Deep Purple – Palais de sports, Grenoble (France – November 9th 2012)

Set list : Fireball – Into the Fire – Hard Lovin’ Man – Maybe I’m a Leo – Strange Kind of Woman – The Battle Rages On – Contact Lost – Steve Morse solo – Sometimes I feel like screaming – The Well-Dressed Guitar – The Mule (+ Ian Paice solo) – Lazy – No One Came – Don Airey solo – Perfect Strangers – Space Truckin’ – Smoke on the Water.

Encore : Hush – Black night.

A few impressions about the concert I saw yesterday night:

First of all: Ian Gillan is singing really well. He voice was good during the whole concert and (good news!) he didn’t try to catch all the high notes that sometimes are hard for him. It was nice to see him relax, happy with this incredible voice that we all love. When he is singing like that, everything works on stage and the rest of the band seemed confident, and played with passion and power.

An obvious fact: Ian Paice is on top form! I saw Purple maybe twenty times and I was really impressed by his playing in Grenoble. He is always pushing hard, but with such fineness. He always has something new to play during the old songs, things that you never heard from him, and it’s just amazing to watch him play.

The first three numbers (Fireball – Into the fire – Hard Lovin’ man) for the beginning of the concert were terrific, with an incredible energy: it works really well and Purple shows how a powerful hard rock band it is still!

I noticed a lot of highlights: “The battle rages on” because Don solo was incredibly good. “Sometimes I feel like screaming”, very stirring because of Ian Gillan performance, “Lazy” for the superb instrumental passages between Morse and Airey, “Perfect strangers” played with perfect vocals and a marvellous Arabian solo from Airey.
It was nice to hear “No one came” too. It’s a real fine rock number, one of my favourite, and Airey & Morse were brilliant.

The big surprise was “The Mule”. I never heard it live before. An incredible performance: it was so perfect, I thought I was listening the Made in Japan album! Ian Paice’s solo was excellent, and much longer than his solos of the 2010 tour.

As always in France, during his long solo, before “Perfect Strangers” Don played several notes of “La Marseillaise” our national hymn, and he was really well welcomed.

For the encores (“Hush” and “Black night”), the instrumental passages between Morse and Airey were really good and long.

At the end of the show, Roger Glover and Steve Morse stayed a long time on stage to thank us.

The set list for me was good; nevertheless, another “Purpendicular track” (my favourite record of the Morse era) would have been great to hear.

To sum up the evening: a stunning performance of the band!

Lionel Bouvet – Annecy (France)
bouvetlionel@hotmail.com

Joe Lynn Turner will be featured in the upcoming documentary Street of Dreams, which is currently in postproduction in Norway to be premiered at the Trondheim Dokumentarfestival on November 29.

The film is about Norwegian bass player Jan Erling Holberg — the man behind JLT’s 2011 album Sense of Time. Although educated at LIPA, Jan Erling never made his way into the world of the stars. Meanwhile, he has been living a normal family life with wife and kids in a small community in Norway. He had everything a man could ever want. House, boat, stabile job and a beautiful family. Despite of this, Jan Erling got depressed. His 30 year old ambition of becoming a professional musician seemed to fade away into a suburban dream. Jan Erling decided to do something about it before it was too late.

Recording demos at night resulted in a handful of tracks that raised the attention of his childhood hero Joe Lynn Turner. Jan Erling quit his job, raised the money on his own and a year later he was closer than ever before to fulfil his dream.

Director Håvard Gossé Bergseth says:

This is an universal story of never giving up, seizing the day and following your heart. We want to give the viewer the feelgood-sensation as we follow our main character, Jan Erling, at home, in the studio, the kindergarden, skiing in the mountains and of course on tour. But will Jan Erling ever become a rockstar? My goal for this film is to reach out to a broad audience. This is not only a film for the fans of Joe Lynn Turner, but for every preson that ever had a dream about wanting more of life than the A4-existece.

The documentary movie will follow Jan Erling through the beautiful landscape of Norway as he gets his first and only chance of a major breakthrough on tour with his favourite vocalist of all times – Joe Lynn Turner. We will follow him on his ups and downs to see if his dream of becoming a rock star will be realized or if he has to go back to his former job and a anonymous life in his wooden house by the fjord.

The project have recieved financial support from Midtnorsk Filmsenter and Hemne Kommune.

Produced by Christian Falch @ Gammaglimt AS
Directed by Håvard Gossé Bergseth
Cinematography by Viggo Knudsen
Edited by Marius Smit

Thanks to Gustavo Solinas for the info.

earMUSIC has released a trailer for the upcoming extended version of the new studio recording of Jon Lord’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra:

The extended version will include an 80-page book containing Paul Mann‘s and Marco de Goeij‘s essays, plus photographs, and a DVD with the documentary about the making of the recording. It is due to be released on December 7.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

Whitesnake will tour UK in May next year, sandwiched between Journey and Thunder, who are also on the bill. It actually appears that Journey will be headlining. Ticket presale starts November 8 at 10am, with sale to general public opening next morning.

Full details in our calendar.

Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.

Martin Popoff has published a short ebook about Gillan’s album Glory Road.

In a cheeky mood, I’ve been known to call Gillan my favourite band of all time, given the insane charm of all six of their albums, the guys burning it out before they could screw up (just like another one of my fave raves, Max Webster).

This dollar “print single” can be consider a canned history of a band seldom talked about in detail, so I’m particularly proud to unleash it upon all you like-minded ancient metal lovers.

Gillan… man, they were a cross between Deep Purple and Tygers Of Pan Tang, weren’t they? With a crazy circus organist chucked on top, one who helped write a lot of the songs. Unfortunately, Colin Towns wouldn’t talk to me, but the irrepressible Ian Gillan did, as did Bernie Torme and John McCoy. Surprised to see I didn’t include any of my chat with drummer Mick Underwood in here, but you’ll see him in the future, when I get around to giving you the story of Future Shock, follow-up to our current concern Glory Road, which is the third album for these punk metal nutters gone newobbim…

The book is available as an app for Apple devices at the iTunes store and as a high resolution DRM-free PDF from zunior.com for everything else (and priced for a buck, it won’t break the bank).

There is also a book/app about Whitesnake’s “Ready an’ Willing” in the same series.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

David Coverdale will be featured in a new documentary A Passion for the Vine produced by Zan Media in Novato, California. NovatoPatch has some of the backstory:

[…] Coverdale blitzes in from a private plane with what appears to be an entourage — a beautiful young woman, a chauffer and others. This is not the hard rock man from the videos I have watched online. This man embraces the entire room with warm eyes, kissing everyone on both cheeks, dropping hysterical one liners three times faster than Jay Leno in his most shining moment — all with Richard Burton’s voice. David Coverdale could charm a cloistered nun to sin in a New York minute.

Read more in NovatoPatch.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen for the info.

It seems that having a TMZ moment is all the rage in the hard rock scene right about now. Between Bill Ward/Black Sabbath feud, Queensryche split, and Black Country Communion falling out, popcorn afficionados are getting thoroughly entertained. Now, a band that has been defunct for a good 15 years decided to add their own drop to the bucket.

In a recent Blackmore’s Night interview Candice Night said that Rainbow demise was caused by two members of the band (not the drummer and not the keyboard player, which leaves Doogie White and Greg Smith on the hook) tried to “blackmail” Blackmore for extra money.

In his interview to Blabbermouth Doogie White spoke in an attempt to set the records straight:

In the 16 years or so since I left Rainbow, I have never spoken publicly about my reasons for leaving. The truth is that I don’t believe it’s anyone’s business but Ritchie’s and mine.

It was therefore with some interest (and a raised eyebrow or two) that I listened to the interview given by Candy on WRCN. I have to say that her version of events came as a surprise to say the least.

If interested, read more on Blabbermouth.

Aww, I miss the days when messrs Blackmore and White were able to communicate more like this:

Thanks to Classic Rock for the info.

As it’s becoming a good tradition, Ian Gillan was interviewed by NevexTV in St.Petersburg, and it pretty much turned into his rant about freedom of speech, the EU, future of our species, rabbis and vicars, cars and trains, age and death… and a little about music:
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The entire Black Country Communion’s new album Afterglow is available for streaming from Soundcloud courtesy of Joe Bonamassa:
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If the stars will align right, the world live premiere of the new Deep Purple album will happen in New Zealand, where the band kicks off 2013 touring schedule on February 24, followed by six more dates in Australia. New Zealand ticket presales start on November 7, with the sale to general public followed on November 12. Australian tickets go on sale to general public on November 12. This leg of the tour will be supported by Journey.

In related news, Italian promoter Barley Arts just announced three dates in July 2013: 21st in Vigevano, 22nd in Rome, and 24th in Udine.

Full details in our calendar.

Caveat: as of the time of this writing, none of these dates appear on either of the official sites. Proceed at your own risk.