giant hit singles.

“I think Ritchie was getting a lot of people at the record label whispering in his ear too,” said Dio. “Pushing for the band to go commercial. Hence the actual song Long Live Rock ’N’ Roll. I didn’t consciously write the lyrics that way, but it was definitely seen as having ‘hit potential’, as they called it.”

Ritchie certainly hoped so. He liked having Ronnie around.

Continue reading on Louder Sound.

Thanks to Amit for the info.