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.

Michael Schenker is on the cover of the current (#18) issue of the Rock Candy Magazine. In the cover story interview, he spoke about his abortive collaboration with David Coverdale.

Back in the early ’80s when I had the Michael Schenker Group my manager at the time, Peter Mensch, believed we needed a new singer to replace Gary Barden. I’d picked Gary for a reason, but Peter wanted to take the band to the next level and he wanted David Coverdale to work with me.

Coverdale probably asked Mensch to get me and Cozy Powell and [bassist] Chris Glen over to Whitesnake to replace Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody and whoever else was in that band at the time. I think that was the idea, but I didn’t want to let go of MSG. I said, ‘No, you ask Coverdale to join us.’

You know that song ‘Dancer’ from the MSG Assault Attack album? I actually jammed that song with Coverdale. I already had the music and he sung it differently, with some different words. So we tried something, but I didn’t really want to do it.

Coverdale/Schenker collaboration didn’t work out and the MSG job eventually went to another Purple family alumni — Graham Bonnet. Here he is performing the Dancer with Michael Schenker Fest in 2017:

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

Don Airey is interviewed in the latest issue (01/2020) of Sweden Rock Magazine.

On Jon’s gear:

As soon as I joined [Deep Purple] officially, I started using my own gear. In the beginning I toured with the band because Jon was ill. I used Jon’s equipment then and realised it wasn’t in good shape. Everything was pretty worn down, the nuts were rusty and stuck to the cabinet and that sort of stuff, so I brought in my own equipment. Which introduced some problems. The keyboard tech asked, “What should I do with all my equipment?” I told him, “My advice would be to throw it in the river.” I would have wanted to keep the Hammond organ but it was in an woeful state. I had it repaired but it never got any good so I brought in my own A-100.

Where is Jon’s old Hammond now?
It’s in a warehouse waiting to be restored. Then Jon’s widow … I don’t know what she wants to do with it but she wants to do something. Maybe put it in a museum or something. What happened to the organ was that it fell to it’s death from a loading bay in Russia, ha ha! It was a six meter fall and that was pretty much the end for it.

On Ritchie:

Ritchie is probably the person I have met who is the most unsure of his own capacity. That is so strange. I read a biography about Woody Allen. The man is a brilliant comedian, a brilliant director, but he never gives himself a second of relief. He always tried to outshine himself, changing things in the last minute. Those thoughts gnaw on you all the time. The last thing on your mind is that you are good.

On “difficult” musicians:

The other day someone asked me what is the worst about the music business and I reply, “What do you think?” He said, “Travelling, getting along?” I said, “No, the hardest thing about the music business is music.” If you want to be in the music business, you have to create music and that can be very hard, and very demanding. If you then are surrounded by people who don’t have that ability, but you still have to be around, you can become a bit difficult. That is something people don’t talk about. If you are in the rehearsal room with Ritchie Blackmore you better be alert, have your chops ready and be prepared to just go along. Same thing with Gary Moore. They don’t suffer fools gladly, as the saying goes.

On Abba:

I remember doing a soundcheck [with Rainbow] in Gothenburg. It was only me and Cozy and we played “All my love” by Led Zeppelin. In front of a Russian ice dancing team! It was their day off but they all came to listen, everyone in their big fur hats. There they were and we played for them. Then, all of a sudden, Agnetha Fältskog walks into the arena. We stopped playing and the Russians stood like they were frozen. Her beauty was astounding. I think she was there for a meeting about a solo album she were about to do and she wanted Ritchie to play on it. But I don’t think that ever happened.

Whitesnake will embark on another extensive tour of the US, this time on a double bill with Sammy Hagar. Night Ranger will be opening on all dates. The itinerary is strategically arranged in 3 legs of 10 shows each — one per July, August, and September 2020 respectively. All venues will be big corporate sheds owned by the Live Nation/Ticketmaster behemoth and bearing such poetic names as iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre and Jiffy Lube Live.

Sammy Hagar’s band will include fellow Van Halen alumni Michael Anthony on bass, Jason Bonham on drums, and Vic Johnson on gutar. Whitesnake lineup has not changed: Reb Beach and Joel Hoekstra on guitars, Tommy Aldridge on drums, Michael Devin on bass, and Michele Luppi on keyboards.

Tickets go on sale to the general public beginning this Friday, January 31st at 10 AM, local time. Presales start Wednesday, January 29th at 10am, presale password is fleshandblood.

Full details in our calendar.

German city of Bonn is celebrating the 250th birthday of their son Ludwig van Beethoven in 2020. In the occasion, gallerist Peter Wierny has initiated a tribute project with national and international artists contributing objets d’art and memorabilia. Roger Glover has contributed a painting (see above). When Ian Paice played in Bonn last November, he made his own slightly cheeky drummer’s tribute to Ludwig:

The exhibition will open some time later this year.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

This is a rather unusual cover even by our standards. Child in Time performed on a church organ at the funeral of German actor and Deep Purple fan Jan Fedder, who succumbed to cancer on December 30, 2019, aged 64. To the wider audience outside Germany Jan might be known for his role of Petty Officer Pilgrim in 1981 miniseries and movie Das Boot.

Vocals: Jessy Martens
Organ: Manuel Gera

Jan was friends with Jon Lord. Here is Jon wishing him a happy birthday in 2005 and sending him tickets for his gig in Hamburg:

At the gig, Jon asked if Jan was in the audience and wished him a belated happy birthday.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the info.