Ian Paice talks about the new album, its producer, the band, the setlist, the music, and the eventuality of retirement to France’s Metal XS. The questions are edited out, for some reason or another, but it’s not difficult to piece it together.
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Some time in early 2016 Ian Gillan was vacationing in Cayman Island (and if Rapture of the Deep has taught us anything, it’s that he is into the scuba diving). During his stay there, he was invited to the local rock radio station 96.5 Cayrock that resulted in a very relaxed 3.5 hours long special that was on the air some time right before the RnR HoF induction. And while nothing groundbreakingly revealing have been said, you can do a lot worse lazing on that Sunday afternoon. Lots of music has been played too, and not just the usual and the obvious.

Enjoy!

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

Record company has posted couple of more promo videos with tidbits from the EPK, documentary, and behind-the-schenes footage.
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The Guardian has a story of the utter sheer madness of James Francis Cauty and William Ernest Drummond, better known as KLF, and their collaboration with Glenn Hughes:

By 1991, Glenn Hughes, the Staffordshire-born powerhouse vocalist who cofounded Trapeze and twice fronted Deep Purple, had reached a parodically low ebb for a rock singer. Addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine and ballooning in weight, he struggled to complete a solo album. “I lived alone in Laurel Canyon with the curtains closed,” he recalls, an echo of the late 70s when his Los Angeles housemate David Bowie descended into his own cocaine-induced permanent midnight as he made Station to Station. “By the end of 1991, I was isolated and very alone,” he says. “Typical cocaine psychosis.” Then the KLF called.

Cauty and Drummond (a Trapeze fan) had conceived of a final version of What Time Is Love?, a guitar-driven, full-metal racket with a shrieking rock vocal. “I felt I was destined to do it,” says Hughes. “They wanted a [Roger] Daltrey or [Robert] Plant kind of sound, so when that Motörhead riff came in, I started singing falsetto: the Glenn Turbo Voice.” Nick Coler remembers Hughes blowing out the microphone with his screaming. Spike Stent says: “With all the choirs and orchestras and craziness, we ran out of tape machines.”

The video, shot back to back with a re-recording of Justified And Ancient with country matriarch Tammy Wynette, (Tony Thorpe: “I don’t think she had a clue what she was singing about. None of us did.”) was believed to have cost £500,000. The KLF flooded the James Bond stage at Pinewood with water and brought in a custom-made Viking longship and submarine. “It was take after take – a very draining video, and it was bloody freezing,” says Hughes. “I wasn’t drunk or high that particular day, but I was in a bad way at that time. And there’s that voice in your head saying: maybe you’ve got to make a change.”

Hughes went home to Los Angeles and, on Christmas Day, suffered a heart attack. On leaving hospital, he checked into the Betty Ford clinic; when he left rehab in February he discovered he was in the UK top 20. “I’d love to say that Bill and Jimmy got me off drugs,” he says, “but the truth is I did it to save my own life. While I was in Betty Ford, I kept thinking about this incredible opportunity and how maybe I could represent something again. It was a complete honour for me and a great time in my life.”

Read more in The Guardian. And while there’s nothing more eve remotely Purple related, the whole story of how they came to burn a million pounds in cash on a remote Scottish island is kinda morbidly fascinating. Or the appearance at the 1992 Brit Awards, complete with firing a machine gun from stage, and that was a watered down version of the original idea. Seriously, go read it. Utter sheer madness does not even begin to describe it.

Thanks to Mark Jones for the info.

Paicey, Roger, and Don having way too much fun being interviewed for France 24. Rumour has it, champagne might have been involved. Lots of it, by the looks of.
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Deep Purple will be featured on the next week (the one starting May 1st) episode of Kuno’s TV show in Germany. The show is half an hour long and is being posted online for your viewing pleasure. Narration is in German, while the interviews are conducted in English and are not overdubbed. The show is hosted by Kuno Dreysse, who is a personality of the Hamburg music scene since 1960s, having rubbed shoulders with The Beatles and Rolling Stones, and later became managing director of the legendary Star Club that hosted everybody who was anybody back in the day.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the info.

Several music news sites (e.g. this one) in Brazil have announced that Deep Purple will play three shows in the country this October — 21st in Rio de Janeiro, 22nd in São Paulo, and 24th in Curitiba. This will be a package tour with Lynyrd Skynyd and ZZ Top also on the bill. There are no details as to the venues and/or tickets at this time, just the dates. They will be filed in our calendar as soon as the venue details are available.
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An interview with Ian Paice appeared in the latest episode of The Rock Brigade Podcast. Abeit being 30+ minutes of mostly Ian talking, not much was said that has not been said elsewhere during inFinite promo campaign and before. It gets slightly more interesting towards the second half, when they start digging deeper into the history of the band.
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Ian Gillan appears on British TV to promote Accidentally on Purpose. that’s from his period between being an ‘angry young man’ and ‘fucking furious’ that he is now. Aaah, I miss that Gillan…
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Glenn Hughes has been announced in this years lineup for the Ramblin’ Man Fair. His interview was recently posted on their website to promote the appearance. The interview briefly covers his whole career, from Trapeze to Black Country Communion IV (that’s how the new album will be called — “We wanted to call it IV because we wanted to get back to the numerals.”)

His take on joining Purple:

Is it true that you only signed up because you thought Paul Rodgers was going to be the singer?

It was a big reason why. I said, ‘If you’re looking for a bass player to take Roger Glover’s place, I’m not that guy.’ And they said, ‘Well we’re going to ask Paul Rodgers to sing’, and very quickly my brain went, ‘Hmmm… wouldn’t that be an opportunity to sing some stuff with one of the greatest blues rock singers in the world?” And then when Ritchie Blackmore said to me, “We want you to sing, and we want to have another guy in the band with a bluesier, deeper voice…”, I signed on the dotted line. And then of course the next week we all found out that Paul had joined Bad Company.

But the way it turned out, singing with David Coverdale was perfect. Purple wanted to get away from the vibe of what Mark II was, the Gillan and Glover thing. They didn’t want anybody to play like Roger, they didn’t want anybody that sang in the way Ian sang – he didn’t have a bluesy voice at all. What they wanted was for two guys to come in, one guy to share vocals with another guy, and one guy to play a different kind of bass. Which they got.

On how California Breed folded:

Then, when it came time to tour, Jason [Bonham] started hanging out with Sammy Hagar. He said, “Can we do this tour in the next window instead?” We were opening for Slash in Europe and Alter Bridge in America, and the tickets were already on sale, so I said, “Jason, I can’t not show up – we’re gonna have to find another drummer.”

Andrew’s a big Queens Of The Stone Age fan, and he wanted to get this guy in [QOTSA drummer Joey Castillo]. I was like, ‘OK, whatever.’ But it didn’t work. I was left with a young kid and I drummer that I didn’t particularly want in the band. When you’re in that situation, it’s not going to happen.

Read more on RambinManFair.com.

The festival will run July 28-30th this year, and Glenn will perform on Saturday 29th at
the Planet Rock Main Stage. Tickets are available.

Two days earlier, on July 27th, Glenn will also appear at the Premier Suite Lounge in Cannock in an “up close and personal” homecoming event (that’s the town where he was born and bred).

Thanks to Yvonne and Express & Star for the info.