The June 2016 issue of “Player” in Japan carried a 16 page article on Deep Purple consisting of Ian Gillan’s interview, Steve Morse’s interview, inFinite album review, and the live & studio gear review of Steve and Roger’s equipment.

The interview is pretty much a repeat of the many interviews published in relation to the release of inFinite, but here are some portions which may be of interest:

Ian Gillan interview:

Q: I think Birds of Prey is one of the key songs of the new album.
Ian: It is a dynamic song, multi-textured, like an orchestra. I love to sing it, but it is the greatest experience to just listen to the band play the tune. I think Birds of Prey would be a good theme song for the 007 series. I would love to see “007/Birds of Prey” in the theatres.

Q: The intro of Hip Boots and some lyrics of Get Me Out of Here seem to show your respect to the rock and roll songs of the 50’s, but would you agree?
Ian: Not really. We didn’t go into the studio to try to write 50’s rock and roll songs. We never go in with a pre-conceived idea. But we are influenced by the 50’s rock and roll, obviously. Jon was influenced by Jimmy Smith, Ritchie could play Chet Atkins’s style, and Ian had the big band swing.

Q: Any thoughts on Chuck Berry who passed away recently?
Ian: Well, once in 1971 or 72, Deep Purple played as his back band in a festival in Germany. He didn’t have his own back band, and just hired people wherever he went. And so he hired us that day. He wouldn’t even say what song, and start playing. I was watching from the wing of the stage, and the band could play for him just by listening to the introduction. I thought it was indeed a great band.

Q: So this is your last tour?
Ian: This will be our last large-scale world tour. But our creativity has not dried up yet, and there is a possibility of making another album. The Long Good-bye Tour is not a catch copy to sell tickets, we want our fans to know that the opportunity to see Deep Purple will be scarce in the future.

Steve Morse interview:

Q: Has your arthritis influenced the guitar play in inFinite?
Steve: There is no change. I play what needs to be played on the album. It doesn’t matter if it causes pain. Actually, on stage I do not feel the pain due to the adrenalin. I feel the pain when I’m practicing. However, I did change some phrasing. In the instrumental section of the Surprising where I’m over-dubbing, in one of the lines I did pick, pull-off, pick, whereas I would have done only picking if it were not for the pain which was very strong that particular day.

Q: Tell us about Deep Purple’s future.
Steve: All five of us will continue to make music and make records, although it may not be Deep Purple. Especially Don, he will be working on projects all his life, he is a workaholic. But this will probably be the last large-scale world tour. Maybe 10-20 years ago, it was a joke that old rock stars go on stage on a wheelchair, but not anymore. We should stop while we can still play well. After Europe and the US, we will definitely go to Japan in 2018. Made in Japan is a classic live album, and it is a great thrill to play in the Budokan. I would like to play there again.

Q: What will you do after Deep Purple’s tour is over?
Steve: It’s still not yet decided when Deep Purple’s tour will end, but I will keep on playing. There is the Steve Morse Band, and many other projects I would like to work on.

Q: Will there be a reunion of Dixie Dregs?
Steve: We have talked about it, but people’s schedules could not be coordinated. If it happens, it will not be a big tour, just several cities in the US. When I played in Japan for the first time, it was with Biff Baby All-Stars with Albert Lee. A Japanese fan came up to me with Dixie Dregs’
LP, and I was very impressed that someone so far away knew about the Dregs!
It is great to play with Deep Purple in Japan, but it would be interesting to play with another band. I may do something with Dave LaRue, Dixie Dregs’
bassist. I have also played with him in the Cruise to the Edge as Flying Colors. I jammed some new music with him, using guitar synthesizers. I may do some stuff when there is time off from Deep Purple.

Album Review
The album review is 2-pages long, but mostly covers the background of each song, which has become quite redundant. One interesting comment was that the reviewer calls Birds of Prey the 21st century Child in Time — with the caveat that this may be too much praise! But the last paragraph may be worth translating: “If Deep Purple never made another album, fans will keep on listening to infinite forever. In the half a century that the band continued to progress, their music is indeed infinite = never ending.”

With thanks to Akemi Ono for the info and translation.

two ‘new’ singles are reportedly being released on 26th May

Land of Hope and Glory

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/land-of-hope-and-glory-single/id1237748131 I Surrender

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/i-surrender-feat-ronnie-romero-single/id1237263638

Also available on Amazon and all other similar services.

Thanks to Akemi and Morki for the info.

A new section opened on Roger Glovers official website called “Videos from the bottom drawer” with the first entry being Gillan & Glover performing “Dislocated” on Friday Night Live.

Read Rogers comments about the video and join the discussion.

It was around the mid eighties, after Perfect Strangers, that Bruce, Jon and I decided to have a ski holiday in Colorado and to that end we rented a huge house in Keystone for nine days. I think it had five or six bedrooms, a massive kitchen, and the living room was three stories high boasting an enormous fireplace whose rough stone chimney reached all the way up to the ceiling.

Read the full story at Roger Glovers official website

Several vintage interviews have been posted on youtube.

Roger, Jon, and Paicey being interviewed by Swiss TV circa the House of Blue Light:

Ian, Ian, and Roger interviewed for French TV in 1987:

Roger & Big Ian talk about their families on Swedish TV in 1988:

Raw footage from Swedish TV interview 1993, only a fraction of this was ever used. (Note: this one is more than an hour long)

Thanks to Nigel Young for the info.

Deep Purple live at Romexpo (Bucharest, Romania 2017-05-13)

The band was in the hungry mood for audience energy :)))
Ian was in his best spirits muttering “superb” at least twice after the songs, giving a summary a dog (gie style) encounter from his rich memory bank at the end of Strange Kind of Woman :)., Vocally at his best too. Don was the darling of the show having incorporated a traditional Romanian melody in his number. Roger was very elegant in his black shirt delivering an incredible bass solo. The show has simple but effective video background support. One hour and 40 mins sharp.

Long live the gentlemen of hard rock!

Bedlam
Fireball
Living Wreck Bloodsucker
Strange Kind of Woman
Johnny’s Band
Blue guitar (Steve’s solo)
Uncommon Man
Surprising
Lazy
Birds of Prey
Hell to Pay
Don’s solo
Perfect Stranger
Space Truckin’
Smoke on the water

Encore:
Highway Star
Roger’s solo
Black Night
Hush

review by Eugen Thielmann

A lengthy — more than an hour — interview with Ian Gillan, done by an Italian radio station Radio Rock 106.6 in Portugal, published a couple of weeks ago, and promptly blocked by some copyright police run amok — is now finally available for viewing worldwide. As you can imagine, a lot of dirt can be overturned in such a long conversation. There’s quite a bit of background noise in the beginning, but it goes away after a while. Dig in!

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

Roger Glover is one of guest musicians on Alice Cooper’s new album Paranormal, due to be released on July 28 via Edel/earMusic:

The 12-track album has been recorded in Nashville with long-time collaborator Bob Ezrin and features a very special bonus CD – a mini-album consisting of three brand new songs written and recorded together with the original Alice Cooper band members Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith, and guitarist Michael Bruce, alongside carefully selected live recordings.

Paranormal also features special guest appearances by U2’s Larry Mullen Jr., ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, and Deep Purple’s Roger Glover.

Deep Purple, of course, not only share with Alice the producer and the record company, but will also be co-headlining their North American tour together this summer.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info; photo: © 2011 Man Alive! cc-by-sa

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.
Continue Reading »