A PledgeMusic campaign is underway to raise funds for reissuing Butterfly Ball & The Grasshopper’s Feast:

The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast is a concept album and subsequent live rock opera appearing in 1974 and 1975 respectively, based on the children’s poem of a similar title.

The work was originally conceived as a solo vehicle for Jon Lord to be produced by Roger Glover who had recently left Deep Purple. However, Lord proved too busy with Deep Purple and Glover took up the reins on his own. Using his connections, Glover recruited a large cast of noted rock musicians to perform on it, with a different vocalist for each character, including David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes.
On 16 October 1975, a one-off performance at the Royal Albert Hall took place. Again it had a star-studded cast of rock musicians, most notably Ian Gillan who was drafted in at the last minute and received a standing ovation on his entrance. He replaced an unavailable Ronnie James Dio who had commitments with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (although Dio did eventually get to perform the song at the Royal Albert Hall in 1999 as the guest of Deep Purple). Gillan had not performed since leaving Deep Purple in 1973. Also notable was the appearance of Twiggy as singer and actress and Vincent Price as narrator. Apart from most of the musicians involved in the studio recording, the concert also featured Jon Lord. The live concert was filmed and released in 1976 produced and directed by Tony Klinger.

Tony Klinger is thrilled with the quality of the creation of this Limited Edition Deluxe Edition Box Set which includes Double DVD (original film + 2017, re-edit, remaster), a Double CD (never released before), Reproduction Press Pack, 5 × 10″x 8″ glossy promotional photos, A3 reproduction Film Poster. Each Box will contain a number certificate signed by Tony Klinger.

Box Set Content

Double DVD (original film + 2017, re-edit, remaster)
Live Double CD (never released before)
Reproduction Press Pack
5 × 10″x 8″ glossy promotional photos
A3 reproduction Film Poster (different to the poster which we are offering for sale)
Signed and number certificate.

There will only be 250 Boxes manufactured.

There’s one little correction to the above, though:

The film was released in March 1977 (not in 1976) and premiered at the Odeon in Chelsea on 20th March.

The box set is available at £99.99, plus there’s a variety of formats and merchandise to satisfy all tastes and budgets.

A Region 1 DVD was released back in 2006, is now out of print, and new copies are fetching upwards of $80 on the market.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the heads up and the correction.

Last Friday, May 5, Don Airey did a keyboard clinic in Milton Keynes, UK, here are a couple of videos demonstrating his prowess (like anyone had any doubts by now).

A longer video has also been posted by the Music Kavern, the store that hosted the event, on Facebook.
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Blabbermouth has several quotes from David Coverdale’s interview published in the May 2017 issue of the Sweden Rock Magazine (the one with Gillan on the cover).

About reissuing the hairspray era Whitesnake albums:

We had digital transfers made of all… ‘Slide It In’, ‘Slip Of The Tongue’, the ’87 album… ‘Cause they’re all coming up to these big-anniversary things now, so we’re looking at all the additional — the demos, etc. — all of the additional material for the hardcore fan, be it video or audio. And you can hear me writing the basic ideas of ‘Still Of The Night’ and that kind of stuff.

It’s a fascinating journey. But hearing the studio stuff… We were in the studio, I think it was ’85, ’86 — I can’t remember — working on the ’87 album, and in the studio, you can hear how really good those songs that Sykes and I had worked on. It’s just really cool. And we’re finding alternate vocals, alternate guitar solos and stuff. It’s a real fun journey. It’s like being a musical archaeologist — digging up the past in order to get the dust off it and present it and put it in a museum as part of special editions. It really is exciting.

Read more in Blabbermouth.

Some of you may have noticed that our site had been available over a much more secure, encrypted https protocol for a while now. This is our small contribution into the Encrypt the Web initiative. We are doing it to protect your privacy from intrusion. Couple of days ago we took the next step and made access to THS encrypted by default, while still keeping the plain old way (visible to the whole world) as a fallback.

Please report any problems either here in comments or by dropping a line to webmaster@thehighwaystar.com.

While trying to google up the name of Paicey’s old man (no such luck, btw), I came across this amusing anecdote about John Mortimer (father of British actress Emily Mortimer and a prolific writer and barrister in his own kind). The story is told by his youngest daughter Rosie:

He was great friends with Jon Lord and Ian Paice, the keyboard player and drummer with the rock band Deep Purple. My mum and dad once went to see them play in Oxford and Dad, who was standing at the side of the stage drinking champagne from a plastic cup, burst into applause as Ian’s drum solo came to a crescendo.

A man standing nearby asked: ‘Are you Ian Paice’s father?’

‘Yes, I’m terribly proud of him,’ said Dad. From that moment on he always referred to his son the rock star.

The complete story is actually also interesting as it’s narrated from the point of view of a kid growing with a father who is much older than most fathers around her. Not unlike some people we might know.

Update (May 9): For what it’s worth, Paicey father’s name is Keith, and he was a pianist in the dance band called Rube Sunshine that played in the Nottingham area.

Thanks to Promark for the additional info (via Yvonne).

Roger Glover, Chuck Berry, Jon Hiseman, Roger Glover once again, Paicey’s father, John McLaughlin, and J.S. Bach — what do they all have in common? Watch About the band part 3 to find out.
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Ian Gillan talking (and jamming) with a Turkish musician Fuat Güner at the former’s place in Portugal. Big Ian says that the band have already done some writing for another new album and that studio time with Bob Ezrin is already booked for next February! As several people pointed out in the comments, Now what?! is indeed referred to as the latest album, so the interview is quite old and the new album sessions are, in fact, inFinite sessions.
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The best and worst moments on stage, the deepest secrets, first records bought and first shows attended, crying and laughing, hidden talents, and many other curious things — all in the new interview with the band posted by the record company.
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Ian Paice spoke to the Ultimate Classic Rock, and he’s waxing philosophical in this one:

I think that with these past couple of records that you guys have done, you really have made two of the strongest records in your overall catalog.

We never felt that it was a risk. We know how good the musicianship in the band is and we know how good the adventure still is. More importantly, we know how much we all enjoy it, and that’s the secret. If you still enjoy what you do and you can focus all of those positive feelings into playing and creating new stuff, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come out with good product. But we never doubted it. You can make the best record at the wrong time and it will disappear without a trace. You can make the worst record at the right time and have a major hit. There’s no logic to anything that goes on in our business. All we’ve ever tried to do is capture the moment in the studio that was us at that time. Sometimes it’s been right, sometimes it’s been wrong. But we’ve always tried to capture the essence of a live band and I think if any of the records do stand the test of time, it’s just because of that fact. I think what we did with Now What?! Is just a reestablishing of the musical credentials of the band, never mind the fact that it was a big record in lots and lots of countries.

So it was a natural progression that following on from that, we had so much fun making that record with Bob Ezrin in Nashville, as soon as we got the chance to do another one, we’ll take all of that experience of working with him and the knowledge of the studio and enjoying it, to make another record. When you make records quickly, and you make them with a great deal of joy and pleasure, they generally turn out to be really good records. It’s when you have the opposite going on, where it takes a long time, nobody’s really enjoying it and it becomes a labor of work, rather than a labor of love. You end up with a record that maybe isn’t going to do so much.

Continue reading in Ultimate Classic Rock

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Don Airey will make an in-store appearance at the Music Kavern in Milton Keynes on Friday, May 5, 2017, between 4 and 5 p.m. He will conduct a keyboard clinic followed by a Q&A session. The event is sponsored by General Music.

And here he is ripping up Difficult to Cure at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt last month: Continue Reading »