Some time in April Glenn Hughes performed a couple of tracks from the California Breed album at the Planet Rock Live Session.

Breathe:

The Grey:

In other news, he revealed in an interview to Billboard that last year he underwent a heart surgery to replace an aortic valve. This happened “less than four months” before hitting the studio with jason Bonham and Andrew Watt.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

The new edition of Made in Japan is just around the corner, and SuperDeluxeEdition.com already has a photo gallery of the 4CD+DVD box set:

See more at SuperDeluxeEdition.com.

Thanks to mr.trinity for the info.

Once in a while we get letters from our readers with a cool story like this:

Just a little memory of mine:

Pictured is a guitar pickup and ticket stub from Deep Purple concert at Long Beach Arena, California 11/20/1974. My parents let me ditch school to stand in line all day at the Long Beach arena for this show. I was second row center standing when Blackmore threw the destroyed guitar just to the right of me. I dove in, gotta handful of stuff and janked. I got this souvenir and a cut up hand.

Question: any idea what kind guitar was destroyed? Obviously a Fender. Was he just destroying whatever he played or did he have new extras just to smash?

I thought you might enjoy, feel free to share.

Brad Peatross

In anticipation of the short 3 date Blackmore’s Night stint on US East coast, ProgSheet published an interview with m’lord and m’lady:

PS: When you look for musicians to play in Blackmore’s Night, what are you looking for beyond a certain level of musical ability?

RB: With most bands, with my history being with Purple and Rainbow, if anybody joins they know there’s lots of people that want to be in that type of band. With this project people are a little bit more reluctant. It’s like “What are you playing? What are you doing?” It’s a cross between renaissance rock music, folk ballads, and mystical music. I don’t know too many bands that have done it. I can’t think of any. You have purist bands that don’t do the rock side. We try to do both. It’s a very strange concoction sometimes. To me it’s not.

It is tricky because sometimes we get people auditioning for the band and all they want to do is play rock and roll. We say “this is not what we’re doing here.” Then we get the other extreme. We’ll have classical musicians who don’t want to play any rock and roll. We always have that challenge.

CN: I feel like we have a long list of criteria when we audition people to be in the band. One of the things that really narrows down whoever’s left is the fact that they can’t only play one type of music. There’s a lot of people out there that can play one type of music really, really well. That’s the skill that they’ve honed. It’s very rare to find someone who is versatile enough to be able to play Gypsy music, pop music, tavern music, renaissance music, rock music, and instrumental music. Really, that’s the variety that we provide on stage and on our albums. It’s harder to find people that have that versatility. Once you find those couple of people that are left standing – that can actually do that – you have to make sure that they’ve got a personality that will fit with the band. That they’re willing to dress up. If it’s a male – he’s willing to wear tights and a renaissance shirt.

RB: Women’s clothing.

Read more on ProgSheet.

Thanks to Mirko Dörner for the info.

The seminal Purple album of the past 20 years — Purpendicular — will be reissued on CD on June 16th in the UK on an independent label Cherry Red Records. We have not been able to obtain from the label any clarification regarding whether it will be remastered or not, but my money is on the latter. This reissue will include two bonus tracks: Don’t Hold Your Breath and a single edit of Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming.

Cherry Red Records seem to have secured licenses to the rest of the band’s BMG back catalogue (now owned by Sony) as well.

The expanded edition (2002 remix) of the original 1969 Concerto for Group and Orchestra recording will be issued on 3LP vinyl on June 27 in Germany and June 30 in the UK. Was this remix ever released on vinyl? — feedback appreciated.

Track list:

1. Malcolm Arnold’s 6th Symphony Op.95 First Movement: Energico
2. Malcolm Arnold’s 6th Symphony Op.95 Second Movement: Lento
3. Malcolm Arnold’s 6th Symphony Op.95 Third Movement: Con Fuoco
4. Hush
5. Wring That Neck
6. Child in Time
7. Concerto for Group and Orchestra – First Movement: Moderato – Allegro
8. Concerto for Group and Orchestra – Second Movement: Andante
9. Concerto for Group and Orchestra – Third Movement: Vivace – Presto
10. Encore – Concerto for Group and Orchestra – Third Movement: Vivace – Presto

The label, rather surprisingly, is Parlophone. Both the original album and 2002 expanded edition were on another EMI label Harvest. Only the first two Mark 1 albums originally appeared on Parlophone. When EMI was put on the chopping block in 2012, Parlophone was acquired by Warner, while most of the rest — by Universal. So even after 40 years of corporate dog eat dog, it appears that the band’s back catalogue is still split between 3 major labels. This time it’s Universal, Sony and Warner.

Thanks to Lutz Reinert for the info.

Clif ‘Cooky’ Crawford was Blackmore’s guitar tech between 1981 and 1988. A couple of months ago his reminiscences started being posted on Facebook and elsewhere. They are, for the most part, an amusing read. Quotes below are unedited for extra flavour 😉

Making of Bent Out of Shape:

by the end of 1982 it was time for another personnel change.this time it was my old friend and employer bobby rondinelli.this came as such a shock to me as it was bobby who brought me to these heights in the music business.i had been on and off with bobby since 1977.anyway a new drummer was needed and we went about auditioning drummers for a long time.we must have had 4-5 guys that were supposed to have made it in but once in the studio it didn’t work out. every drummer i knew came down to play but none really worked out for one reason or another.we were also playing alot of soccer and the new recruits were expected to play.many a drummer who thought they were in good physical shape were very disappointed in themselves as a couple of hours on the soccer pitch usually killed most of them off!!they’d head into the studio after playing soccer and were so tired at this point that their timing would be shot…

Rainbow — Live Between the Eyes:

“live between the eyes” recorded in san antonio texas in middle of 1982 american tour shows rainbow at their peak with this lineup, in my opinion.while joe lynn turner wasn’t as heavy metal a singer as ronnie james dio he did have an incredible voice and range and was always in great vocal shape.bobby rondinelli on drums was a powerhouse and also played better when people were watching. david roesenthal was again in my opinion the best keyboardist to play in rainbow and you could tell by the interaction with ritchie. he loved playing back & forth with david as david was pitch-perfect and could mimic anything ritchie came up with. roger glover was the catylist who held it all down and was a jack of all trades and producer of the album…

Rainbow — Straight Between the Eyes:

after multiple tours in 1981 we went to killington vermont for rehearsals for new lp and new member david rosenthal this was another ski resort area where you can get a large house in the woods and not have to worry about waking anyone up at all hours when inspiration struck. they also had multiple bedrooms and were fairly easy to rent for short periods of time. from there to morin heights canada to le studio 100 miles north of montreal in the heart of the winter. this studio had great reputation and great facilities. the Police had just been there for parts of “ghost in the machine”. it was the home base for Rush as they did multiple things here. the owner guy carboneau was a great guy and nick blagona was the best engineer around and all around fun guy. ritchie liked the snow and solitude of being kind of stranded up in a chalet with nothing but the people working with him and very few distractions. we burned more wood there for staring into fires than the locals did in 6 yrs and then some of the furniture went !

Rainbow Live in Japan and Deep Purple reunion:

…once we got home to new york maybe a week went by and ritchie called me and asked me to pick him up in the morning and take him to greenwich conneticut where he was to attend an important meeting…little did i know i was bringing him to meet with his manger(bruce payne) and ian gillan,jon lord,ian paice and of course roger glover…. i think he told me halfway there but it didn’t sink in until i opened the conference room doors and sitting at the table was these same famous chaps.i was quickly introduced to each of them and immediately shook their my hands.they were all extremely excited to be together and it was a magical feeling as this was the first time they were in the same room together in 11yrs!!….when i got home i called raymond d’addario(production manager) to tell him he didn’t work for rainbow anymore! then i added…because we now work for deep purple!!!!!i think this blew his mind as he had worked for elf when they opened for deep purple back in the day..now he was the production manager for a super group about to start rehearsals in stowe vermont followed by a reunion album recording and a gigantic reunion tour to start in december 1984 in perth australia…

Perfect Strangers rehearsals:

…as all the equipment arrived so did the band and we set up at a place called horizons which was a large ski house on the side of part of a mountain over looking stowe. we used the basement to jam and it came together pretty quickly as they just started playing like they were never apart.ritchie had lots of ideas and i remember roger saying how they were now going to start playing and making a very heavy album.they were all on the same page there…ritchie and jon lord played alot of classical sounding things by themselves and were very much in tune with each other.roger and ian paice would jump in and off they’d go.there was nothing but smiles all around as everyone knew this was going to be big!…we even had some locals sneeking around the property having heard thru town that deep purple were here. it was a very special time as most of the locals soon heard rumours about us being in town and were soon joining us in games of soccer and drinking with us at the pubs…

Thanks to Dima Zykov for heads up.

Jon Lord being interviewed by Jools Holland about his friend, the late Jim Capaldi, drummer and co-founder of Traffic:

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

It took only 42 years, but finally Smoke on the Water now has an official video:

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Glenn Hughes gave an interview to UK radio station Harborough FM, appearing on the Friday Night Rock Show. He spoke about California Breed, set the record straight about his experience in a trio environment, shared which drummer he played with never made a mistake, and explained the difference between big rock and proper rock.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

In a new interview with One On One Glenn Hughes explains why after the BCC fiasco he and Jason Bonham didn’t want to continue with another big name guitar player.

Listen here (mp3, 28MB) if the player above doesn’t work.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.