The ill-fated Whitesnake Japanese tour, that has already been rescheduled for March from October 2019, is now postponed until further notice due to “the ongoing threat of the Coronavirus”.

We regret to announce that WHITESNAKE’S Japan Tour which had been scheduled for March has been unavoidably postponed due to the ongoing threat of the Coronavirus.

Currently, we are working on rescheduling the dates. Your purchased tickets for the original dates will be valid for the rescheduled dates. Please ensure you keep your tickets safe. For those customers who wish to receive a refund, we will announce details of the refund process once we announce the rescheduled dates.

We deeply apologize to all parties concerned especially those customers who bought tickets and have been looking forward to the WHITESNAKE shows.

Japan is among the countries that are hit the hardest with the current outbreak of the virus, with 360 people infected and 7 dead (plus 706 infected and 6 dead on the Diamond Princess cruise liner docked in Yokohama) as of March 5, 2020.

A fairly comprehensive documentary of the history of Deep Purple Marks 1 and 2 has been put together by the Music Legends Magazine. It is a step above the slew of similar talking head documentaries from a few years back as this one actually interviews Nick Simper (and he tells the story of him being booted from the band from his own perspective).

Apparently, there should be part 2, covering Marks 3 and 4, but it is nowhere to be found on Youtube. In consolation we can offer you a similar in style Ritchie Blackmore documentary produced by the same people:

Thanks to Jim Collins for the heads up.

The press release went down the wire today confirming release date for the new Deep Purple album Whoosh! as June 12. There is also a new website to promote the album.

The track listing is as follows:

1. Throw My Bones
2. Drop The Weapon
3. We’re All The Same In The Dark
4. Nothing At All
5. No Need To Shout
6. Step By Step
7. What The What
8. The Long Way Round
9. The Power Of The Moon
10. Remission Possible
11. Man Alive
12. And The Address
13. Dancing In My Sleep

Number 12 is, of course, a pure and unadulterated speculation fodder 😉

The “mediabook” thingy shipped as part of in some release formats will include an hour long feature Roger Glover And Bob Ezrin In Conversation and the full live performance at Hellfest 2017, both on video.

[update Feb 29] Speculations are over. There are 30 seconds previews of each song available at your local Google Play store. Which confirms that And the Address is indeed a remake of the track from Shades of Deep Purple.

Thanks to Jim Collins, Amit Roy, BraveWords, and everybody who posted this in the comments.

According to Amazon, the title of the upcoming new Deep Purple album is indeed Whoosh! and release date is set for June 12, 2020. The following formats have been announced: 2CD, 1LP, and a limited edition vinyl box set.

[Update] Another German retailer Nuclear Blast lists more vinyl formats for preorder:

• 2LP purple vinyl exclusive to Nuclear Blast;
• 2LP + DVD;
• Deluxe box set: 2LP Gatefold, CD+DVD Mediabook, three 10″ singles with previously unreleased live recordings (Recorded 2017 as part of the Long Goodbye Tour), Deep Purple collector’s T-shirt in XL, art prints.

Thanks to dirie for additional format info.

[UPDATED] Whitesnake show on the double bill with Scorpions on February 24 in Brisbane, Australia, has been cancelled:

Unfortunately due to a medical emergency within the Scorpions tour party, Scorpion and Whitesnake show scheduled to take place at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre tomorrow, Monday 24 February 2020 has been cancelled.

🎟️Tickets purchased by credit or debit card will be refunded in full (including ticket insurance premium and refundable ticket purchase, if relevant) and patrons do not need to take any action. Patrons should allow up to 15 working days for the refund to appear in their account.

If your credit or debit card has been permanently closed/cancelled, please supply Ticketek with updated details in order to process your refund.

Patrons who purchased tickets in an Agency using cash or EFTPOS will be contacted via phone in the next 15 days to arrange for a full refund. Alternatively, you can contact Ticketek.

Further refund enquiries should be directed to ticketek.com.au.

The medical emergency mentioned in the announcement is due to the Scorpions frontman Klaus Meine having to undergo an emergency kidney stone removal after the show in Melbourne on February 19. The next show in Sydney on the 22nd was declared as “postponed”, presumably in the hopes of rescheduling it for a later date, and now Brisbane is cancelled alltogether.

[Update Deb 24] The Sydney show has now been rescheduled for February 26. All tickets held for the Saturday, February 22, show will be valid for the new date without the need for exchange. Patrons who are unable to attend the rescheduled date on February 26 should contact Ticketek for a refund. [/end update]

Whitesnake is scheduled to tour with Scorpions until March 4 in Singapore. At the time of this writing (February 23), there is no word on the fate of subsequent gigs in New Zealand (Feb 27), Indonesia (March 1), and Singapore.

[Update Deb 24] In a completely unrelated development, the Singapore show apparently has now been rescheduled to March 5 with venue change from Fort Canning Park to The Star Theatre. All tickets purchased for March 4 will be valid for the new date and venue. The official Whitesnake website confusingly still lists March 5 venue as Fort Canning Park, while both Scorpions one and local ticket vendor indicate venue change. [/end update]

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info and to Lutz Reinert for the Sydney update.

Our contributor from Germany posted a summary of the Rocks magazine coverage of the upcoming Deep Purple album in the comments, and it deserves to be promoted to a news item.

The feature is quite interesting and in depth, here are a few selected highlights for our non-German readers courtesy of Uwe Hornung. All the usual caveats about reverse translation apply.

• The new album is to sound more progressive, say the “Rocks” scribes (hardly a surprise, ever since Don joined, the band has become more and more a prog rock one, it’s in his DNA …)
• Whoosh! (that’s the title of the new album) will contain seven songs, most of them lengthy. The title is to allude to the world being eventually washed away due to climate change.
• Bob Ezrin is perceived as a hard taskmaster by the band, especially by Steve Morse, though it was Steve’s idea to use him in the first place (after having experienced him as a producer when Steve was with Kansas in the 80s).
• Bob sees Purple as “a genre of their own, not classic, not contemporary, if I had to give it a name I’d choose ‘rock grandeur'”. He also deems them as a quintessentially British band (and all the better for it, “only a Brit band could play the music as they do”) and Morse’s guitar style as “international and eclectic enough to fit in”. Improvisation — a dying art — is what makes Purple stand out, past, present, and future.
• Steve had a hard time adjusting from Jon to Don, Jon was telepathic, “with Don there were clashes during the recording of Bananas”, but that is now all water under the bridge. Everyone in the band is now in agreement that Don is the “mad professor” and the off-the-wall musical driving force.
• While Little Ian deems Purple’s 70s production work as “still sounding good today, they were products of their time and made for the audience we had back then”, he rates Bob Ezrin as creating productions that “sound like they stem from us, yet are made for today”.
• Roger hated the sound of Rapture of the Deep (the album) immediately.
• back in the day Bob Ezrin was approached by Purple Records to produce Made in Japan, but he was busy with other things, so he turned the offer down only to see MiJ become the iconic live album of the 70s with huge sales making him think “Damned, I sure messed up that one!”. Well, the postman always rings twice.

Don Airey’s tour of continental Europe in March 2020 has been cancelled:

The Colosseum II Remembered Tour is with great sadness being cancelled, to be rescheduled later in the year, due to unforeseen circumstances.

The aforementioned unforeseen circumstances most likely refer to the fact that Don will be appearing with Deep Purple in Mexico on March 14. Due to the sheer logistics, shows on March 13th, 14th, and 15th would have to be cancelled, leaving the rest hanging on the chance that everything goes right. So, it actually makes sense to try to reschedule the whole tour for another time.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the heads up.

At a Q&A session held during the recent Rock’n’Roll Fantasy Camp in California, Ian Paice mentioned that the new album will be released most likely at the end of April and that they are working on the cover right now. The record company does not want them to release any information so they cannot talk any further about it.

Thanks to Akemi Ono for the info.

Deep Purple and their upcoming new album is the cover story of the issue #75 (February 2020) of Rocks magazine out from Germany. Machine translation of the promo blurb reads:

Deep Purple (Exclusive!)
When Infinite came out in spring 2017 and Deep Purple embarked on a concert tour with the meaningful motto “The Long Goodbye”, the time seemed to have come to say goodbye to the hard rock giants, whose glorious history preceded half a century in England. The band has now surprisingly announced their 21st studio album – and talked about it exclusively with ROCKS. We were able to hear seven new songs in advance and conduct extensive interviews with Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Steve Morse and producer Bob Ezrin. What lies ahead for us in spring is in our cover story.

Thanks to Deep Purple Tour Page for the heads up.

A whole bunch of new European dates have been announced today for The Dead Daisies. In some of the bigger venues they will be opening for either Judas Priest or Foreigner, while headlining at smaller ones. The tour starts on May 29 in Essen, Germany, and will take them through Estonia, Russia, Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Slovakia, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania — a whopping 18 countries in a bit less than 2 months. Tickets are either already available, or will go on sale shortly.

Full details in our calendar.