Ian Gillan gave an interview to Classic Rock on the occasion of, ahem, 27th anniversary of The House of Blue Light release. He spoke about doing crosswords, cooking breakfast, fixing his roof (and he did’t mean a hair transplant), and the importance of always ending up at the pub. And what’s a good interview without some amusing anecdotage?

I remember when we did Perfect Strangers I was still signed individually to Virgin, and I went to London to play Richard Branson my new solo album. I went in and he and his team were all there in a playback room. I gave him this cassette with all the tracklisting on it and he put it in the deck. There was all this feedback, and then you heard ‘Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black-and-white cat…’! My daughter had recorded over the thing. Un-bloody-believable!

Read more in Classic Rock.

Jeb Wright interviewed Roger Glover for the Goldmine magazine. They started with Now what?!, but quickly switched to topics not covered in recent interviews. Roger touched upon a couple of things that to say always cause heated debates on this site would be an understatement of the millenium:

GM: How do Steve Morse and Don Airey compare to Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord?

RG: In a word, they don’t. If we had replaced Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord with look-alikes, or sound-alikes, or anything-alikes, then it would have been a shame. It would have been hanging on to past lulls too much.

You have to change. When someone else comes into the band, you can’t expect them to be anything but themselves. Our band really works together when we are all 100 percent ourselves, as then there is nothing pretentious going on.

Steve and Don bring different colors to the palette. I love the early stuff that we did; don’t get me wrong. I am very proud of it, but we are who we are now, and that is really all we can be.

GM: “Now What?!” has a lot of songs that would sound great in concert, but how can you put these songs in a live set when the set is already filled with such classic songs?

RG: That is going to be a battle, isn’t it? We are looking at playing at least four or five of the new songs in concert. We suffer a little bit from the fact that we don’t change the setlist enough for most hard-core fans.

The truth of the matter is that people want to see and hear songs that they know. It is difficult to not recognize that people want to hear “Lazy,” “Highway Star” or “Black Night.” Although, most people around the world, most audiences we go to, in Eastern Europe especially, are teenagers and young people. We get to relive it all through them, which is a great experience.

To be honest, after so many decades of playing “Highway Star” every night, we dropped it this last tour. You can’t please everyone, so we will just have to continue to please ourselves.

Read more in Goldmine. As it is often with Roger’s interviews, there’s quite a bit more stuff in there that is quite interesting.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

David Coverdale has contributed guest vocals to his former guitarist Andrian Vanderberg’s new band MoonKings. He recorded Sailing Ships which will appear on their debut self titled album due on February 24 via Mascot Records.

Thansk to Classic Rock for the info.

Vincent Price took 3rd place in Classic Rock’s Song Of the Year 2013 poll.

The top 10 is:

1. Dream Theater – The Enemy Inside
2. Stone Sour – The Uncanny Valley
3. Deep Purple – Vincent Price
4. Black Star Riders – Bound For Glory
5. The Temperance Movement – Only Friend
6. Fish – The High Wood
7. Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa – Strange Fruit
8. Michael Monroe – The Ballad Of The Lower East Side
9. Motörhead – Lost Woman Blues
10. The Answer – Spectacular

See the full list on Classic Rock site.

Polls like this can be more accurately characrerised as a test of online fandom coherence rather than popularity. Not that there’s anything wrong with other entries on the list. Pretty much any track there is worth checking out, you never know if you might (re)discover another band that you like.

Happy New Year everyone!

The Schubert in Rock project, led by Austrian musician Klaus Schubert, performed in Innsbruck on December 6. It and featured quite a few members of the Purple family with Don Airey on keyboards, Neil Murray on bass, Klaus Schubert himself on guitars, and Bernhard Welz on drums; with vocal duties shared between Tony Martin, Joe Lynn Turner and Doogie White.

Austrian public broadcaster ORF has a report about the project. You can view it online at orf.at (the report starts around 1 hour mark into the show and lasts for 3 minutes).

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Glenn Hughes has just finished working on a new album in Nashville, and Julian Lennon (son of John) contributed guest vocals to it:

Jules is the ONE who helped me put our new band together. We all love you Jules. Yes. Jules and I are singing together on the new Nashville album. He is in Monaco. We sent him the files last night ~ which he recorded in record time. We received them back 4 hours ago! Trust me. Jules is the real dang deal…

Julian wrote:

The One & Only Glenn Hughes et Moi, singing together for the first time ever last night. Even if we are 4746 Miles apart… Technology Today… Who would have thought…

Thanks to GlennHughes.com for the info.

Cameron Crowe’s official site The Uncool has a reprint of his article in Rolling Stone #184 from 1975, based on an interview he did with Ritchie Blackmore just a couple of days after the first Rainbow single was penned in the studio.

Jacksonville, Florida – Ritchie Blackmore’s face fell into a tortured grimace. “Fucking hell,” he growled through a mouthful of steak. “This tastes like burnt rubber!” Fuming, he sank a fork into the meat and flung it across the dining room of the high-rent restaurant. The maitre d’ hustled up to the Deep Purple guitarist.

“Is something wrong with your steak, sir?”

Blackmore looked down at his now meatless plate. “What steak?”

“The steak you’ve just thrown across the room.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Blackmore smiled innocently. “The steak was fine. It’s the baked potato that’s a bit… well, overcooked.”

“Very well, sir. I’ll find you a new one.”

“No, no. Don’t worry about it.” Blackmore picked up the potato and chucked it into the kitchen door. “Could I have my check please?”

Continue reading on The Uncool.

On a side note, this is how none other but Rolling Stone itself described Deep Purple in 1975:

Throughout Europe, the Far East, Scandinavia and Australia, Purple’s relentless power riffing has held a massive following ever since their first 1968 hit, “Hush.” In America, where the band soared to supergroup status two years ago with the success of “Smoke on the Water,” their newest album – Stormbringer – is already a gold addition to their nine-LP catalog on Warner Bros. According to a company spokesman, no one, not even Elton John, the Allman Brothers Band or Led Zeppelin, sells more records worldwide. […] After a turbulent seven-year existence, Deep Purple have made their home at the top of the heavy-metal heap.

‘One hit wonder’, my ass…

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

During the March break in Deep Purple touring Don Airey will embark on a short European tour to promote his new album Keyed Up. It starts on March 13 in Switzerland and finishes on the 23rd in Belgium. See our calendar for further details.

Thanks to Six Concerts and Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

Glenn Hughes is in the studio in Nashville, working on a new album throughout December. Read his studio reports on GlennHughes.com:

[December 11th, 2013]

Today is the first day of the new album… I’m ready. Full of glorious passion and fire ~ wish you were here!!

It’s all going splendid here @ the Studio. Reckless… don’t forget to breathe…

First day in Nashville went extremely well. All love …all faith… Till the end.

Loving Nashville. A music Mecca. Lovely people… who love to rock. Love you all…

When record deal is signed (soon!) I can announce. I feel and hear you. Expect Rockswagger… Groove… And HEAVY!

Thanks for your patience…

GH

Don Airey’s new solo album is set to be released in February. Full press release follows:

‘Keyed Up’, the new studio album from renowned keyboard maestro Don Airey will be released through Music Theories Recordings, a division of Mascot Label Group on 17 February 2014 [Cat. No. MTR 7408 2]. This is Don’s fourth studio set, and his third to be released through the label. The album features many of Don’s friends and peers and, sadly, represents one of the very last times that Gary Moore recorded a guitar part. He – a long time associate of Don – features on ‘Adagio’ and also on ‘Mini Suite’, which is dedicated to his memory.

Don said, “I loved having the responsibility of pulling together the sessions at Chapel Studios. The album was basically laid down live, no overdubs, no redoing – we don’t do filesharing. There are wonderful musicians on this record, I call them ‘the band that never was’, as it’s a true pleasure to work together but opportunities are so limited. Being in a band like Deep Purple, especially with the success we’ve had this year, should be enough; but I need another outlet. Some of the music is straight ahead rock, a tribute to where I’ve come from, but there’s variety – ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk’ was the piece I played on my first radio performance aged 14. There are plenty of weird sounds too, most from the Hammond; a lot of it wasn’t planned, I just got carried away with the moment!” The band on this record was Don Airey on Keyboards, Darrin Mooney [Primal Scream] on drums, Laurence Cottle on Bass, Rob Harris [Jamiroquai] on guitar and Carl Sentance [Vocals]. Guest performers include the aforementioned Gary Moore, Graham Bonnet, Simon MacBride, Alex Meadows and Tim Goodyer. The engineer was the amazing Ewan Davies.

The tracklisting of the album draws from throughout Don’s career and also takes in some of his influences, with twists upon familiar themes. Don has performed with a host of the most important bands in the rock canon, from Cozy Powell to Colosseum II to to Sabbath to Rainbow to Ozzy Osbourne and of course, ultimately to Deep Purple, via sessions for innumerable peers and this experience and panache illuminates ‘Keyed Up’. This is an album that wears its virtuosity easily and never loses sight of its sense of fun, ‘Claire D’Loon’ anyone? ‘Difficult To Cure 2013’ is a version of The Rainbow favourite re-arranged to include Beethoven’s double fugue, whilst the ‘Godbox’ referenced in the seventh track was Fats Wallers’ nickname for the Hammond organ.

What: Don Airey — Keyed Up
When: February 17, 2014
Where: Music Theories Recordings
Track listing:

1. 3 In The Morning
2. Beat The Retreat
3. Blue Rondo A La Turk
4. Solomon’s Song
5. Claire D’Loon
6. Flight Of Inspiration
7. Inside
8. The Godbox
9. Difficult To Cure 2013
10. Mini Suite
    a) Lament/Jig
    b) Restless Spirit
    c) What Went Wrong
11. Adagio
12. Grace

Musicians:

• Don Airey — keyboards
• Darrin Mooney — drums
• Laurence Cottle — bass
• Rob Harris — guitar
• Carl Sentance — vocals

Thanks to Chris Hewlett for the info.