On the day of Deep Purple show in Kiev, an interview with Steve Morse appeared in the Ukranian The Koz Times. It said, among other things,

— All stated that this farewell tour of Deep Purple. And you yourself have also decided that after the tour you leave the scene?

For me personally, it’s a farewell tour. As for the other guys, then I think they will still be playing. Perhaps, in other groups, special projects or as invited guests. I also plan to stay in music but not so actively as now. But you do realize that when the music for so many years is the most important place in your life, impossible in one day to abandon it. In General, I know that the guys are not going to retire. They would rather die on stage than in bed (laughs).

Which understandably caused quite a stir on ’em interwebs. However, bear in mind that said interview appears in reverse machine translation into English. Anyone familiar with reverse translations and machine translations can attest that the result can bear little resemblance to what was actually said.

More to the point, the above quote not correspond with what Steve was saying backstage earlier this month.

Thanks to Vladimir Dribuschak and Yvonne for the heads up.

Simon Robinson’s DP book “In Rock – Wait For The Ricochet” is going to be published in a German language edition.
The publisher is Hannibal-Verlag, translated by Andreas Schiffmann The book is advertised for October.
German title is going to be “In Rock – Der Lange Weg Zu Einem Meisterwerk”

https://easyontheeyebooks.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/meisterwerk/

thanks to Lutz for the info…

Nick Simper & Nasty Habits have just released their new live album titled “Live An’ Nasty” on vinyl. It’s the first album with new vocalist Attila Scholtz, who has worked with the likes of Jon Lord and Ian Paice before. It will be the combination of a limited edition set of 150 pieces on purple vinyl and 350 more pieces on black vinyl in a gatefold sleeve and on 180 g vinyl.

The tracklist is a mixture of Nasty Habits songs and Mark 1 Deep Purple tracks.
Titles are: Joke / Emmaretta / Cold / Please Don’t Go / Why Didn’t Rosemary / Help / Lalena / Hush
The record came out on May 19th. It is only available on the Nasty Habits homepage. www.nastyhabits.eu
The album release concert will take place on Sat. 23rd June in Vienna at the REIGEN club, where the LP was recorded too. www.reigen.at

Don Airey will play the top billing at the HRH Prog Festival in Northern Wales this coming November. In a recent interview with Classic Rock Revisited he also hinted about more UK dates to come:

Getting ready to do a four-month summer run of festivals with DP starting in Mexico in May, with perhaps a UK tour in November with my own band following up on the release of One of a Kind.

The rest of the interview is well worth checking out. For the lesser known moments of his illustrious career, if nothing else:

Jeb: You like the Hammond. I’ve heard you even play at your church in your local village. Is that true?

Don: Yes, I am officially deputy organist at the local church, the only proper job I have ever had. If I am around and needed it’s a privilege to play there, but not the easiest of gigs, I have to say. The organ dates back to Victorian times, and is a splendid instrument, and of course you have really to be on your toes…keeping up with the choir…and not missing the many service cues…and remembering the important part dynamics and phrasing play in hymns, anthems and psalms.

Read more in Classic Rock Revisited.

Thanks to Yvonne for the info.

The festival planned for June 16, 2018 featuring Steve Hill, the Henrik Freischlader Band, Bernie Marsden and Joe Bonamassa has been cancelled.

Glenn Wellard sent us an updated revision of his version of the Deep Purple Family Tree. This new revision fixes Atomic Rooster (which had been mistakenly called ‘Arctic’) and links the Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin branch to the tree via Coverdale/Page collaboration.

And before you start complaining again, remember: this is just a one man’s vision on where to prune the tree. Nobody promised that it would be utterly objective. The main constrains were to include 50 bands/lineups (on the occasion of the 50th anniversary), and make it printable on an A1 format poster (that Glenn sells on Ebay).

Happy gardening!

Japan and North America tour dates have been announced.

The North American tour starts on August 21 in Cincinnati and will continue throughout the rest of August and all of September, visiting a total of 25 cities and wrapping up on September 30 in Sacramento, California. It will be a double header bill with Judas Priest. Presales for many of the shows start tomorrow, April 24, general sales following a few days later.

The short but sweet 5-date Japanese tour is scheduled for October this year. Ticket presales (where available) start tomorrow, April 24th, via the venerable promoter Mr. Udo’s website. Sales to the general public will follow in May.

Full details in our calendar.

Thanks to Akiko Hada, Bo Olsson, Akemi Ono, Randy Engman, and Lutz Reinert for the heads up.

Glenn Wellard sent us his version of the Deep Purple Family Tree together with the following note:

Being a fan myself, and this year being the 50th year since Deep Purple were formed, I decided I wanted to do something to mark the occasion and produce something to hand on my own study wall. So, for the last few months I’ve been working on a super huge family tree of band member connections with other major UK bands. It contains 50 different bands within it (I thought that was a nice number to reach for a 50th anniversary!), with the core of it, of course, being Deep Purple members. I’ve called it the Deep Purple Extended Family (as they are considered to be one of the catalyst for a lot of the rock bands that came after them). I’ve now completed the project, and a print of it is hanging proudly on my study wall. However, I’ve decided it would be a shame to keep the poster to myself, so I am sending a high definition converted JPEG copy of it to various parties out there that might be interested to have a look at, comment on, display on websites, etc, on a permission basis, whilst retaining copyright over hard copy prints.

It’s been a complex and pretty frustrating project at times, which has taken a lot of effort to make it as accurate as possible. As the tree has got bigger, the options of branches that can be included get exponentially bigger (!) and so it becomes harder to decide what to include and leave out, as well as the connections between artists getting more complicated. So I have tried to include those branches and connections that seemed most relevant to me.

I have also listed the poster on eBay (it can be found by searching Deep Purple Poster) in case people want to buy a large high quality printed copy. So, the only thing I have done to it to protect myself on the copy I am sending out digitally, is to add a faint copyright watermark, which does not detract from being able to view the detail of it online. On eBay I’ve restricted sales to the UK, mainly because I’m not sure what the postal cost to send to the USA would be. But if there was interest from over the pond there, I’m sure I could figure this out!

Click on the image above to view a full size version (warning: it’s HUGE!)

Ian Paice will be featured on the next episode of Vintage TV show Nicky Horne Presents…. The episode will be shown on Tuesday 17th of April at 10.30pm and will be repeated on, Sunday 22nd April at 10.00pm.

Vintage TV is available in the UK on Sky 369, Freeview 82, Virgin 343, Freesat 505 and BT/TalkTalk 82.

Thanks to Yvonne for the heads up.

May 2018 issue of Burrn! magazine carries an exclusive 12-page interview with Ritchie Blackmore, conducted by editor-in-chief Kaz Hirose. Below are a few of the more interesting tidbits translated back into English courtesy of our Japanese correspondent Akemi Ono.

On coming to Japan:

Burrn!: This year Rainbow is doing shows in places where you have not played before, Russia, Finland, Czechoslovakia. You wish to play where you have not done the new Rainbow line-up?
Ritchie: Well, I don’t like to travel, but I have been to Russia before, and I like borscht, the famous Russian soup.

B: What about Japan?
R: I thought about it when Mr. Udo invited us, but it’s too far. I don’t like flying long distances.

B: How about via Hawaii or California?
R: I’ve lived in California for about 3 years, I didn’t like living in Hollywood. Everyone is a rock star or a movie star and seeing a psychiatrist.

B: Japan really wants you to come.
R: Yes, I understand. If I go, it will be through Mr. Udo. I have known him for a very long time — about 200 years probably.

Ritchie’s comments on the tunes played by the current line-up:

Spotlight Kid: First I thought this was a meaningless song, just being played up-tempo. So I asked Don Airey whether he thought there was anything good about this tune. Don answered that since we have it, we should nurture it. Later on I took a liking for it.
I Surrender: This is a very difficult tune, especially since we have changed the key from G to F#. I need to concentrate very much.
Mistreated: I like to play this tune. David Coverdale did a great interpretation.
Man on the Silver Mountain: I also like to play this tune, but none of us know what this title really means. Only Ronnie James Dio knows. People tend to read into song titles. Like Speed King. When Deep Purple played in the US, people thought it was about drugs, but it was only about driving fast.
Soldier of Fortune: I requested this as I wanted to play the acoustic guitar. This is a great song. David wrote the first half and I wrote the second half. He wrote the first half on the piano and said he did not know where to go with it, so I made suggestions. It is nice to write and arrange a song 50/50.
Child in Time: One of my favorites, although we did not play in Deep Purple so much as Ian Gillan did not want do it on stage very frequently.
Long Live Rock’n Roll: This was a rare case where I was involved in writing the lyrics. I told Ronnie that the riff sounded like “Long Live Rock’n Roll” to me. I told him he could change it, but we ended up staying with it.
Smoke on the Water: Once I asked Ian Anderson which tune he does not enjoy playing, and he said “Aqualung”, since if he does not play it, everyone wants to hear it. Smoke on the Water is a tune everyone expects me to play, but fortunately it is a good song.

On tunes that have not been played:

Kill the King: I’m probably not playing it since it sounds too much like Spotlight Kid. If there is one song that we have not played and we may, it’s Self Portrait.
Gates of Babylon: It’s difficult to play the riffs. There is a lot of editing in the recording, and it’s difficult to play live.

Other questions:

B: Would you like to record a whole album with the current line-up?
R: There is a possibility, but I do not want to make an album with only re-makes of old tunes. Maybe something like 2 new songs, and 2 previous songs. That could be an idea.

B: Which are your favorite Rainbow tunes? I think Street of Dreams is unique and a great Rainbow song.
R: Yes, that is definitely one of my favorites. Joe did a great version. That may be one of the ideas to work on, or maybe not.

B: Do you still make songs with Candice?
R: Not really. We were too busy in the past, so we are taking some time off. She is also busy with the children.

B: Will you do shows in the US?
R: Probably not, although there were some ideas going around. If we do, probably one or two shows only. And not in California.

B: NY?
R: NY or Connecticut, if we ever get around to it.