Courtesy of earMUSIC, The Highway Star is reviewing Deep Purple’s new album =1. As we are fast approaching the end of The Long Wait for its release on July 19, this segment looks at the album’s last two songs.

Deep Purple’s first studio album with new guitarist Simon McBride is one highly anticipated piece of music. For the first time in 30 years(!), the much coveted guitar position in Deep Purple has changed hands (literally), and while the new guy has already proved himself on tour for all to see, new studio material is what really counts.

Happily, the newfound energy witnessed onstage also permeates their new music. As such, the =1 album shines a proud and inimitable Purple beam that is also illuminating new musical corners in their 56 year career. Quite the feat.

We assess this music on the premise that Deep Purple is a band of elderly gentlemen who miraculously and luxuriously have not had to stop playing. And play they do. As if their lives depend on it, which of course suggests that music is their raison d’etre. Let’s be thankful for this.

After more than a month of listening, =1 stands tall as an incredibly strong-willed set of songs brimming with energy and imagination. There’s no going through the motions here from any of them. They sound so … inspired.

Which brings us nicely to the album’s final two songs – incidentally also two of the most accomplished and difficult to describe. Deep breath.

12 – I’ll Catch You – is a slow one, reflective and somber and quite different to everything else on the album. Bluesy but not an actual blues and with a very powerful performance from Ian Gillan over a gentle and supportive backing.

I guess that it’s to be expected
When I have to talk this way
When I have to speak in tongues
I want to say what can’t be said

I have to keep a straight face
When I’m breaking up inside
If you know who, knew what I thought
Then we’d both be crucified

I dream about you every night
But you’re just beyond my reach
So now you never know my touch
And we shall never meet

Mother Nature’s keeping her socks on
Father Time is gonna be late
Ships at night are passing silently
And our love will have to wait

My bags are always ready
My keys are in the car
Anytime you want to jump
I’ll catch you in my arms

SOLO

I’ll catch you in my arms
Anytime, Anytime, anytime you want to jump
I’ll catch you in my arms

Gillan’s voice and words show pain and longing. At a different time, he sang enthusiastically about breaking into her open heart. Now his open wounded raw delivery reveals a frailty that is both powerful and heartbreaking. As he shakes his listener, the tears are real. Deep breath.

13 – Bleeding Obvious – is the final song on =1. It has been in the live set for a while, so you may have spotted the YouTube clips. With an intense and unpredictable riff, we’re off to a very busy start, building up to the first verse.

The full-on verse gives way to a gentler chorus, then a left-field naughty chord deftly cleanses the palate before the next round.

For the solos section, the guitar and bass lift off from an Eastern viewpoint, ascending and accomplished. Then a new section arrives. Measured and masterful. Then a haunting staccato section all too brief takes us into a softer melodic and complete change of mood with slow, airy singing.

And then we head into yet another change again. An Eastern inspired theme takes us forward, powerful and mesmerising with guitar, Hammond and strings and a busy rhythm section adding energy to the beautiful execution. It’s skillful, competent, driving and driven.

The intro riff returns for a build-up to one final verse, then one more cleansing of the palate with that chord, a surprising ascending run and … the album’s over!

Bleeding Obvious concludes =1 with an intricate joyride of head spinning loops, twisting turns, steep drops and whirlwind bends. It’s brilliant. Seemingly effortless yet highly complex. Phew!

Adding up all the numbers, =1 is a fine, fresh, astute and convincing new album – and with the music still echoing around the brain, let’s celebrate the absence of superfluous covers with this lovely photo of Ian Gillan and producer Bob Ezrin at the recording sessions in Toronto. Congratulations.

All photos in this review series courtesy of earMUSIC.

Read also: Part 4, Part 3, Part 2, Part 1.

Simon McBride gave an interview to the German site laut.de (in the midst of an interview marathon with 9 other engagements). Yep, reverse translation again. As such, take it with a grain of salt.

It’s a lengthy read. Simon talks about his influences, joining the band, the songwriting process, lengths of the songs on =1, his gear, and some other things. Enjoy!

You have known some Purple members for a while. You have played with Gillan and Don Airey in the past. Can you describe your feelings when you got the call in 2022 to join the band, first for the live area and then also in the studio.

It goes back to the end of 2021, when the first request came in asking if I could imagine being Steve Morse’s replacement for some shows in the USA. Then in May 2022, a few shows came up that Steve couldn’t play because his wife wasn’t well. For my part, I approached the matter very naively and was happy to play a few shows for Deep Purple, and that was that. I’m going home and Steve is taking over the reins again. For me, he was still the guitarist for Purple at that time.

So there was no disappointment. Instead, I approached the matter very professionally. When Steve’s wife’s condition continued to deteriorate, and it became clear that he was not returning, the topic of further touring came up. At the time, it was July or August 2022, we were on a European tour. At some point, I had an email from the manager in my inbox. It was bizarre, he asked me if I would be interested in becoming a permanent member. My first impulse was to write back and ask why he even wanted to ask me that.

Later that day we were in a bar and Gillan asked me in his direct way: Are you in the fucking band or not? And I said, of course I am, raised my glass to him and that was the end of it. It took a few days to really realise this. Plus, the four other guys have been on this journey together for so long, and I’ve only just joined. I felt comfortable from day one. The chemistry is right, I’m treated without restrictions and can let my playing flow freely.

Read more on laut.de in German or via Google Translate in other languages.

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the heads-up.

Photo: Stefan Brending, cc-by-sa-3.0 de

Stereophile magazine laments the passing of physical media (exhibit A) and discusses the problems with the music streaming. Yep, there’s a connection.

There are plenty of reasons to worry about this, even beyond the purely sentimental. Mostly it comes down to a loss of control. You control what you own—what’s on your shelf—but a favorite (or even acceptable) streaming service could end at any time, for any number of reasons. The biggest streamer, Spotify, has so far been profitable intermittently and has yet to offer lossless streaming. The financial health of other streaming services, including audiophile favorites Qobuz and Tidal, is largely unknown.

Think about that Machine Head reissue: Now that Dweezil’s stereo mix exists, will you still be able to access the original mix, by Martin Birch, years into the future? If you own the LP or CD, the answer is yes—but what if you’re dependent on streaming?

If you own a CD or LP, you know exactly what you’ve got—or at least you can know, with research. When your music is streamed, you can never be sure what you’re listening to and it can change at any time without your knowledge. Did the streaming service choose the ’95 remaster? Is it the version that originally appeared on LP? Is it a special version created for the streaming service (à la “Made for iTunes”)? Why are the drums in the left channel instead of the right, as they are on the LP?

Read more in Stereophile.

Ultimate Guitar spoke to Simon McBride, and offers not quite a full interview, but his answer to one of the questions:

What is the most difficult Ritchie Blackmore part to play?

Most of it is actually not too bad. There’s one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it’s in ‘Lazy’. I don’t play the same solo he plays in ‘Lazy,’ but ‘Lazy’ is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and just have a bit more fun with it.

But there’s this one lick he does in it, and I said, ‘I have to play that.’ And it’s a bitch of a lick. It’s not ultrafast. It’s just there’s a lot of chromatic stuff in it and slides in a very tight space, within three or four frets, and that’s it. So that, to me, is the hardest thing about playing Purple.

Everything else, Ritchie was never really a full technician. So, nothing was really difficult to play technique-wise. Ritchie was more of a creative player.

Even ‘Highway Star,’ the fast part in that, it’s fast, but it’s not John Petrucci from Dream Theater or something ridiculously fast. It’s fast, but it fits the song. But everything else that he played was more just melodies. Ritchie played for the song most of the time. But yeah, that lick in ‘Lazy’ — that still haunts me every night when I come up to it. I’m like, ‘Oh shit, don’t screw it up!

Thanks to Ultimate Guitar for the quote, and we hope to see the rest of the interview one day.

Just a sort note. In case you haven’t ordered the new album yet and like to save money, SuperDeluxeEdition.com provides a handy shopping chart for the box set, 2LP, and CD+DVD digipak (that’s the last one, erroneously marked as 2LP again).

Go to superdeluxeedition.com for all your price comparison needs. Caveat: most likely does not include shipping.

NME reviews the 2024 Montreux Jazz Festival and starts right with the most important in our quarters:

“We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline,” growls Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan, erupting after what could arguably be the most iconic riff ever gets a bigger reaction than any guitar part could – not least because it marks a homecoming of sorts.

The rock legends hail from London, but ‘Smoke On The Water’ was born here. Written about the fire and destruction of the Montreux Casino at a Frank Zappa show in 1971, it’s as much a record of the history of rock as it is one of rock’s most historically important tracks.

You feel it tonight as the local mayor and dignitaries gather with the sold-out crowd to rock out and watch dry ice from smoke bombs crawl across the lake behind a background of mountains at the 58th Montreux Jazz Festival. The Guinness Book Of World Records crowned Deep Purple as “the globe’s loudest band” in their ‘70s heyday, and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were trying to reclaim their title tonight. Bones rattle and teeth shake as the band shred into the night, providing a worldie of a set for this “unbelievable, formidable, magnificent, superb” audience.

Kudos to NME for their opinion.

German site Musicreviews.de reviews =1 in positively glowing terms, and gives it a score of 13 out of 15 (same as Whoosh and inFinite, while Now What?! got 12/15 from them). Usual reverse translations caveats… (you know the drill).

When listening to “=1” you quickly come to the conclusion that DEEP PURPLE really did everything right with their choice of McBride. While the record title refers to the idea that in an increasingly complex world everything will ultimately lead to a unified core, you can also apply it to the group and say that they have grown together with their new guitarist so quickly that you would think he had been on board for a long time.

This does not mean, of course, that he does not set any clearly audible accents, on the contrary: the record seems as fresh as Steve Morse’s 1996 debut “Purpendicular” and is not stingy with welcome surprises. Let’s take the full-bodied opener ‘Show Me’ with its many fresh subtleties, starting with Ian Gillan’s spoken vocals, a chorus with a chromatically descending melody at the end, and Don Airey’s synthesizer (instead of the programmatic organ) in a solo exchange with the guitar. These duels are a recurring element on “=1”, whereas the track, with its short and dramatic finale, forms a bracket together with the closing ‘Bleeding Obvious’ in that both numbers are bursting with clever ideas on both the harmonic and melodic level and build up in an exciting way towards the end.

Read more in musikreviews.de in German or via Google Translate in other languages.

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the heads-up.

Louder Sound has a preview of Glenn Hughes’ interview slated to appear in the next issue of the Classic Rock magazine. Her Glenn talks about Black Country Communion and possibility of doing another album with them.

I want people to know that this will possibly be the last band that I’m in. I’m so deep into my solo career with this new album I’m about to make. And Black Country Communion to me is, seriously, a band of brothers. I can’t imagine being in another band after this.

I don’t know if there’s even going to be one. It’s a matter of ‘is there going to be enough time?’ You know how old I am, and the fact is that I want to do this for as long as I possibly can. So many of my friends have disappeared or died or retired or whatever. I am one of the last of the early-70s gang that are still doing it. I’m not saying there won’t be [another BCC album]. But if there’s going to be one, it needs to be in the next couple of years.

I don’t want to be doing this when I’m eighty. I know there are a couple of my mates who are eighty still doing it, but I don’t think I’ll be doing this when I’m eighty. I don’t think so.

Thanks to Louder Sound for the quotes.

In a new interview with German publication Welt, Ian Gillan discusses Russian politics, title of the new album =1, Brexit, making friends in Germany in 1965, and almost setting his house on fire. All the usual caveats about reverse translations fully apply.

[…] Everything has become infinitely complicated these days. We have to give up our private data for the smallest of tasks. If you don’t do that, you can no longer take part in social life, in everyday life. That is the background to the title of our new album “= 1”. It used to be that three minus two was one. Today the processes that lead to this result are much more complicated. I know a scientist in Tasmania who gave me a very long calculation using square roots and other symbols to illustrate this. We have printed it in full length on the inside sleeve of the vinyl record (he opens the cover, points to a very long formula).

Read the interview in German on Welt.de or via Google Translate in other languages.

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the heads-up.

The famed Los Angeles recording studio The Record Plant is closing down after 55 years in business. It has a Purple connection — Stormbringer was mixed there, together with some last minute recording additions. But that’s beside the point. The reasons for closure reflect the overall state of the music business today.

Longtime studio engineer Gary Myerberg said: “There is no money in the recording music business. That’s basically like a flyer for your show. I don’t think there’s much hope for the recording industry in L.A. … If you want to go to the studio and spend $2,000 a day, just take that and buy a laptop and a sample library or tell AI what song you want to make, and it’ll make it.”

Local guitar tech Jesse McInturff added: “The need for a big room is pretty minor at this point. There are less and less rock bands and you could record Taylor Swift in a vocal booth the size of a closet.”

Thanks to the Ultimate Classic Rock for the info and quotes.