![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/glover1.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride4.jpg)
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 »
The physical single for Lazy Sod was released on CD and vinyl on October 11, 2024, with a whopping circulation of 2,000 copies worldwide (not clear if this is for each format, or combined total). In this day and age, even that landed it in the British charts:
All for the week of 18 October 2024 – 24 October 2024.
Thanks to Marcus for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing