Westfälische Nachrichten reviews the October 26 Deep Purple gig in Lingen. It starts with mentioning the combined age of those on stage (354) and continues:

Superlatives that raise questions among the 4,500 visitors in the sold-out Emsland Arena. Can the old rockers still do it, or are they resting on their laurels for “Smoke on the Water” and their other top hits? Deep Purple quickly throw the impression of being old hat overboard.

They start with “Highway Star” and then race through their career, which has now lasted for over half a century. Unlike their esteemed colleagues from Jefferson Starship, who opened the evening, the Brits even have a brand new album with them, which has the telling title “=1” and has stormed the charts straight away.

Read the review in original German or try Google to translate it to other languages.

Meanwhile, National Turk reviews the Amsterdam gig on October 29 in English. Apparently, it was just a clickbait — a machine translation of a Dutch review from de Volkskrant. Here we offer you (what we think) a slightly better machine translation, or you can read it from the source if you know the language.

No high notes, but a scream that pierces the soul: Deep Purple rocks hard and moves

Fortunately, only the film projections of the hard rock inventors’ performance in Amsterdam are dated.

Robert van Gijssel
Pop music editor for the Volkskrant.
30 October 2024, 12:21

Of all the touring classic rock acts, Deep Purple is the most classic. The rockers, carved from stone, kicked off the hard rock era with the album Deep Purple in Rock (1970). And Machine Head (1972) is seen as one of the driving forces behind heavy metal, alongside the work of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.

But Deep Purple is still playing. And the band doesn’t just rely on old hits. Deep Purple has released three new albums in the past four years. And this year’s vital hard rock album =1 even forms the main part of a fresh setlist in the Ziggo Dome.

The band composition is also special. In addition to the beautiful screamer Ian Gillan (79), bassist Roger Glover (78) and primeval drummer Ian Paice (76) will appear in Amsterdam, as well as keyboardist Don Airey (76), who replaced the late John Lord more than twenty years ago. The only newcomer is guitarist Simon McBride, who moves across the stage like a young god (45 years old), against a backdrop of unfortunately terribly dated and ugly film projections.

But from the poisonous opening moves of Highway Star, Deep Purple thankfully rocks like crazy. The hammering, “churchy” organ parts steam up next to those basic but grooving riffs that wrote music history. The sound is deliciously hard, as it should be, with Deep Purple. But the real goosebumps arise with Gillan’s vocals.

No, he doesn’t hit his screeching high notes anymore. But his voice is so moving in the wailing blues rock ballad When a Blind Man Cries. And in Into the Fire he miraculously finds a spot on his vocal cords where it doesn’t hurt yet, for a scream that should cut through the soul of every metal person.

★★★☆☆
29/10, Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam.

Thanks to Friedhelm Wenning for the Lingen link, and to Fedor for setting things straight regarding Amsterdam.

Deep Purple were awarded platinum records for =1 by the Czech certification authority ČNS IFPI. The awards were presented at the recent show in the neighbouring Katowice, Poland.

According to the Czech rules, an album can be certified platinum if it achieved a turnover based on wholesale price before VAT of at least 1,000,000 Kč (approximately €40,000 / US$43,000).

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the info. Photo: DP Web Crew via Instagram.

Deep Purple live at Emsland Arena (Lingen, Germany 2024-10-26)

First the complaints: The gig in Lingen, Germany, last Saturday was much too short! They should have played at least 22 hours longer. Then I could have heard a good bunch of my favourite DP songs.. But after two hours the old and lazy sods seemed to be exhausted. Of course not!!! After fascinating two hours the sold-out Emsland-Arena (capacity of 4500 people) was cheering for more, but the lights went on. I must not mention the musicianship of the band members, we all know how great they all still are. The courage of the band not to rely only on the old classics, but play six (!) songs from =1 made this gig very special for me. The best: If somebody was there, who didn’t know anything about Deep Purple, he or she surely couldn’t decide which song was from the seventies and which one was a new song. The songs from =1 fitted perfectly. With Simon McBride on guitar the band has gone back to it’s roots. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate Steve Morse very much, but somehow Deep Purple seems to be rejuvinated with Simon as many people stated here before. This also applies to Ian Gillan, who after all the gigs in the last months still is in very fine form. Of course he can’t scream as in the seventies anymore, but today he sings much better than for example during the eighties, when he and Ritchie Blackmore seemed to be competing who is the worst of the two … All in all I had a wonderful evening and I’m quite sure that goes for the other 4499 people who witnessed this concert too. One more complaint to conclude this review: It’s a pity that they dropped “Hard lovin’ man” after the American tour, because it’s one of my favourits. But instead we got Old-fangled thing as the first encore which was more than compensation. Long live Deep Purple!!!

review by Friedhelm Wenning

Ian Gillan was interviewed by The Portugal News (which is kinda sorta his hometown newspaper now). He gave his views on the number of tracks from =1, and on the arrival of Simon McBride as the newest member of the band. Which was a good thing because…

[…] it put the band back into simpler arrangements. Now, I learned something a long time ago that simplicity is the platform of virtuosity. Now we put back the body rhythms into Deep Purple, which is what we had in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It was basically joyous Rock and Roll again and it was more the kind of rock and roll that I grew up with than the stuff where Steve was coming from. I don’t want any misunderstandings, I absolutely and totally respect Steve Morse and he is a fantastic guitar player but I found the route he took with song construction was much easier, probably, instrumentally than it was for laying a song on top of it.

Read more in The Portugal News.

Louder Sound reprints a 2005 Classic Rock feature on the Iommi/Hughes collaboration that resulted in the Fused album.

The friendship between Tony Iommi and Glenn Hughes goes back more than 50 years – and Iommi even briefly enlisted the former Trapeze/Deep Purple man into Black Sabbath for 1986’s Seventh Star album. In 2005 they joined forces once again for Iommi’s Fused album – a record that both men counted as among their best, as Classic Rock found out when we met up with them in London.

Like most rock stars of a certain age, Tony Iommi and Glenn Hughes wear their sunglasses indoors: Iommi in his familiar opaque purple lenses, Hughes in pale pink-tinted wraparounds. They have a photo session to do after our chat, and both are dressed like men who haven’t carried their own guitar case in decades. They’re both slim, and sporting black jeans that are so ornate that you’d expect to find a coat of arms sewn into them somewhere.

Continue reading in Louder Sound

A performance of Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra was held at the Herkulessaal in Munich on October 12, 2024. Performers included rock band Boxhead and Abaco-Orchestra conducted by Ina Stoertzenbach. Paul Mann and Pete York were in the audience, with Pete York delivering an introductory speech in German, reminiscing about the Windows event that was held at the same venue 50 years ago. Continue Reading »

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Edd Griles, director of Rainbow 1980s AOR videos Death Alley Driver, I Surrender, Stone Cold, and Can’t Happen Here, among other things, has passed away. The eulogy mentions that he has also directed unspecified Deep Purple videos, but our search for relevant credits didn’t return any matches. Continue Reading »

This spoken word artist that is rumoured to dabble on guitar continues his Tales from The Tavern with an episode about Jim Marshall, Mitch Mitchell, and associated bits and ends. Continue Reading »

Paicey provides his tour kit rundown for the Modern Drummer video channel. TMI for the most of us, but if you’re a drummer, dig in! Caveat: the sound engineer needs to figure out how to record the voice, not just the drums, so you might want to try turning subtitles on. Continue Reading »

Ritchie Blackmore talks about guitar players that influenced him in his early years — Big Jim Sullivan and Joe Moretti. Continue Reading »