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.

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