Another book on the horizon, and it is a Whitesnake story by Martin Popoff, being published by Wymer.

In Walking in the Shadow of the Blues: The Whitesnake Story, the first ever full biography of the band, top music writer Martin Popoff tells the tale of rock legend David Coverdale, from his Deep Purple roots to the two distinct incarnations of his mega-popular creation.

Whitesnake began life as a UK-based blues rock outfit, until the lad from England’s chilly east coast transported the act to America’s sunny west coast in search of fame, fortune, big videos and even bigger hair. Coverdale found them all, and 1987’s self-titled album went eight times platinum in the US alone before the band’s bright star waned in the face of grimy grunge.

In this book, Popoff conducted 30 interviews of major characters, including Coverdale himself, to piece together the band’s roller-coaster history. He follows their story through the hirings and firings, the splits and reunions and the image changes which have enabled Coverdale, through his Whitesnake vehicle, to position himself firmly within the pantheon of hard rock greats.

If you’ve rocked out to anthems like “Here I Go Again,” “Fool For Your Loving,” “Still Of The Night” or “Slow An’ Easy,” this is essential reading.

Yes, for the job at hand, Popoff interviewed (and many of them multiple times), David Coverdale, Bernie Marsden, Neil Murray, Micky Moody, Adrian Vandenberg, Steve Vai, John Kalodner, Doug Aldrich, Keith Olsen, Ian Paice and many others, to deliver his usual album by chapter, with every song touched upon. So, what are you waiting for… Come An’ Get It!

What: Walking in the Shadow of the Blues: The Whitesnake Story
Author: Martin Popoff
When: September 19, 2025
Where: Wymer Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-915246-89-9
How much: £17.99

Pre-order through the publisher.

Deep Purple have headlined this past weekend the Best of Blues and Rock festival in São Paulo, Brazil. This marked their first public performance since November 10, 2024. The hiatus, previously explained in an interview by Ian Paice, stems from the intention to take the live performances easy this year, playing “a day here, three days there”, with touring to resume in earnest in the Fall.

Our man in Brazil Marcelo Soares reports from the festival:

Deep Purple’s only show in 2025, before November, was an open air gig at the Ibirapuera park, in São Paulo. The stage was at an auditorium designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, with the white walls serving as a screen for the live images that also were used behind the drums and organ.

The organizers of the Best of Blues and Rock festival had announced one day before that they had sold about 85% of the 15,000 maximum tickets — which means nearly 13 thousand tickets sold. There was room for that many people. Even the rain that insinuated itself in the morning made room for a beautiful sunset.

No new songs were played. We had pretty much the same set of the German tour in October, but three =1 songs were dropped to fit the festival duration. Otherwise, the running order was the same. The three new songs played in Europe but not here were Portable Door (!), Now You’re Talking and Old Fangled Thing.

Purple hadn’t played together, at least onstage, for seven months, so this was their first show this year. Their playing was as sharp as if they had played together the week before. It might have helped that they did some rehearsals in a studio in the city before the gig.

The three =1 songs included in the set (A Bit on the Side, Lazy Sod and Bleeding Obvious) were not well known by the crowd, but they were not shunned either. It’s more a factor of the record industry than anything else, indeed. Lazy Sod had more people singing along, because of the video. And the energy in Bleeding Obvious is a very strong high point for the show; even if few people sing along, most will dance.

It’s important to have this nice share of new material. The band is alive and creative, and all the press reviews of the concert made a point of noting that.

About the band themselves, what original thing can one say, having followed them for so long as we have? My wife, who saw them for the second time, got very impressed at their competence, energy and high spirits. I never cease to marvel at that also, but then I have witnessed it time and again since 1997.

Roger is energetic as always, with a shining smile. Seeing him jump onstage, you can almost forget he turns 80 in November. Wish I had half his knees. (He, too, or so a wise man told me.)

Gillan never leaves his wit at home. After When a Blind Man Cries, people kept shouting his name and he cut it all with an “enough of that already!”. He also announced he gave up on explaining what Lazy is about.

Don quoted some bossa nova and Aquarela do Brasil. For the encore, he wore a Brazil soccer team jersey, in a move to reclaim the jersey last seen at the Madonna gig in Rio.

Simon was acclaimed by the crowd. Before Smoke on the Water, when there was a seeming mix-up on what he should have done (in Germany he did a solo at that time), the crowd chanted his name. He has the chops and the swagger.

Paice seems to do with less effort, in his 70s, what he had to be an athlete to do in the 70s. He is a master of his craft, like all his colleagues.

The two opening acts were far better than I expected, especially Judith Hill — a family act, with her mother Michiko Hill on Hammond and synths, her father Pee Wee Hill on a funky bass and a voracious drummer. The older Hills met in a funk band in the 70s, and the rhythm in the show was simply hypnotic, in a great mood. I didn’t know her before, and now she has two new fans at the same address.

Before Judith, we had the Brazilian rock band Hurricane. They were very excited to be in the same bill as Purple, and their keyboard solo showed younger musicians are still listening, learning and practicing what Jon Lord and his contemporaries did.

There are musicians able and willing to carry the kind of music we love for at least as long as Purple’s career so far. It’s great to see all those generations in the same stage.

Setlist:

1. Highway Star
2. A Bit On The Side
3. Hard Lovin’ Man
4. Into The Fire
5. Guitar Solo
6. Uncommon Man
7. Lazy Sod
8. Lazy
9. When A Blind Man Cries
10. Anya
11. Keyboard Solo
12. Bleeding Obvious
13. Space Truckin’
14. Smoke On The Water

Encore:

15. Green Onions
16. Hush
17. Black Night

A few pieces of video evidence:

Thanks to Marcelo Soares for the review, and to mfg05 and Bruno Capelas for the video clips.

Blues Rock Review (somewhat belatedly) reviews Simon McBride’s Recordings 2020 – 2025 that came out a few months ago.

While hype around this collection of personal tracks (a original material and covers) has been very much hush hush (Deep Purple pun intended), it’s an exciting and intriguing glimpse into McBride’s accomplished, passionate, and versatile guitar playing,

The reincarnations on this LP are certainly a tick for the latter, with the Belfash native taking a straight ahead rock approach to songs by the likes of Free, Duran Duran, and…..Bill Withers. Funnily enough, it’s the Withers cover “Grandma’s Hands” (originally recorded by Bill Withers) that’s the biggest triumph. McBride’s hands and creativity bring funk, groove, and bluesy lines, without pumping out that all-so-important heart and soul.

Read more in Blues Rock Review.

Classic Rock magazine reviews Gillan’s Future Shock for their Album of the Week Club.

Fondly regarded in their day, mainly because of their proximity to the classic Mk II Deep Purple sound, it wasn’t until the release of Future Shock in 1981 that Gillan really came into their own. Preceded by the success of singles like the covers of Trouble and New Orleans, it also contained some of the best material vocalist Ian Gillan had leant his name to since his Purple heyday, not least the witty No Laughing In Heaven.

“It was really the start of me being publicly irreverent,” Gillan told us. “It harked back to when I was 13 years old, asking questions at Sunday school like, ‘Father, what was the immaculate conception?’, and getting answers like, ‘You have to have faith in God, my son. Faith will guide you’.

“And I began to realise that I didn’t believe in religion, and that God didn’t create Man, it was the other way round. The idea of going to heaven was anathema to me. The last thing I want to do is be stuck in heaven with the sort of people I’d like to avoid! That’s where this song comes from.”

Read more in Louder Sound

Thanks to Georgius Novicianus for the heads-up.

Steve Morse took part in a jam that happened in Annapolis, MD, on May 31, 2025. The occasion was the release of a novel Punk Force by Steve’s friend Ward Carroll. Ward is a retired navy F-14 Tomcat pilot, an author of books about life in an F-14 squadron (Punk series), a military commentator, and YouTuber. He plays rhythm guitar and sings here. The rest of the band consisted of SMB stalwart Van Romaine on drums, TJ Collins on bass, and Tom Butwin on acoustic guitar and vocals. They performed a set of hard rock standards, although nothing from Purple.

Thanks to SteveMorse.com for the heads-up.

CBC profiles Bob Ezrin with a lengthy interview, published on the occasion of him receiving a Governor General’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award today, June 14, 2025. Music-wise, the interview focuses on just the two “genre-defining” albums from his vast portfolio — Pink Floyd The Wall and Kiss Destroyer. He also mentions that he just got back home after spending a month in Nashville working with Deep Purple on a new album under the heading of Some guys never learn, which may or may not be the working title.

Thanks to CBC for the info, and to Nigel Young for the YouTube link.

A pretty comprehensive documentary on the life of Cozy Powell, who weaved in and out of the Purple family much of his career, and had played with… Perhaps it would be easier to list whom he hadn’t played with. It is lovingly put together from archival footage, contemporary and posthumous interviews with the people who knew him well. Enjoy! Continue Reading »

There was quite a bit of talk on these pages recently about the production of Rapture of the Deep, and the role of Michael Bradford in particular. Here is an extended interview with him from a couple of years ago, where he talks about working with Deep Purple, among many other things. The interview doesn’t provide all the answers, but it’s good insight into the mind of the producer. The whole chat is well over 2 hours long, so we’ll steer you straight to the Purple bits, which last for about 15 minutes.

Thanks to EveryoneLovesGuitar for the interview, and to Uwe Hornung for bringing it to your attention.

P.S. You won’t regret listening to the entire 2+ hours of the conversation. Michael is a fabulous storyteller, and boy oh boy, does he have stories to tell!

An acclaimed pioneer of psychedelia, funk, soul, and racial integration in music, Sly Stone (real name Sylvester Stewart) of the Sly and the Family Stone fame has passed away at the age of 82. Louder Sound quotes Glenn Hughes in their obituary:

The big turning point for me was when I first went over to America with my band Trapeze in the very early 70s. I turned on the radio and heard Sly & The Family Stone. The likes of Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding and Donnie Hathaway had influenced me vocally, but Sly Stone’s music had a deeper resonance. Especially on [fifth album] There’s A Riot Goin’ On. Thank You For Takin’ To Me Africa, Family Affair… songs like that. It sounded just superhuman to me.

When Sly sang he used two or three different voices, which influenced the way I started to sing, from real deep down to kinda screamy – that was just me. Well, it was going to be me.

When you play Stormbringer and you listen to You Can’t Do It Right, Hold On and Love Don’t Mean A Thing – the way Ritchie played, it’s funky. The way Ritchie hooked in with me, Paicey and Lordy, that’s some funky stuff. We didn’t use the word ‘funk’ then because that might’ve offended some rock fans. But it’s the whole core of who I am. Thanks to Sly Stone, when I joined Purple I added a swagger that wasn’t there before. I feel good about that.

Thanks to MacGregor for pointing this out.

Black Country Communion is on tour in Europe, and on June 7, 2025, they have performed at the Sweden Rock Festival, and Glenn Hughes was interviewed backstage by the Sweden Rock TV podcast. Continue Reading »