In an unexpected move (first single was originally promised not until January 20), the record company publicised today the artwork, release date — April 7, and the first single from Deep Purple’s new album inFinite — Time for Bedlam:

The song will be available as instant grat as part of the digital album preorder as well as on all streaming platforms starting from Thursday, December 15th, midnight worldwide with the physical preorder of the album to start at the same time.

A limited edition EP for Time for bedlam, with non-album songs and unreleased recording will hit the shops on February 3.

A documentary movie, witnessing the songwriting process and the recording of the album with producer Bob Ezrin has been produced, allowing fans to be part of the private band member interactions in the studio. The movie will be included in some editions of the album and it will be presented before release in various fan events worldwide.

Useless, but fun fact: cover image for the album was shot off Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalen Islands), in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Quebec, Canada.

The announcement also includes a quote from Ian Gillan on the meaning of the album’s title and the “Long Goodbye” tour moniker:

If you take it literally you may, quite reasonably, think the ‘Finite’ part of the word describes the life of Deep Purple, with a clear beginning and a nebulous end; but what of the ‘in’ bit? The word infinite is a three-dimensional double edged sword. It describes something that goes on forever in all directions; not unlike its temporal equivalent ‘Eternal’ What’s that all about?

Stephen Hawking declared (in ‘A brief History of Time’) that, before the Big Bang there was nothing. That would put the kybosh on the idea of our universe being Infinite, as he provides a starting point, which is not acceptable to the concept. So, Hawking’s universe in ‘Finite’; by definition; whether he agrees or not.

Ironically, he is quite wrong (scientists always are eventually), therefore the Universe is infinite, which means it will never end, and also means that it never started, and the corollary to that of course is that we don’t exist.

There is a metaphysical solution to all this, but it will have to wait until the tour is over because (thanks heavens) there are only 24 hours in a day (for the time being) or 10 hours in a metric day.
More on that later…

A three-dimensional double edged sword indeed.

Thanks to Andrei Gusenkov for the heads up and Maxim Bylkin for additional info.

German magazine Rocks is featuring Deep Purple on the cover of its current issue (January 2017).

Apart from an eight page story of their rise with In Rock, it also features six pages on the new album inFinite (which was still untitled when the interviews with Bob Ezrin and Roger Glover were conducted). The journalists were able to preview half an hour worth of music from the album [possibly during that press event that Roger mentioned a few weeks ago — THS]. The working titles of these songs include Time for Bedlam, All I’ve Got Is You (which is about a relationship crisis), The Surprising (in which the band should be furthermost away from what the fans might expect), Birds of Prey (with drum sound reminding on Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks). The article also covers relationship between Bob Ezrin and the band, the times when Steve Morse and Don Airey joined the band and learned that they can play and write in their own style, how Gillan and Glover are working on the lyrics, and other things.

Thanks to Timo Teichert for the info.

DPAS mentioned that there is a Japanese box set of Rainbow Memories in Rock on the market that includes a soundboard recording of the Birmingham show as a bonus. This is of interest as by most accounts that show featured the best performance of the three gig mini-tour, while the two German shows on the release can be best described as, ahem, tentative.

Our Japanese correspondent furnishes further details.

The “super premium” box set in question has a limited edition run of 500 copies and is available exclusively through Ward Records for a princely sum of ¥34,884 (¥32,300 excluding tax). In addition to the 2CD Birmingham recording, it includes the regular Japanese editions of the album (compiled from the two German shows) on Blu-ray, 2CD, and vinyl, plus a photo booklet, and a t-shirt.

Birmingham track list:

Disc 1
1. Over the Rainbow – Highway Star
2. Spotlight Kid
3. Mistreated
4. Since You Been Gone
5. Man on the Silver Mountain
6. Soldier of Fortune
7. Difficult to Cure (Beethoven’s 9th)
8. Catch the Rainbow

Disc 2
1. Perfect Strangers
2. Long Live Rock and Roll
3. Child in Time
4. Stargazer
5. Black Night
6. Burn
7. Smoke on the Water

Expect it to show up on your favourite The Pirate Bay mirror soon.

Thanks to Akemi Ono for the info.

Graham Bonnet recently spoke to Metal Forces Magazine, which resulted in an interview that plenty demostrates his no-nonsense attitude. He spoke at length about his current eponymous band (his guitar player Conrado Pesinato has quite a number of very big shoes to fill), his days in Alcatrazz, his connection to Ronnie James Dio, his plans, and much more. He also offered his take on the most recent incarnation of Rainbow:

I think [Blackmore] was probably testing the waters to see if Rainbow’s name over the marquee would actually draw a crowd. I don’t know what the attendance was for some of these shows, but I know that now he’s gone back to doing what he was doing before with his wife – the Blackmore’s Night thing. I haven’t listened to that. I can’t do it. I can’t look at that band he put together and judge it, because I am really not interested.

I don’t think that it was a serious attempt at bringing back Rainbow. I think that it was a way for him to probably make some money quickly, and use guys in the band that you’ve never heard of before. If he had been putting together a so-called reunion or another Rainbow-type gig, he should’ve used at least Roger Glover (bass, Deep Purple / ex-Rainbow) and Don Airey (Deep Purple / ex-Rainbow) on keyboards, and whomever as a singer. I don’t think it would’ve been me, but whomever it may have been. If it had a couple of the guys from the Rainbow that I was in, I think it would’ve drawn more of a crowd and people would have seen it as being a real band, but I saw it almost as a session. People have told me that it was a bit lifeless and limp. Now whether it was that way, I couldn’t tell you, but they just said that it wasn’t Rainbow as such.

Joe [Lynn Turner] thought that he was going to be chosen. I said to him… This was when Ronnie was still alive, because I did some gigs with Joe a few years ago and Ronnie was still alive. He said that there was probably going to be a Rainbow reunion thing, and that they were going to ask him to do it because he did more albums, had more hits, or whatever. I said ‘Maybe, maybe, but if they’re going to put Rainbow back together, it should be with Ronnie and the other players from when Rainbow was first formed. Not me, not you, but the other guys that were original members.’ So, I wasn’t expecting to be asked. I knew I wouldn’t be, and I didn’t think that he would be.

Anyway, I was right (laughs). Neither of us were asked to do anything. It was a bit of a shock to him, I think, but I never saw it. I could never imagine being asked to do that because it’s old news, and I don’t think Ritchie would want to do that again. I don’t know. Maybe he would; maybe he would want Joe, or me, or whomever to play with him again, but that would be a serious venture because that would mean money, actually (laughs). It means a lot more money than he would probably want to deal with, because he would have to pay players that are a bit more serious than the band he put together. I don’t know if they were unknown people, but to me they were unknown, so that means that they were paid less. Anyway, that’s what I think (laughs).

If Ritchie asked me to play with him tomorrow, I’d play with him tomorrow. For like a one-off, of course I would because he gave me a new career, so to speak. I went into a direction I never thought I would be going in, compared to the stuff that I had done before. Man, of course I would.

I’m sure Joe Lynn Turner would, too, but it’s a matter of who it would be. I just think that that was a money venture, I really do, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not knocking Ritchie for that. We all need to make money, and that’s why we’re all out playing live now. We don’t sell records any more; people are downloading music, and it’s not like it used to be. We’re all getting older and worried what the hell we’re all gonna do if the music business for this kind of music just crashes, so we’re getting in there while we may.

Read the rest of the interview on Metal Forces.

Graham Bonnet Band upcoming tour dates:

JANUARY
6th: Ayers Event Center, Corpus Christi, TX
7th: Cadillac Bar, San Antonio, TX
8th: Trees (Elm St), Dallas, TX
20th: Malones, Santa Ana CA
28th: Rockbar Theater, Reno, NV

FEBRUARY
8th: Circus, Helsinki, FINLAND
9th: Klubi, Tampere, FINLAND
10th: House Of Rock, Kouvola, FINLAND
11th: Rock The Night, Aubiere, FRANCE

MARCH
13th: Umeda Club Quattro, Osaka, JAPAN
14th: Club Quattro, Nagoya, JAPAN
16th: Tsutaya O-East, Tokyo, JAPAN

APRIL
15th: Club Destroyer, Sundsvall, SWEDEN
21st: Madam Felle, Bergen, NORWAY
22nd: Hard Rock Cafe, Oslo, NORWAY

The band is now comprised of:
Graham Bonnet – Vocals
Conrad Pesinato – Guitars
Beth-Ami Heavenstone – Bass
Jimmy Waldo – Keyboards
Mark Zonder – Drums

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Four Rainbow shows in June 2017 are being advertised by British concert ticket vendors: London O₂ on the 17th, Manchester Arena on 22nd, Glasgow SSE Hydro on 25th, and Birmingham Genting Arena on 28th. All appear to be reserved seating and go on sale December 8 at 10:00 a.m.

Tickets will be available through:

• Ticketline
• Myticket
• Seetickets
• AXS

Update (Dec 7): All 4 British shows have been confirmed by Blackmore’s management, who also informs us that “there will be no other Rainbow concerts in Europe in 2017”.

The record company has posted a second teaser for the new Deep Purple album inFinite, due to be released early next year:
Continue Reading »

Back in 1969, the lineup of DEEP PURPLE had seen a drastic change: Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Paice split up with singer Rod Evans and bass player Nick Simper and hired the former EPISODE SIX musicians Ian Gillan and Roger Glover to complete the lineup.

One of the first shows to feature the new lineup was the live performance of Jon Lord’s „Concerto For Group and Orchestra“, an ambitious work to unite the different worlds of a rock band and a full orchestra which lay the foundation for Jon Lords career as composer / writer and solo artist. About a year later, the follow-up of the „Concerto“ faced the light of day during a live performance at the Royal Festival Hall, again featuring his DEEP PURPLE bandmates and conductor Malcolm Arnold.

Contrary to the „Concerto“, which took more than 40 years to be recorded in a studio, Jon Lord went to the studio in 1971 to record „Gemini Suite“ as a studio project. At that time, the rock career of DEEP PURPLE was in full flight and Ian Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore showed no interest in participating in the recording and were replaced by guitar player Albert Lee , multi talented Tony Ashton and singer Yvonne Elliman.

While the „Concerto“ had its focus on band and orchestra as a whole, „Gemini Suite“ did focus on the different instruments, dedicating a track to guitar, piano, drums, vocals bass guitar and organ respectively.

The first CD release was a straight release in 1987 on Line Records in Germany being the only official (and now long deleted) version until the remastered release on Purple Records more than 20 years later. The 2016 release is not based on any of those previous versions and features new artwork and a new remaster by Rob Cass, based on the original stereo mixes of the album.

Not owning the 2008 remaster, a comparison with the 1987 release shows quite some improvement in sound quality with more details being audible than on the original CD release. Luckily, the remaster doesn’t follow the popular trend of brick-walling every track and preserves the dynamics and overall feel of the original recording. The booklet gives no explaination why the original artwork has been dropped and was replaced by completely new design, but the new foreword by Roger Glover adds some enjoyable pages to the booklet.

Only thing to criticize is the record company did not use a proper Digipak for the release and decided to go with some LP-like fold-out papersleeve instead, resulting in your CD getting the first fingerprints and scratches before even being played.

It is now more or less official: Deep Purple will play the UK in November 2017 and the tour is being promoted as The Long Goodbye Tour. Tickets go on sale December 9, with presales starting a day earlier. Support for all 5 shows will be Europe.

There are also some a lot less official dates on European mainland in May and June. These remain highly unconfirmed, but look very plausible to our eyes. Some are going on sale in the coming days. At least a couple of German shows are being billed as “Farewell Tour 2017”, but do not read too much into it.

Full details in our calendar, which may be updated further quietly.

Ah, and one last thing: the first single for the new album Infinite will be released on January 20.

Thanks to Blabbermouth and Nigel Young for the info.

Several of our regulars contacted us wondering why we did not report on the rumours that upcoming Deep Purple tour will be their last. The truth is, there is not much to report. So far, there has been just that — rumours and innuendo.

Let me inject a healthy dose of scepticism into what you may have read elsewhere.

The first source of said rumours were the Hellfest organizers, who briefly put up a flyer suggesting that this will be the band’s last tour. It was quickly taken down and replaced with one without such claims. And we all know that promoters will say just about anything that will not land them in jail to sell tickets. So, on a scale of trustworthiness, this is rather close to 0 than to 10.

The second source (which Simon Robinson cited without link) is the Spanish site The Metal Circus. A post dated November 29 states that:

Hace escasos minutos hemos estado en contacto con una fuente muy cercana al management de la mítica banda británica Deep Purple, quien nos ha confirmado que, en efecto, Deep Purple se despiden de los escenarios de todo el mundo con su próxima gira.

Now, my Spanish is nonexistent, but Google translation does not bring in a lot of confidence either:

A few minutes ago we have been in contact with a [source] close to the management of the legendary British band Deep Purple, who has confirmed to us that indeed, Deep Purple [will say] goodbye to the stages around the world with their upcoming tour.

“A source close to management”? Really? I wonder what is Spanish for “hearsay”…

On a side note: personally, I decided some time ago to follow the example of a fellow fan and to treat every Deep Purple show as the last chance to see the band. Let’s face it: the esteemed gentlemen are getting to that stage in their lives, where anything can happen at any minute, and plans be damned. So, for me it does not really matter whether the band is planning their retirement or not. I’ll be just grateful if they indeed continue for another couple of years, as Gillan suggested in recent interviews, and will give me another chance to go and see them doing what they do best.

I wish you the same.

The first date of the 2017 Deep Purple tour — following release of the new album — has surfaced. Organizers of the Hellfest festival in France have posted next year artist lineup and Deep Purple is listed as one of the three headliners alongside with Aerosmith and Linkin Park. The festival runs June 16-18 in Clisson, France, and we’ll fill our calendar as soon as the exact date of the band’s appearance will become available.