Deep Purple live at SAP Arena (Mannheim, Germany 2013-11-02)

Powerful from start to finish with sweet humour from all the lads, Mr G. cracking puns and rabbiting funny stuff.
FRIENDS: they are NOT old, but older – ie even more experienced
They were ALL outstanding virtuosos … as were the crowd ( – and I reckon the top performance from the Peter team got us in a great mood B4 DP commenced. Peter was touchingly friendly with us).
Don is always brill. but he absolutely excelled himself. Dear Jon, who lives on in recordings, and Don, who when playing the Jon material delivers energy and honour, are A+++ with trademarks.
Ian was on the good ol’ form and there was a love affair with the crowd even better than usual (similar in Stuttgart). He was kind and conversational. Lets just put Regensburg down to his Mum’s departure to the beyond. (condolencies again Ian – hope Bruce relayed our message to you).

Hope they are back round here soon.

And a mention that personally I really like the SAP Arena acoustics – eg rich bass.

P, S. to Tracy: save ya pennies and come to Europe next time. The UK tours are even tighter with less than 40 miles between dates sometimes (eg in1996). The concerts are even funnier there cos the more of the crowd understand the fooling around

review by Roger

Deep Purple live at SAP Arena (Mannheim, Germany 2013-11-02)

We (six of us) went to see the boys in Mannheim. Peter Frampton was good and is still a master of the voice box and his several guitars. He played for an hour and on the setlist were eight songs.
At half past nine Deep Purple came to the stage and opened the show with a new track. IG said “the new record”. We saw them last year as well and everybody in the band was on fire on both of the nights.
Their energy and the fun they and the crowd have is so impressive. They played five new songs and they sounded very good. DA is magician playing the keyboards.
I like SM if he is playing his calm parts, and IP is still the reference for all drummers.
I took two songs and then the sound board had everything under control. The voice of IG was clear and he sounded very good. My highlight was Perfect Strangers. We saw and heard a nice version of Hush with Don and Steve playing nice solos and Black Night as the final song of the evening.
The band is back on track.

review by Jens Rothermel

Deep Purple live at Westfalenhalle (Dortmund, Germany 2013-11-01)

First of all let me make it clear that I was on the very skeptical side when I read the reviews of the Regensburg gig. Although I’ve always been a big admirer of Mr Gillan, I always hated it when he was struggling and I´ve witnessed that a bit too often recently. So I was very anxious before the Dortmund concert. I took my 13-year old son and would I have to be ashamed? Would I bring him to a bunch of old fellows beyond their prime, led by a frontman who cannot sing anymore and doesn’t communicate with the audience? Well, that wasn’t the case. Far from it. The opposite.
Mr Gillan delivered from A to Z, and boy did he deliver. There was not a single weak note. He was absolutely in command of his voice from the beginning to the end. Also he seemed to have a lot of fun and was very charming and enthusiastic about the audience, smiling a lot, too. He wore his medical boot, but that was hardly noticeable. Funny too, when he came on stage for the encore in a white crooner style dinner jacket and then changed into a shirt which looked like a black dinner jacket! More than a great job – thank you Ian!
The band has been praised more than once recently and very rightly so. Everybody was on top of their game, from Ian Paice’s solo in “The Mule” to Don’s and Steve’s breathtaking and very entertaining playing, to Roger’s cool bass solo during the encore.
The setlist was a dream. I was skeptical about “Apres Vous” as an opener, too, but it worked fabulously. They apparently put a lot of work into this show, for they very cleverly let songs shift into each other in a well rehearsed manner and connected them with little bridges, all very fluent and effortless.
It was a real rock show. Light and sound was flawless and with the LED backdrops the stage looked very professional and at times very dramatic.
Highlights were “Above and beyond” and by far “Perfect Strangers” which they played with a power and grandeur I don’t remember having heard on other tours (and I saw them all since 1985!). But then again, every song seemed to be the highlight. All new songs were great and the audience loved them all.
So, what can I say? Mind you, I’m not so easily impressed and saw them countless times before, but this was one of the best Purple concerts I’ve ever seen. And, phew, yes I definitely could take my son there. He was absolutely overwhelmed. Thanks again, gentlemen, for letting me be proud of you.
(Setlist as the previous gigs, maybe 3000-4000 people in a ¾-filled Dortmund Westfalenhalle.)

review by Joerg

Deep Purple (complete with the tree generation of the Airey clan) were featured on the local news in Düsseldorf, Germany, where they played on October 29. You can watch the news report on WDR.de (in German). The relevant segment starts at 12:44 into the programme and continues for 5 minutes.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

Opening with Après Vous instead of a staple tune on this tour was certainly a ballsy move on the part of the band. Here’s a good one, from Regensburg on October 25: Continue Reading »

Bild.de reports that while in Berlin Deep Purple have signed a guitar (a white Strat, no less) that is being auctioned now on Ebay. All proceeds will go to charity Ein Herz für Kinder (A Heart for Children) that promotes children health, education and welfare in Germany and abroad. The auction closes on November 9 and at the time of this writing (October 30) already fetches a hefty bid of €3,120.

About a month ago The Guardian interviewed musical duo Chas & Dave (the Chas part is none other but Chas Hodges of The Outlaws fame). He recalls an episode that happened in 1971 while supporting Deep Purple on tour:

And then lightning strikes Chas. “I forgot all about it, but we did a tour with them.” By “we”, he means Heads Hands and Feet, his pre-Chas & Dave band. “And I sat in with them when their bass player was ill. It was up in Scotland and I did a gig with them. I played with Deep Purple.” And it’s true: for one night only, on 8 March 1971, at Aberdeen Music Hall, Chas Hodges was Deep Purple’s bassist.

Thanks to The Guardian and Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Since its release earlier this month, Perfect Strangers Live enjoyed success in the charts. As the album was released on both video and audio, it had a chance to enter charts in both categories (where available):

• UK Music Video Top 40 #1 on (week ending) October 26, #8 on November 2; #15 on November 9, #31 on November 16
• Australia Music DVD chart: #6 on October 28; #23 on November 4
• Denmark Music DVD Top-10: #5 on week 42 (of the year); #5 on week 43, #7 on week 44
• USA Billboard Music Video Sales chart: #5 on October 30
• Germany Top Album Chart (audio album): #20 on week 43; #49 week 44
• Austria
  • Musik-DVD Top 10: #5 on October 25; #5 on November 1, #6 on November 8, #9 on November 15
  • Albums Top 75 (audio): #53 on October 25
• Sweden
  • DVD chart: #5 on October 18, #7 on October 23, #7 on November 1, #13 on November 8, #13 on November 15
  • Albums Top 60: #59 on October 25
• France Top 200 Albums (audio): #140 on October 26
• Belgium:
  • Flemish Album chart: #180 on October 26
  • French Album chart: #112 on October 19, #92 on October 26

If you have any confirmed chart positions, please post in the comments, preferably with a prooflink.

Thanks to Nigel Young and joroz for continuing updates.

I guess sometimes you have to be there to know. However here’s a couple more reviews from the UK tour, covering both sides of the coin….

Purple returned to Glasgow on the back of the great new album and we were intrigued to see how much they would change their set to accommodate it. We need not have worried as they surprisingly started with Après Vous and it was immediately clear that the new material had reinvigorated the band. Steve Morse and Don Airey traded licks throughout the show and the band were really enjoying themselves.
Ian Gillan was in the best form I’ve seen for years and his voice soared into the stratosphere at the end of Vincent Price. More surprises were to follow, not least when the Mule was resurrected complete with a classic Ian Paice drum solo.
Well worn favourites such as Highway Star were cast aside in favour of Hard Lovin’ Man and Into the Fire but this was not an issue as the ecstatic crowd lapped up the virtuosity of the frequent jams. Don Airey and Steve Morse excelled and did their predecessors proud. The band played Above and Beyond in tribute to Jon Lord and Ian Gillan put his heart and soul into the vocals.
The encores of Green Onions, a Roger Glover Bass solo and Black Night rounded the night off with a bang and the abiding memory is of Ian Gillan sitting on a monitor enjoying watching Morse and Airey blazing away in another guitar/organ duel.
A fantastic concert and we can only hope the success of this tour will tempt them into the recording studio again soon.

Andrew Jones

Stilton is a Mature Cheese that can go Off

Having been a fan for the last 45 years and seen the band many times over the years ( see earlier reviews) I was looking forward to the bands return to thr UK since I last saw them on their orchestra gig at the O2.
I had great tickets centre stage 15 rows back and was right in the middle of a great mix. We had been entertained by the unusual Rockbox who did a very good covers set with an unusual instrument line up.
After the anticipated warm up of the orchestral “Mars Bringer of War” they opened with Apres Vous. Now before I go any further I have mixed feelings about the new material and whilst the songs are well produced I dont feel the energy or exitement with any of the tracks that I could honestly say are classic purple and feel the album to be quite average and uninspiring.
Not a classic opener therefore but I appreciate they are promoting the album after all. Now Ian has always been my favourite rock vocalist but it would seem age is taking its toll and attempting numbers such as Into the Fire and Hard Lovin Man were painful for him judging by his grimacing and the resultant sound was sad for me to watch.
The band were in essence superb with a good mix and the usual solid tight sound. However, even the classics have become a little jaded and predictable. The new songs didn’t really do the band justice and Vincent Price sounded like a pet shop boys cover.
They finished with SMOTW and BN but why Ian was wearing a lurex jacket as if in some vegas tribute pastiche was embarrassing. I have adored this band for many many years and have all of their material and it was disappointing for me to leave the show without the warmth and satisfied excitement I have always felt from the band having watched their shows all around the world. The musicianship is still great and the classics are what they always will be but like a good cheese such as Stilton it can go stale after too much maturity.

Dave Bonner

The original management company Deep Purple (Overseas) has posted a teaser for the Made in Japan documentary that is being prepared for release some time early next year:

The documentary component highlights the Mark 2 period of the band with a focus on the recording of ‘Machine Head’, the friction that developed within the band, the recording of the famous Japanese 1972 concerts, and for the first time we will see the complete 1972 film recording.

The documentary will cover the period in band’s history starting from recording of Machine Head to Mark 2 implosion in June 1973. Most of the 26 minutes of live footage from Tokyo August 1972 is used, with both historical and new interviews overlaid in places of the show that were not filmed.

The documentary will be released in conjunction with the remix of the three Japanese shows.

Thanks to DP(o) for the info.