Another teaspoonful of the Nick Simper interview in Classic Rock. He talks about his dismissal from Deep Purple and still sounds more than a bit bitter about the whole affair:

It was definitely a body blow. It was a turnaround, when you consider I’d recommended Ian [Gillan] in the first place. He had the chance but rejected it. We auditioned about 200 people before we found Rod Evans – I bet Ian was thrilled to get that second chance in 1969.

When he did come on board, he made it very clear he wasn’t joining without Roger. I was definitely peeved.

I feel subsequent Deep Purple lineups have diluted what we created. They had success, you can’t deny that, but I’ve lost interest in it – it doesn’t do a lot for me musically.

About his stint with the Nasty Habits:

When I was asked to play with Nasty Habits and do Mark I stuff, I said ‘no way.’ But eventually I realised people still love those songs, and they haven’t had the chance to hear them live for a long time.

I was amazed at how packed the shows were, so we kept going. Now I’m getting ready to record bass for our first album of all-original songs.

Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.

Classic Rock has a promo piece for the Hard Road box set with several quotes from the rarely interviewed Nick Simper:

It was a very exciting time – the band was brand-new and we were thrust together to make the first album in 18 hours. I think we did a pretty good job.

It’s quite amazing that we recorded almost all live, and with only four tracks. I had to share a track with the drums. That put a lot of pressure on us; when that red light went on, none of us wanted to be the guy to mess it up.

I think that energy comes through. People say there’s something magical about 60s records and I’m sure that’s what it is – the adrenaline that came with recording that way, with no room for error, just being musicians in a studio together. That nervous tension definitely transferred to the vinyl.

Our US management wanted to grab the big dollar while it was available. Three albums in little over a year would never happen today. Once the money started to slow down we were just discarded. We worked and worked and worked – then we were treated as disposable pop artists. The Mark II version of the band never had that pressure.

I guess it’s almost heritage stuff now. Nobody would have thought that nearly half a century later there would be any interest in it. These reissues and box sets are like musical antiques and it’s lovely that people want to explore them.

Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.

Back in 1975 DEEP PURPLE MK III were playing their final shows, with the majority of the band and the audience not even knowing. Ritchie Blackmore, unsatisfied with most tracks on the latest DEEP PURPLE album “Stormbringer” collaborated with singer Ronnie James Dio to record a solo single (which grew to an entire album) and finally took the decision to leave DEEP PURPLE and form a new band called RAINBOW. During a short touring break before the last of the planned dates, Blackmore informed the management about his decision to leave and the management took the opportinity to bring in the Rolling Stones mobile recording studio to capture the MKIII final shows taking place in Graz, Saarbrücken and Paris.

As the band didn’t break up after Ritchie Blackmore left and the rest of the band continued with Tommy Bolin, the live recordings weren’t published as intended and it took until October 1976 for at least some of the material (the majority taken from the Saarbrücken show) to be released on an heavily edited live album called “Made In Europe”. Another 20 years later, “MK III The Final Concerts” was released, using mostly recordings from Paris with additional five tracks from Graz. In 2001 the Paris show finally got a release in its entirety and another 13 years later the still unpublished songs “The Gypsy”, “Lady Double Dealer” and “Smoke On The Water” of the Graz show are finally released under the “The Official Deep Purple (Overseas) Live Series” banner.

While the disc starts with quite straight performances of “Burn” (DC: that was the title of the album “Burn”), “Stormbringer” (DC: this is the title of the last album), “The Gypsy” (GH: this one’s called “The Gypsy”) and “Lady Double Dealer” (GH: this is called “Lady double dealer”) the show changes from “Mistreated” (GH: it’s a blues song called “Mistreated”) on with the inclusion of less or more extensive and inspired solo parts. While most of the original MK III stuff is fun to listen to, especially “Smoke On The Water” (DC: this is a song from the album “Made In Japan”) with Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale singing against each other sounds horrible and the inclusion of “Georgia On My Mind” and “With A Little Help From My Friends” during the end of the song sounds misplaced.

It is also audible that Ritchie Blackmore sounds closer to the soon-to-follow RAINBOW-days than to the Mark II era, even including bits and pieces of the soon-to-be-released “Still I’m Sad” during the intro to “You Fool No One” (DC: a song called “You fool no one”). The album concludes with “Space Truckin'” (GH: a song which has been with us quite a while), another MK II tune which sounds mistreated by the MK III vocalists and some strange instrumental parts.

Although it’s good to see at least some new stuff being released from the vaults instead of a record company publishing the same things over and over again, it’s annoying this release of the Graz show is still incomplete and lacks the encores. Hopefully the final product will clarify the reason as the press info doesn’t even mention the show being incomplete.

Tommy Bolin’s early band Zephyr debut album was released as a deluxe 3CD box set on May 27 this year on Cleopatra Records. The album was remixed by the founding member and bassist of the band David Givens. The boxset sold so well (the label itself apparently has only 3 copies left in stock), that it will be followed up on August 5 by a 1CD “light” edition, which will include remix of the complete album, plus live and studio jam bonus tracks from the second and third discs of the box set.

A 180-gram coloured vinyl pressing will follow later this year. This will contain just the remix of the original album (tracks 1-9 below).

Track list of the “light” edition

1. Sail On
2. Sun’s A Risin’
3. Raindrops
4. Boom-Ba-Boom
5. Somebody Listen
6. Cross The River
7. St. James Infirmary
8. Huna Buna
9. Hard Chargin’ Woman
10. Guitar Solo / Cross The River — Reed’s Ranch, Colorado Springs, 1969
11. Jam — San Bernardino, 1971
12. Uptown (To Harlem) — Boulder, 1971
13. Sail On — Tulagi’s, Boulder, 1973

Tracks 1-9 are from the original album, remixed and remastered; tracks 10-13 are bonuses.

Track list of the 3CD box set

Disc 1: The 1969 Debut Album

1. Sail On
2. Sun’s A Risin’
3. Raindrops
4. Boom-Ba-Boom
5. Somebody Listen
6. Cross The River
7. St. James Infirmary
8. Huna Buna
9. Hard Chargin’ Woman

Disc 2: The Live Cuts 1969-1973

1. Sail On
2. Hard Chargin Woman
3. Uptown (To Harlem)
4. Jam Cats
5. Repent Walpurgis (A Tribute To Brian Jones)
6. Guitar Solo / Cross The River
7. Rock Me Baby
8. Cross The River (Instrumental Section)
9. Jam
10. I Can t Find A Way (To Say I Love You)

Disc 3: Live at Tulagi’s (Boulder, CO – June 19, 1973)

1. Repent Walpurgis
2. Cross The River
3. Boom-Ba-Boom / Somebody Listen
4. Sun s A Risin
5. Huna Buna
6. Sail On

You can still grab a copy of the 3CD box set from the label (while they last) or from other retailers. For the 1CD version, you’ll have to wait until August 5.

Thanks to Classic Rock for the heads up.

Deep Purple performed at the Hohentwiel Festival in Germany on July 21, and paid a tribute to the German soccer team, which was recently crowned as world champions. The festival was held in the city of Singen, which means singing in German, and under the pouring rain Singing in the Rain jokes were, quite naturally, abound. Steve Morse even dropped fragments of the tune into his guitar solo spot.

Local e-paper SÜDKURIER has a full report (in German) and a photo gallery.

Roger Glover spoke to Ultimate Classic Rock on the occasion of upcoming North American tour. As usual with Roger’s interviews, it’s rather off the cuff and thus very interesting. He also once again confirmed that the band is working on a follow up to Now what?!, and it will be produced by Bob Ezrin.

Bob Ezrin has a diverse track record of projects and success that really speaks for itself. What did you like about Bob, as far as what he brought to the table for Deep Purple?

He was very decisive. There’s no leader of this band, so decisions can be a bit fraught sometimes. One person thinks this way, and another person thinks that. Bob was very good about picking out what the best idea was and sticking to it, and in the process not hurting feelings. Yeah, a few feelings got hurt. I remember going into the studio with a song that Ian Gillan and I had written called ‘Weirdistan’ and when we did the vocal session, I started with Ian and picked up an acoustic and we were going over what the song was going to be, and I heard from the back of the studio, Bob, who was hidden behind his computer doing something, said, “I’m not liking this!”

You need someone that you trust to be able to tell you the bad news. Because the tendency is that you want to protect yourself, you know, “But we wrote it — it’s us and we believe in it!” and he goes, “Nope, it doesn’t sound very good!” So, that was a great learning experience and it cut the time down a lot. Especially if you have a couple of days arguing about a song and not getting it right, he was very quick and decisive and you know, he’s a songwriter, so he knows his music. He came up with some very, very helpful suggestions. It was a match made in heaven and we’re going to do it again!

You mentioned working on another album and working again with Bob Ezrin. What can you tell us about that?

We had a writing session six weeks ago. We took a week in Portugal and funny enough, Iron Maiden’s bass player, Steve Harris, is building a studio there. It’s not quite finished, but he let us use the room, because the room was good. So we had about a week there and we’ve got about a dozen rough ideas down.

So from here on out, there will probably be another writing session later this year and maybe we’ll even start recording towards the end of the year — or certainly in the new year. But yeah, we’ve kept in touch with Bob. Bob has actually become a very good friend. He really enjoyed making the record with us, so it’s a no-brainer really that we’re going to do it again. I think that will probably be out sometime next year.

Go read more at the Ultimate Classic Rock.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Somewhere in between of looking for a new guitar player and warding off fridge intruders, David Coverdale also has been building in Reno, Nevada, a new studio for his band:

Thanks to Whitesnake TV for the clip.

BBC Radio is conducting an online poll of greatest guitar riffs. Smoke on the Water and Long Live Rock’n’Roll are in the running. The latter is quite a bit of a strange choice, but that’s a matter of taste.

Putting aside for the moment the meaningfulness of all such polls, online or offline, this one is only open for voters with kosher IP addresses UK residents. How open minded of the BBC!

Thanks to Marcus Streets for the info.

California Breed has added a string of dates in the US starting October 7 in Bethlehem, PA, and finishing on the 26th in LA. This side of the pond they will be supporting Alter Bridge. Tickets for most shows go on sale July 18.

Full details in our calendar.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

On July 20, after Deep Purple finish their set at the Guitare en Scene festival in France, Steve Morse will take part in a special all-star jam to pay tribute to the legendary Jimi Hendrix. The jam will start at 22:15 at the Chapiteau stage (the same stage where Purple are scheduled to start at 19:30). Steve Vai, Uli Jon Roth and Eric Sardinas have been also confirmed to partake.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov (deep-purple.ru) for the info.