Classic Rock Revisited has a new interview with Glenn Hughes, talking about California Breed:

Jeb: What pushed you [to get an unknown guitar player]?

Glenn: I won’t say too much, but after Black Country broke up, it was kind of private, but some of my friends said that they could do some shows with Jason and me. It was really nice of them to say that, but I knew it would only lead to me wanting to do more with these guys, who were very famous guitar players. I knew if they sat in with Black Country that I would want to do more with them and they would not be able to do it, and it would be just like the scenario with Joe.

A few more months down the line we met Andrew. I wanted to make a specific type of rock album. It was difficult for me think who would play guitar, if it was not going to be one of my famous friends, or Jason’s famous friends. It was not going to be Jimmy Page. It was not going to be Steve Vai. I would have loved to play with these guys…like Slash. I love to play with Slash, but they would all be available to play sporadically, but not all the time, and I wanted a band. We got the opportunity to have this young man cast into our lives. I really believe in fate. I am old enough and wise enough to know to get out of my own way and to let something greater than me—I am not talking about God- but rather the greater universal thing of getting out of my own way and letting things flow. I am ambitious. I am a workaholic, but I am not the type of person who can do 100 things at once. I like to do one thing and I like to do it 100%.

Read more in the Classic Rock Revisited.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

California Breed played their first live show ever yesterday at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles. Here are three video clips of the performance.

Days They Come:

Burn:

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the heads up and to Bolinsstrat and Joseph Schaeffer for the video.

[Updated] Andy Fox from the Welsh radio station GTFM continues to provide an excellent coverage to all things Purple. This week he will be interviewing Ian Gillan in celebration of the Made in Japan reissue. His Rockshow is on the air every Thursday at 21:00 and can be listened worldwide online. For further listening options visit www.gtfm.co.uk or www.bcfm.org.uk (with the latter offering a much better sound quality option).

The show will be available to ‘listen again’ after the fact from the archive.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

The highly controversial Northern Cyprus gig held this past weekend was a free concert, organized by the Near East University on occasion of their 25th anniversary. Ian Gillan did interviews, parts of which you can see below (in piss poor editing):

Some more bits appear on the university web site, albeit still mostly exchange of pleasantries.

And for the sake of all this not to be your complete waste of time, here’s the (almost) complete show, filmed if not professionally, but with a decent camera on a tripod:

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info and to Nikita Turovsky for posting video of the gig.

Darker Than Blue has very amusing recollections from Ken Flegg, a former Marshall engineer, who accompanied the band on the trip to Japan in August 1972:

The third gig at the Budokan in Tokyo on the 17th August went well with no significant problems, other than the acoustics of the hall could have been better. Possible because of this the subject of the monitors came up again and Ian Gillan asked over the mic before Strange Kind of Woman: “Yeah everything up here please. A bit more monitor if you’ve got it.” Then Ritchie asks “Can I have everything louder than everything else?” which Ian Gillan repeats “Yeah, can he have everything louder than everything else.” This remained on the final master.

Read the whole thing in Darker Than Blue.

Bernie Marsden’s new solo album called Shine (about which we wrote in November) is ready and will be released on August 18 via Provogue/Mascot Records.

Although Marsden was wary of flooding the credits with too many special guests, Shine does feature some extremely well-known names, from Joe Bonamassa to Whitesnake singer David Coverdale and the Deep Purple duo of Ian Paice (drums) and Don Airey (keyboards).

Track list:

1. Linin’ Track
2. Wedding Day
3. Walk Away
4. Kinda Wish She Would
5. Ladyfriend
6. Trouble
7. Who Do We Think We Are?
8. Bad Blood
9. Shine
10. Dragonfly
11. You Better Run
12. Hoxie Rollin’ Time
13. NW8

If you preorder the album directly from the label, they promise to include a free poster.

Bernie talked about the album in his recent interview with Martin Popoff:

There’s quite a bit of Ready An’ Willing in there. And you know, we’ve got David singing on it, which is fantastic. You know, and getting him involved was really, really good for me. That felt really… I don’t know, what’s the word? It felt right. To do that track. To say, ‘Mate, do you want to sing on this?’ ‘Yeah, of course.’ So it was great. We didn’t have to ring up managers and stuff in order to do this. It was just two guys talking together. He did it and it was great. And then Joe Bonamassa got involved… well, Joe was involved really from the beginning, and it was through him that I got to meet these people from his record label. I’ve been playing with Joe off and on for about two years, invited out to his gigs and stuff and then finally the guys came out and said, ‘Hey, we’d like you to make an album for us.’ And it was great. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll make an album for you but I want Joe to play on a track’ (laughs). Joe’s great; he’s a really good guy but you know about him anyway.

Read the rest of the interview on BraveWords.

Another interesting quote from Bernie regarding the bad old times (this comes from a 2012 interview with the Geeks Of Doom, as quoted by Blabbermouth). The tough question was how he feels about later incarnations of Whitesnake rerecording his songs:

I thought Here I Go Again was fabulous because for me it was such a long time after I had written the song that I could listen to Whitesnake in that period as if I was listening to Journey or Forgeigner: it was just another band who were really good. But they were an American band by then [who] just happened to have the same name and the same singer and guy I worked with. Fool For Your Lovin, when they re-recorded that I felt it lacked some of the heart and soul of what the song was all about and I know that David has more or less said the same thing in interviews over the years. I think Steve Vai is a wonderful guitar player and he did a very good Steve Vai job on that track, but I didn’t think it had the heart of what the song was all about. So you win some, you lose some. But having said that it sold about three-and-a half, four, five million [copies], so I can’t complain too much! [laughs] It continues to do well to this day.

The week is over and final figures from the UK Official Charts Company are in. Both California Breed debut album and Made in Japan reissue made it to the Top 100, albeit to the lower than the mid-week positions. California Breed is at #26 (down from 16) and Made in Japan is at #71 (down from 28). They also charted at #1 and #4 respectively in the Rock & Metal Albums Top 40.

Friday morning (May 23) Glenn Hughes and Andrew Watt appeared on The Heidi & Frank Show on KLOS 95.5 FM radio station in Los Angeles. Watch excerpt from their interview:

An interview with Glenn Hughes recorded on March 24 during his publicity tour has recently appeared on the French TV Rock Live:

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

According to the preliminary midweek numbers issued by the UK Official Charts Company, both California Breed debut album and Made in Japan reissue are set to be in the Top 100 albums chart this week. As of Wednesday, May 21st, California Breed is at #16, and Made in Japan at #28. The final chart for the week will be posted on Sunday, May 25th, at 7pm.

Thanks to Nigel Young for the heads up.

In what Geoff Barton calls “the most un-rock’n’roll story of the year”, on May 19 Ian Gillan has opened a showcase garden for the Sutton Seeds company at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. Sutton Seeds is currently based in Paignton, Devon, which is just down the coast from Ian’s home in Lyme Regis. The region suffered from bad weather and flooding this past winter, and apparently the locals are keen to show that the crisis is over and the area is open for tourism again. The company is also said to be promoting a new variety of flower which is deep purple in colour.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen and Rock on Collectibles for the info. Photo: Gerry Edwards Flower Co.