Producer of the Bananas and Rapture of the Deep Michael Bradford seemingly disappered from the Purple horizons, but not from the music scene in general. After his collaboration with the band, he produced and played bass with Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics fame) and then became musical director and bass player for Ringo Starr’s touring band. He also shared bass duties on Ringo’s 2010 solo album with Paul McCartney.

An interview recorded in 2016 for the NAMM Oral History Library

Fine example of his very dry sense of humour (which may explain how he got along so well with an essentially British hard rock band despite vastly different musical backgrounds).

In 2014 he released a solo album The Long Night. A track from the album — No One But Myself To Blame featuring singer Liz Primo:

Michael can be reached via his production company Chunky Style Music.

Don Airey is reissuing his 1988 solo album K2 – Tales of Triumph and Tragedy, funded through Pledge Music. Album options include

• signed CD with original album and 7 bonus tracks for £30
• signed CD (as above) + DVD with “new performances”, interview footage, and original EPK for £35
• limited edition deluxe box set for £75

The box set will include both CD and DVD, signed and numbered certificate (the box is said to be limited to 100 copies), reproduction of the press pack, promo photo, and an A2-size map of K2.
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Roger Glover was a guest of Francophone TV channel TV5Monde, and his appearance turned into a mini retrospective of his incredible career.
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While being in Paris earlier this month, Ian Paice and Don Airey sat down to chat with La Grosse Radio. It resulted in this very relaxed conversation where they go through several tracks of the album, explaining how these ideas were born and developed. Plus, their thoughts on the latest incarnation of Rainbow and on the inevitable retirement.
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Three weeks after the new DEEP PURPLE album “inFinite” hit the stores, Edel will continue the series of Jon Lord re-releases with “Windows”, an album featuring a cooperation between Jon Lord and conductor and composer Eberhard Schoener. Schoener, who was also involved in progressive rock masterpieces like “The Turn of a Friendly Card” by The Alan Parsons Project may be best known for being the creator of the main theme for the TV series “Derrick“.

“Windows” was recorded live at the Herkulessaal in Munich on June 1st 1974 as closing performance of the “Prix Jeunesse International” festival under the “Rock meets Classic” banner and was broadcasted by German TV station Bayerischer Rundfunk to a potential audience of 300 million people.

The album consists of two parts, the 18 minute piece “Continuo on B.A.C.H.” and the name-giving 32 minute “Window” (without “s”), both composed by Jon Lord and Eberhard Schoener.

“Continuo on B.A.C.H.” plays with the idea of continuing on “The Unfinished Fugue”, the last part of “The Art of Fugue” by Johann Sebastian Bach and features way more Jazz influences than focussing on Jon Lords hard rock background (as the two predecessors “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” and “Gemini Suite” did) using the orchestra more as soloists than using them in a more conventional rock meets classic way.

The first part of “Window”, called “1st Movement – Renga”, was composed by Eberhard Schoener and starts with a more blues-like feeling featuring the voice of David Converdale, later contrasted by two sproaons, who make this part hard to enjoy in its entirety.

As the name hints, the second part “2nd Movement – Gemini” recycles the vocal section from “Gemini Suite”, likely some sort of compromise because Jon Lord and Eberhard Schoener were running out of time. “Windows” was a contract work for the Bayerische Rundfunk to close the Prix Jeunesse International festival and had to be finished in time.

The closing “3rd Movement – Alla Marcia: Allegro”, composed by Jon Lord reminds of “Gemini Suite” but also includes moments which would later become parts of “Sarabande”, Jon Lords next solo work.

The band consited of Jon Lord on piano, organ and keyboards, his DEEP PURPLE bandmates David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, both on vocals and Glenn also on bass, Tony Ashton on vocals and keyboard and last but not least SPENCER DAVIS GROUP members Ray Fenwick on guitar and Pete York on drums. The classical section included the Munich Chamber Opera Orchestra conducted by Eberhard Schoener, featuring sopranos Erminia Santi and Sigune von Osten, Günther Salber on violin, and finally well known actor Klaus Löwitsch as narrator.

Sadly the audio recording doesn’t include the whole performance, but leaves out the “Einleitungsfanfare zu Also Sprach Zaratusthra” by Richard Strauss and all narration parts by Klaus Löwitsch without explaination. This might have been because the narration was completely in German and its content hard to guess even for native German speakers. Thanks to Youtube, there is at least a low resolution video of the whole event available for everyone to watch.

While being published on LP in 1974, the first straight-to-CD-transfer of “Windows” was released 1987 by Line Records, followed by a 25th Remastered Anniversary Edition on Purple Records in 1999 and a reissue in 2010. Adding a restored version of the video recording would have been a great bonus to render the 2017 release from a nice to have album to a must-buy.

North American syndicated radio program In The Studio with Redbeard: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands is celebrating the 45th anniversary of Machine Head with an hour long program featuring interviews with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover about the album. The interviews are not new, so you may have heard them before. The show had repackaged 1987 interviews for the 40th anniversary before.

You can listen to the interview portion of the show at inthestudio.net.

Thanks to Mark Fischer for the info.

Ian Gillan is on the cover of issue 4 (May 2017) of the Sweden Rock Magazine. Inside the magazine there is an 8 pages long feature on Deep Purple and their new album with interview and pictures, 5 pages of illustrated interview with David Coverdale, and a page worth of interview with Bob Ezrin.

More magazine covers have been featured in this clip posted by the record company:
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Updated: The record company has posted second and third installments of inFinite EPK with Airey, Paice, Gillan and Glover discussing the new album and tour, fragments of which that you may or may not have already heard elsewhere:
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Japanese release of inFinite came out with extra liner notes (as is customary over there), written by renowned hard rock critic and adviser to the Burrn! magazine Masa Itoh. And the notes are so well written that we decided to present them to your attention here. Many thanks to Akemi Ono for the translation.

Time goes by way too quickly

“This is what hard rock is all about!” was my thought as my body trembled. It was Deep Purple’s first Japan tour in August, 1972. 45 years have passed since Deep Purple’s first concert in Japan. I cannot believe it. 45 years.

Everybody was in a state of confusion as tremendous waves of energy devoured the audience. The fierce musical interplay of the band was so provocative that the crowd rushed to the front of the stage. The encore was Speed King. The spontaneous play developed continuously until I felt like a little boat rocking in the ocean. When I looked up at the stage, Ian Gillan, with his long hair, was playing the percussions with all his heart and body. This concert was later released as “Made in Japan.” This album is considered to be a classic, and what makes it more meaningful is that it marks a monumental day in Japanese rock history.

Deep Purple returned to Japan again in June 1973, and again brought the audience to a state of confusion, but in a different way. There was dissonance among band members and they left the stage without doing an
encore. Some people in the audience became angry and violent and started throwing chairs around. This seemed to symbolize the end of Mark II.

This lineup gets back together again in 1984. I interviewed Ritchie in Sydney, and he was in a good mood and unusually talkative. However, issues between Ian Gillan and Ritchie continued, and they both left the band at different times.

When Deep Purple finally was inducted to the Rock and Roll of Fame, there were comments that it was way too late. The inductees were only main members from Mark I to III. Steve Morse and Don Airey were not inducted. Ritchie did not show up to the ceremony. The depth of the problems amongst the members and management was evident.

In 1994, Steve Morse joined Deep Purple. Don Airey joined in 2002. This line-up already has a history of 15 years. In the current world, where the lives of bands are very short, it is frankly amazing that a rock band, which started from the dawn of the age of rock, together with Led Zeppelin, still continues to play with new members. Moreover, the band’s breadth of activity is expanding. It is noticeable that Deep Purple is not only a classic rock band. Deep Purple’s audience is growing in number. Japan is a good example. In April 2014, Deep Purple sold out its tour which included a show at Nihon Budokan, which they had not played in 18 years. The live album recorded in Budokan at that time became popular world-wide. They returned to the Budokan in 2016, and again played to a full audience.

To someone like me, who is an old-time fan, I cannot help but think of the current line-up as the band without Ritchie. However, the younger generation rock fans who come to hear Deep Purple are different. They are here to see the current Deep Purple, and not trying to see the shadow of Ritchie. The young fans, who were not around to experience the “Made in Japan” concert, are here to experience the king of classic rock, Deep Purple, as they are. At least, that is the feeling that I get in Japan and what I know from England and Europe. So I assume it is a world-wide phenomenon. “inFinite”, Deep Purple’s 20th album, was released in this kind of a positive atmosphere.

There were two mysteries regarding this album. The title “inFinite” means “forever” or “endless”. However, the “F” in “Finite” is emphasized, and “Finite” means there is a limit. Also, the tour is called “The Long Goodbye Tour”. Is this a deliberate message from the band? The fans were agitated.

But when you think about it, music could last forever, but there is an end to all human lives and no member can play forever in Deep Purple. Considering the band members’ age, this could very well be their last album, and they probably could not tour for 10 more years. Jon Lord, one of the founding members, passed away in 2012 at the age of 71. Ian Gillan and Roger Glover are both 72 now and nearing the end of their touring career. With these facts in mind, fans could not pass the album and tour title as a kind of British joke, and therefore continue to have active and loud discussions about what it is all about.

Only Deep Purple knows the future of Deep Purple. However, the level of quality of this album makes you wish that their future will continue forever. They have come up with an album so wonderful that maybe they wanted to give it cryptic name that could be interpreted many ways.

Sorry to say, but ironically, the two members who are not part of the classic lineup — Don and Steve — are the powerful engines that make the tunes in the new album function. It is obvious from the opening tune, “Time for Bedlam”. Steve’s slide guitar and Don’s organ follow the footsteps of the golden ages of Mark II, almost like paying homage to the band itself. The Gregorian chant-like arrangement then brings in a fresh gush of air. The merger of “tradition” and the “innovation” inherent in this tune is alive throughout the album, and I believe is the most important point of the new album. The second single, “All I Got Is You”, shows a brilliant sense of pop and increases the contemporary attractiveness of the band. This experiment culminates in “The Surprising”. This epic song, with a cinematic outlook of the world, is very colorful, but is “traditional” at the same time.

It is interesting that they chose the Doors’ cover “Roadhouse Blues” as their ending tune. This song has been covered by numerous artists, and is almost a song of praise for bands which spent most of their life touring. It makes you feel like this may be the last album.

The album is like an essence of the early 1970’s when Deep Purple was growing rapidly as a hard rock band. Whether this was intentional or not, there is a lot of good chemistry within the band. Bob Ezrin is really the perfect producer for this kind of music. Whether they are paying homage to “In Rock” which features Mount Rushmore, the artwork of this album shows the five members carved in huge glaciers. The glaciers may be melting by global warming. Glaciers vs. the hard rocks of Mount Rushmore. Fans may need to analyze this comparison as well.

Us fans, have a most peculiar favourite pastime — telling the band what to do, what not to do, which songs to play, and which not. In particular, every Tom, Jane and Joe know best what the ideal setlist should be, y’know, the one that “surely pleases everybody”.

Despite the fact that the band repeatedly stated that they will not listen to any outside opinions and will choose the songs to play on the upcoming tour that will feel right to themselves, if we don’t voice our opinion, they won’t have much not to listen to, right?

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