Another very expensive book is being prepared for publication by Rufus — this one is on Ritchie Blackmore with pictures by Ross Halfin.

This new book is an intimate portrait of Blackmore both on and off stage and captures the brilliance and madness of Rainbow during those years. Ross had unparalleled access for several years and the images in this book often show Ritchie as you’ve never seen him before. It finishes with shots of early Blackmore’s Night in action. With an introduction by Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen who first saw Blackmore on stage at the age of 14 (and features in a photograph on the legendary Made in Japan cover) and words by Ross and journalist Pete Makowski who knew and worked with Ritchie and Rainbow at the time.

As Ross remembers…”Around this time I met writer Peter Makowski who Geoff Barton (the features editor at Sounds) introduced us with the prophetic words “You two will be bad for each other”. Never has a truer word been spoken. Now the one thing I knew about Pete was he knew Blackmore – and I don’t mean “knew” him in a music industry sense – he really did know Ritchie and was a friend of his and as Pete said one day – “let’s go and do Blackmore”. I actually can’t remember where I finally met him but I was pleasantly surprised. Ritchie, who I expected to be off and aloof, was completely the opposite. Once I’d met him he was funny, liked a drink and was fantastic company. Pete and I for the period around this book – I suppose you could say were in his inner circle. We travelled with him, we hung out with him. As you can see from some of the pictures in this book, Ritchie once you knew him was very accessible and as a photographer I could shoot with
him more or less anything I wanted – he would never say no – or I would have to give him a funny, twisted reason to want to do it.”

The book also includes contributions from Billy Corgan and Colin Hart.

At 304 pages, this deluxe hardback book measuring 245mm x 345mm is signed by Ross and comes in two very limited editions. The main edition, bound in white leather with a black sleeve, is just 350 numbered copies worldwide and sells for £199 plus delivery and a super limited, large format A3 edition at just 50 copies will sell for £599 worldwide. Both editions feature an animated 3D lenticular on the cover of Ritchie throwing his guitar into the air.

The book will go on pre-sale at 3pm UK time on Wednesday September 29th and will ship in mid-December.

Thanks to Mike Whiteley and Gary Poronovich for the heads up.

Glenn Hughes and Doug Aldrich were interviewed on the Chuck Shute podcast. They spoke about Dead Daisies, David Coverdale, football and football, the Transformers, Keith Moon, Glenn’s addiction, saving the dolphins, and many other things. Continue Reading »

Regardless of whether the yesterdays rumours about the new album turn out to be true or not, we thought it would be fun to play through the songs listed there. Continue Reading »

In case you’ve forgotten it, we repeat it once again — one simply can not “delete” something from ’em ol’ interwebs. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.

Case in point: apparently the track listing for Deep Purple’s new album went down some sort of trade database, probably with the notice not to publish it until the D-day. Also apparently, some French retailers didn’t get the latter memo and published it. Just as apparently, Powers to Be™ tried to delete said info from the ‘net in the attempt to prevent the spread. To no avail.

Anyhow, it appears that the new album Turning to Crime will be a collection of covers:

1. Volume 1
2. 7 And 7 Is (Love)
3. Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu (Huey “Piano” Smith)
4. Oh Well (Fleetwood Mac)
5. Jenny Take A Ride! (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels)
6. Watching The River Flow (Bob Dylan)
7. Let The Good Times Roll (Ray Charles & Quincy Jones)
8. Dixie Chicken (Little Feat)
9. Shapes Of Things (The Yardbirds)
10. The Battle Of New Orleans (Lonnie Donegan/Johnny Horton)
11. Lucifer (Bob Seger System)
12. White Room (Cream)
13. Caught In The Act (Medley)

Discuss.

This post has been brought to you by our Department of Unsubstantiated Rumours. Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov and Blabbermouth for the heads up.

David Coverdale has celebrated his 70th birthday in his own style, being interviewed for the ABC Audio:

I’m going to ignore it. It’s not 70, by the way, it’s 69 plus one, so you can stick that in your old pipe…and light it. But the circumstances…just snuck up on me, and I’m just simply not prepared emotionally.

Read more in ruralradio.com.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info. Photo: DC’s twitter.

Geir Myklebust specifically for the audience of our site reprints in his blog the questionnaires that members of Deep Purple Mark 2 have answered back in 1970. These originally appeared in the November 21, 1970 edition of the New Musical Express.

Professional name: Jon Lord
Real name: Jon Lord
Birthdate: 9th June 1941
Birthplace: Leicester
Personal points: 6ft 1/2 in. 12 st, green eyes, brown hair
Parents` names: Miriam, Reginald

Professional name: Richie Blackmore
Real name: Richie Blackmore
Birthdate: 14.4.45
Birthplace: Weston-Super-Mare
Personal points: 5ft. 11in, 10st, green eyes, black hair
Parents names: Personal

Read more of Jon’s and the ever so private Ritchie’s answers. Ian, Ian, & Roger to follow, hopefully.

[Update Sep 21]: Gillan’s answers posted.

[Update Sep 22]: So are Paicey’s.

[Update Sep 23]: …and Roger’s. His most memorable one liner:

Biggest disappointment in career: They all seem big at the time but they`re forgotten now

Many thanks to Geir Myklebust for this labour of love.

In an interview to Geoff Barton of Classic Rock, Glenn Hughes recalls his days of blow and hookers more blow. With champagne on top. And a little seance in between.

“I was loaded on coke and the champagne was flowing. But I’ve never smoked a lot of pot, so my memories of those times are pretty vivid,” the bassist/vocalist declares. Hughes’s cocaine addiction got so serious it threatened to destroy him. But he pulled himself back from the brink and has now been clean and sober for 30 years. Let those vivid memories commence.

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Ritchie Blackmore

When I got the gig as bass player in Deep Purple I was only aged 21. We went to Clearwell Castle to work on the Burn album. Ritchie rigged up my room with hidden speakers. In the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of all these ghost noises. I was scared shitless! The next night me, Baz Marshall [Purple roadie] and Ritchie held a séance. Baz was a farmer and he’d recently lost one of his cows.

We started the séance and suddenly the room echoed with the sound of a cow mooing. Only this time it wasn’t a wind-up! Blackmore freaked and ran out. When it came down to it, he was a bit of a scaredy-cat. But Ritchie was the king of the prank – we all know that. Even today, he always carries a water pistol around with him. I have it on the greatest authority.

Continue reading in Louder Sound.

Thanks to Gary Poronovich for the info.

A vintage interview with Ian Gillan by Allan McDougall originally published in the New Musical Express on November 7, 1970. This was taken at the Olympia in Paris, where the band had played on November 1.

Roger is a fantastic bass player.

I talked to Ian Gillan about Roger and he agreed.

“Yeah, he doesn’t get so much glory as Jon or Ritchie, because Rog is very unobtrusive. The rest of us are dead flash on stage, but Rog just choogles along quietly on bass, keeping a rock-steady beat for little Ian, and keeping Jon and Ritchie up to scratch with chord progressions when they’re freaking out all over the place.”

Read more in Music history for those who are able to read.

Thanks to Geir Myklebust for posting this.

Some time in early August Ian Gillan spoke to the Tales from the Road podcast hailing from India. (Low key does not even begin to describe it — they have grand total of 23 subscribers on Youtube.) It is another one of those lengthy video chats courtesy of the pandemic. When pressed about studio plans during the touring downtime, Big Ian quipped that “There were lots of things going on”, but he “can’t talk about it quite yet”.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

Rolling Stone magazine is on a family tree streak with an in-depth profile of Neil Murray for their Unknown Legends series.

Was the cover of Lovehunter created to cause controversy? It’s pretty out there.
I guess to an extent. But it was really more of a management idea than anything to do with the band. I think out of anybody, I was the least in favor of it. It was kind of a bit too heavy metal and not representative of the music of the band, in my opinion. It’s a popular image for merchandise and stuff, but it’s rather adolescent, let’s put it like that.

In a way, it’s better than the next album, Ready an’ Willing, where they just took a bunch of photos from the back of the Trouble album, made them into silhouettes, and stuck a picture of Bernie in there from somewhere. I thought that was real cheap. No spirit at all.

There was another idea that came before that. I’m not sure if I saw it, but it was chucked out by David, I think. It was a kind of stopgap thing, anyway.

More to the point, the band and David’s lyrics and how he was onstage were getting criticized a lot. The rock press was very much post-punk, “let’s not be demeaning to women” kind of thing. David almost took that as a red rag to a bull. “OK, I’m going to do it even more because this is not to be taken seriously. This is how we are. Deal with it.”

Read more in the Rolling Stone. Seriously, go and read the whole thing. Yes, it is long. But that’s what makes it good — lots of great insight into the bands and people he’s been working with over the years.