If you thought the au naturel cover of Child in Time was fun, check out this one. As one of the youtubers has put it

Wanted to see them in Uppsala summer of 1258, but I couldn’t find a spot to moor my longboat. Damn !

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Ian and Ian give a track by track overview of the new album. It’s a 17-minute crash course into the lyrical universe of Whoosh for those who do not follow Caramba’s wordography. Continue Reading »

Roger Glover shows his artsy side in this early 80s vintage TV interview.
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Ian Gillan answers to Loudwire‘s Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction. This was published 3 years ago, but somehow slipped under our radar all that time. Big Ian not as much as providing rebuttals, as goes on a tangent telling anecdotes from his career.
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Speaking of Planet Rock, they also have a collection of semi-random factoids titled 42 facts about Deep Purple’s album covers — that’s two for each studio album. As we all know, 42 is also the answer to the ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything. To top it off, truly yours website gets a namecheck. Apparently this collection is a part of their Deep Purple month celebrations that should last throughout September.

From the incredible sleeves of ‘Deep Purple In Rock’ and ‘Whoosh!’ through to the downright bizarre artwork of ‘Bananas’ and ‘Purpendicular’, take a look at all the Deep Purple album cover facts below.

Check it out on planetradio.co.uk

Blabbermouth has a few quotes from Roger’s recent interview with Planet Rock radio regarding “turbulent time” caused by Blackmore’s departure from the band.

It was surprise to me when Ritchie handed in his notice and said he didn’t wanna play any more gigs after Helsinki. And we were on tour at the time. It was so difficult to take in. Somehow we were determined to carry on, if he was gonna do that. Joe Satriani was a temporary replacement, which did show us the way that we could exist without Ritchie. But I felt very strongly that you can’t replace Ritchie. He is who he is, and there’s no way you can replace him.

If you get someone to play like him or similar or something like that, it would have been a horrible comparison. We needed something different. And to me, the character of PURPLE always was Ritchie and Jon as instrumentalists, and they’re both virtuosos. So you’ve gotta have a virtuoso. There’s thousands of guitarists who can play, but there’s very few who stand out as being very individual and different to everyone else. And I felt Steve presented that. He asked me when we first met, he said, ‘What do you want from me?’ I said, ‘I want you to be yourself. You can’t be in the band unless you’re yourself, a hundred percent.’ And he said, ‘So I can play anything?’ I said, ‘Yeah. Anything will do. We’ll let you know if we want it or not.’

‘Purpendicular’ was one of the happiest albums I’ve ever made, because suddenly we found ourselves writing songs we could never have written before.

John Coletta’s granddaughter reacts to Smoke on the Water.
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Louder has published online their Whoosh feature that originally appeared in Classic Rock magazine issue 278. All five members of the band have been interviewed for the article.

Ian Gillan:

When somebody suggests you make a new Deep Purple album, do you think: “Oh God, not again?”

No, no, no. Quite the reverse. We went through a time years ago when everyone seemed under the weather for whatever reason, then everyone felt a bit better and the energy came back, When that’s there, you’ve just got to find an outlet for it.

Whoosh! is like the last two Purple records in that it sounds like a bunch of mates having a good time.

Absolutely right. Everything is done together. We write the songs together, we arrange them together, we record them together. Hopefully that joy and immediacy comes across. You can’t recreate it artificially.

Ian Paice:

Have you ever thought: “Oh no, not again”, when someone has suggested recording a new album?

I used to. Hanging around in the studio and doing nothing is soul destroying. Especially when you hear it and it doesn’t sound very good. I don’t think any of us have enjoyed it like this for a long, long time.

That title, Whoosh!, is that what Purple’s career has felt like? That the past fifty-plus years have gone by in a flash.

Domestically, yes. When it comes to family stuff, it’s flown by. But in terms of the band, no. I can remember all the times, good and bad. But there are other ways to look at that title: the things we’ve been going through for the last couple of months, the problems we’re creating on this glorious little ball we live on. We could be here and gone that quickly.

Steve Morse:

Whoosh! is the seventh album you’ve done with Deep Purple. Is it still fun?

Oh yeah. There’s nothing about it that’s too serious – listen to songs like And The Address and What The What. I feel like the Ians and Roger don’t feel right unless we’re getting near a recording/touring cycle again. I remember asking Rog: “Why don’t we just do a song every few months and release it on the website. Why does it have to be such a big production?” And Roger says: “Because that’s what we do.”

I’m guessing that Purple are a band steeped in traditions.

Yeah. There are some things you just don’t do. Like making a change in the set-list, or inviting somebody to ride in the van. And you don’t keep people waiting. If you’re on time in Deep Purple, you’re late. I’m not joking.

Don Airey:

Were you surprised when the band decided to make this new album?

We didn’t expect to go back in the studio, but everybody was ready for it. We had a lot of material, everybody was up for it.

And you had Bob Ezrin.

He doesn’t brook any delay, there’s no excuses. The job gets done no matter what. He’s brilliant at corralling you all together and setting you on the same path. I don’t understand how he does it. He’s at least two steps ahead of me.

Was that discipline missing before?

When I came in they were in total shock that Jon had left. But I think the band was at quite a lazy stage in its life as well. It’s funny, I came in for three dates and here I am eighteen years later.

Roger Glover:

What was better about being in Deep Purple in 1970 compared to being in Deep Purple now?

Women [laughs]. You’re basically asking me what I enjoyed about being twenty. Being in a big hit band in the seventies, it was every schoolboy’s dream. But it’s all a whirl now.

What’s better about being in Deep Purple now compared to being in Deep Purple in 1970?

[Thinks] I don’t know, really. As things change, some things remain. The attitude towards our music is the same, but you get a different view of things. Certainly songwriting. We don’t write as naïve twenty-year-olds. There’s more of an ease to what we do. We’re not so desperate. But you’re putting something out there for people to judge, so you’re still vulnerable. Even after all this time.

Read more in Louder Sound.

Thanks to Gary Poronovich for the info.

And just to brighten your day, here is a guitar shredding cover of Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming by Damian Salazar.
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This is all highly theoretical now, but nevertheless…

Now that the new album has been out for a month, everybody had a chance to listen to it and make up their minds, but impressions are still fresh. What tracks from Whoosh would you like to hear live when the band resumes touring? You can choose up to 4 (yeah, we know, we know, but let’s be realistic). The poll closes in a week, on September 15, just before midnight UTC.

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