Roger Glover posts a message to the world, in which he mourns the passing of John Prine on April 7 from COVID-19 complications.

I sit at the computer attempting to describe feelings, views, thoughts, but nothing seems important right now, and yet everything is. Of course, I send my wishes for good health to anyone and everyone. I feel for the suffering going on around the world. The situation seems surreal; a horror story that’s literally life and death. I don’t need to tell you because you already know; we’re all in the same boat.

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As many European governments have now banned mass gatherings until at least the end of August, the whole summer tour schedule is now in jeopardy. Hellfest, Graspop, Clam Live, and Lovely Days festivals are now officially cancelled, with a whole bunch of others (we predict) to follow in the coming days.

Worse, there are indications that the ban on mass public gatherings, including live music and sports events, may extend until a COVID-19 vaccine is available, which is 12 to 18 months away. As Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a special adviser to the director general of the World Health Organization and director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, has put it:

If 1% of the population has COVID-19 and half are asymptomatic, that’s 250 people in a stadium of 50,000, all touching chairs, eating food, talking and jumping and shouting. Is there is a better place for spreading disease? Going back to those situations, for all of us who love concerts, it’s hard to see how to do that without a vaccine.

We’ll begin opening up with social interactions while wearing face masks. If we’re probably bending the top of curve, [that’s] four to six weeks at the absolute earliest. […] maybe you can later have a venue of 2,000 people where you put in 500 and spread them out with masks and protection. But you’ve got to vaccinate 70% of the population to get back to pre-COVID, and you may have to shut down some businesses that reopen. It’s a roller coaster, and you want those hills to be as gentle as possible.

And Dr. Emanuel, besides being a world class expert in epidemiology, probably knows about entertainment industry a bit more that your average Joe Schmoe — his brother Ari is such a prominent figure in the entertainment business that he was parodied as the characters played by Bob Odenkirk on The Larry Sanders Show and by Jeremy Piven on Entourage.

So there you have it — brace yourself for a year without live music. The implications of this will be enormous. Live performances became the main source of income for most musicians ever since the rise of the internet pulled the carpet from under the recording industry feet. Now with this source of income also gone, many may just give up — those who can afford to retire, will retire, and those who can not will seek another means to support themselves and their families. This will cascade down to the supporting staff and infrastructure — road crews, managers, agents, promoters, venues, etc, etc. The music industry will most certainly not be the same when it emerges on the other side.

Being married to your singer all of a sudden does not seem to be such a bad idea after all, does it? 😉

Thanks to andreas leutgeb and Blabbermouth for the info.

Ritchie Blackmore had his own ‘Mr.Grover, Mr.Gillian’ moment yesterday when a German newspaper decided to publish a birthday note for somebody famous. So they’ve probably consulted a celebrity gossip calendar and pulled up a stock photo of a guitar player from Deep Purple to accompany the blurb that came down the wire.
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Glenn Hughes and Doug Aldrich will perform an acoustic version of Unspoken — the first single from the new Dead Daisies album — live on Facebook on Sunday, April 19th, at 1:00pm PST.

UNSPOKEN is the first powerhouse single to hit the digital airwaves from our highly anticipated finished album.

Written during the bands first studio session last Summer, Glenn recalls, “I wrote the chorus while driving into Hollywood. I pulled over, turned on my iPhone and recorded the chorus, I transported myself back to 1972, just for a moment. The intro, is the theme of the song, It’s bombastic, primeval and haunting. This song is about letting go, getting past the fear, and to breathe again.”

Glenn, Doug, David and Deen bring the Daisies signature sound, set with a retro style approach to the new music. Can’t wait for you all to hear it and get out of the house to see you all again!

Glenn Hughes was a guest on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon recently, so watch out for the interview to appear some time soon.

[Update] Apparently the clip we posted originally on April 10 was not supposed to be made public until April 17, and was taken down.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night did another live performance from their home on April 9. Enjoy!
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The Dreaded Lurgy took the first bite out of Deep Purple’s touring schedule — the opening night of the tour in Moscow on May 31 has been cancelled. Refund for the tickets will be available between May 1 and June 30 at the point of purchase. VIP upgrade ticket holders will be contacted directly.

In a recent interview to Guitar World Steve Vai reminisces on his time in Whitesnake:

David Coverdale had a lot of experience working with gifted players when you joined the fold and seems to be someone who really values the interplay between a frontman and a dazzling lead guitarist. What was he like to work with? Was he hands-on or did he get out of the way and let you do your thing?

David was a prince! He had a lot of confidence in me and basically knew he needed to just let me do my thing. David knew what I was capable of and didn’t really interfere with what I wanted to do. I just did it, and if there was something he didn’t like I was happy to change it because it was his thing. Working with David was great and there was something in his phrasing as a singer that I just adored.

There was really only one situation where David asked me to redo something and I completely agreed. It was on The Deeper the Love. I had done a solo using a piece of rack gear that was the hot new piece of gear at the time. I won’t mention who it was made by, but I hated the thing, but everybody was saying how great it was, so I gave it a spin.

It sounded like shit – thin and buzzy like a deranged mosquito! I wasn’t really satisfied with the sound on the solo and, sure enough, David heard it and went, ‘Steven darling, would you mind redoing this solo – it sounds a bit thin.’ Other than that, he just let me run with it.

Did you have any reservations about not staying wholly true to Whitesnake’s old signature sound?

You have to find a balance between what’s expected of you from the band, what the fans are expecting, what the song requires and is telling you to do – and also being true to your own voice. I had no choice but to express my own voice because that’s all I know!

If I had tried to sound like Yngwie when I had joined Alcatrazz, it just wouldn’t have worked because I’m very satisfied with the way I play, but I also can’t play like Yngwie. It was the same thing when I was playing with Dave Roth; I needed to deliver in a rock context – which was very natural to me – but I’m not going to compete with Edward Van Halen!

There’s no way those records would’ve been accepted if I didn’t have some kind of rock integrity, but I knew what the songs needed and I knew what the audience was expecting and there’s a side of me that I knew could deliver that. It was the same thing with Whitesnake.

The foundation of Whitesnake’s sound was rooted in rock blues, and there’s a whole culture that emanated from Europe in that traditional solid rock blues guitar playing that had a real authenticity to it.

Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Adrian Vandenberg, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page – that was the sound all Whitesnake records had been built upon. But Whitesnake had gone through different permutations of guitar sounds throughout the years, and the previous one to me was John Sykes, and he absolutely had his own sound.

Sykes didn’t sound like any other previous Whitesnake guitarist, but his thumbprint is an indelible part of the Whitesnake record he did. The fatness of that record and the rock integrity it had was all Sykes. So I knew I wasn’t going to sound like Sykes and I wasn’t going to try to.

You cheat yourself when you try to do that and play like someone else. And the audience is a lot smarter than you think; they’re very intuitive and perceptive and if you try to pull anything over on them – like biting someone else’s thing – you’ll get beat up for it.

Read more in Guitar World. There’s lots more.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

The following message from Ian Gillan was posted to the band’s facebook account today, April 3:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…well, not exactly in this case; more cause and effect, where the latter is often greater than the former.

Distribution lines (the physical sales of CDs, vinyl, cassettes (?) etc) and retail outlets are closed until The Dreaded Lurgy gets indigestion.

Therefore, as there are still so many of us who love to hold a new record in our hands, and following advice from our magnificent label, we have decided to delay the release of Whoosh until August.

During my quarantine I’m listening to a lot of music and guessing that it’s the same for many of us during this scary disruption to our lives.

We know, don’t we, that music will play a big part in our celebrations as we step back into the light.

But, health comes first, so I must stuff my excitement about sharing Whoosh with you back into a box for a little while.

Stay well and follow the light…

ig

However, at the time of this writing there was no confirmation from the label itself and their promotional site for the album was still listing release date as June 12th.

This post may be updated with future developments.

[Update Apr 6]: The new date has been set for August 7, 2020.

Thanks to Martin Ashberry and Rich Shailor for the heads up.

As our live calendar keeps filling up with strikeout, the anxiety levels keep rising in certain quarters about the fate of the upcoming Deep Purple tour which is scheduled to begin on May 31 — will it happen or will it not?

Well, we have learned today that it’s both a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’, in a way. The band has never been shy to play in dangerous situations, even being committed to play under the threat of an all out war breaking out. But this time it’s different, with many countries around the world closing their borders and imposing severe restrictions on public gatherings due to the coronavirus pandemic. So the band decided to team up with the company called Eyellusion (the people behind the Dio hologram) and tour as their virtual selves. This will be the first on many levels, not least of which is the fact that while Ronnie’s hologram was computer generated, it was backed by a live band. This time not only the whole band will be virtual and represented by their holograms, but their audience as well.

Another advantage of hologram performance is that avatars do not have to be rendered precisely true to life — certain details and features can be omitted or deliberately altered. For example, a vocalist’s voice can magically obtain the range of his 25 year old self, or a guitar player arthritis can disappear.

Refunds for the tickets will apparently be available to those who don’t want any part of it. Those ticket holders who would like to see the shows will be invited to submit their own holograms via the company website to attend as virtual audience.

A virtual reunion with Blackmore was considered, but the company spokesperson said that accurately rendering water being tossed across the stage is beyond their computational capabilities at the moment. So that would be a ‘no’.

Thanks to Hubert Jesslilt for the info.

Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night posted a track of Diamond and Rust with reworked lyrics, recorded at their home in Long Island.
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