Mick Underwood was a lovely man. I was deeply saddened to learn that he had died. It’s taken me a while to digest the news and put in perspective what he meant for Ian Gillan and me. When he joined Episode Six, he brought a new sense of professionalism to the band and the live performances took an immediate upturn. That said, it can’t be denied that we’d been chasing that elusive lucky break for so long that we’d just about run out of steam. Maybe he felt that way as well, so when Ritchie called him looking for a singer, he selflessly suggested Ian Gillan knowing that he could be dealing a serious blow to Episode Six. Of course, we will never know what was in his head at the time. Now, over five decades later, I feel a deep sense of gratitude to him.
Sonic Perspectives has a review of the opening gig of the North American tour on August 14 in Hollywood, FL.
There’s no point in wasting lines to explain why Deep Purple is one of the most revered and genre-defining rock n’roll bands of the last century, that has been said time and time again. But what still needs to be said is how these music legends remain relevant and very much at the top of their game after more than 5 decades in the business. And such a remarkable feat was in full display earlier this week, as they took the stage at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, to kick off their “= One More Time” tour.
The crowd erupted as the band appeared, immediately launching into a high-energy rendition of “Highway Star”. Ian Gillan’s vocals, while bearing the marks of experience and the passage of time, retained the raw power and emotion that have captivated audiences for decades, and as the performance went on, his vocal acrobatics grew even more mesmerizing. Classics cuts like “Hard Lovin’ Man” and “Lazy” sounded electrifying, with the rhythm section of Glover’s fatty and thunderous bass lines – they were perfectly audible in the mix –, and Paice’s precise drumming adding the backbone to their energetic stage presence, injecting such classic tracks with renewed vigor, one that was truly surprising to behold when one considers four quarters of the gentlemen on stage are well into their 7th decade of life.
Meanwhile, The Sentinel newspaper out of Pennsylvania reviews=1:
The new album captures the essence of what made Deep Purple icons of rock while demonstrating their continued ability to innovate and inspire. For both longtime devotees and newcomers to Deep Purple’s music, this album offers a compelling listening experience.
Rhino Entertainment will be reissuing the three David Coverdale’s solo albums — WhiteSnake, Northwinds, and Into the Light as a 6CD box set.
Rather confusingly, the box set is titled Into The Light: The Solo Albums, with no explicit mention of the other two on the cover, and a latter-day Whitesnake-the-band logo to boot. Inside, the albums are given a lavish treatment, each remixed and remastered, and with plenty of bonus tracks. They come in a hardcover box featuring a 60-page book with rare photos, detailed liner notes, and a new interview with DC. The remix of Into the Light will also be available separately as a 2LP vinyl. Both formats are due on October 25, 2024.
Remix of Midnight Blue off Into the Light has been released today digitally to accompany the announcement:
Track listing
Note: MCMLXXVII = 1977
CD1: Into the Light (remix)
She Give Me [4:13]
River Song [6:43]
Don’t You Cry [5:33]
Love Is Blind [5:47]
Slave [4:55]
Cry For Love [5:38]
Living On Love [6:11]
Midnight Blue [4:49]
Too Many Tears [6:15]
Don’t Lie To Me [4:44]
All The Time In The World [5:27]
Wherever You May Go [3:58]
Yours For The Asking [4:30]
Let’s Talk It Over [8:08]
CD2: Into the Light (additional remixes)
Love Is Blind (Band Version) [5:32]
As Long As I Have You [4:09]
With All Of My Heart [5:40]
Wherever You May Go (Strings Version) [1:14]
Love Is Blind (Strings Version) [3:31]
Demos & Unfinished Symphonies
DC with Tony Franklin
Lust [3:40]
Oh No Not The Blues Again [3:30]
Into the Light Intro [1:05]
Into The Light [4:03]
You Make It Hard On Me [5:17]
Would You Be Happy [4:24]
Fooling Yourself [3:59]
Make The Best Of It [4:29]
Veda of Cassandra Blues [4:11]
I Can See The Light [4:03]
Another Fallen Angel [4:23]
Itchy Finger [4:55]
Original DC demos, 1997
DC with Tony Franklin
Crazy ’Bout Cha (Original Version of Whipping Boy Blues) [4:28]
If You Want Me [4:23]
Lay Your Love On Me (Original Version of Lay Down Your Love) [4:22]
A second single from the upcoming remix of Blackmore’s Night third album Fires at Midnight. Has been released. Listen to the remixed Sake of the Song on your favourite streaming service or right here. Continue Reading »
It’s been the same story many times before — the band releases a new album, starts touring, puts several new tracks into the setlist, but after some time the new material starts to dwindle. By the time they reach North America, few, if any, are left in the set.
In anticipation of the Deep Purple North American tour on the double bill with Yes, Ian Gillan spoke to the Ultimate Classic Rock:
It’s great to see Deep Purple hitting the road with Yes. What sort of bond was there between the two groups back in the day?
There wasn’t much of a bond. [Laughs] We were doing a festival [in] Plumpton, the first rock, jazz and blues festival that became the Reading Festival, run by Jack Barrie at the Marquee [Club in London]. He’d put on some absolutely great bands. Of course, we’d worked with most of them in those days. It was fantastic. They were all good in their own way – but I think Yes were a bit miffed, because they wanted to close the show and it wasn’t in their contract. It was [in our contract] that Deep Purple would close the show, so they refused to leave the hotel room. Jack said, “Guys, would you mind going on a bit earlier? I don’t want to push you but it would help me and it would help the crowd.” “Yeah sure, okay, no worries.” Then, Ritchie [Blackmore] decided that if we weren’t going to close, nobody was. He ordered some gasoline to be brought in. He threw it all over the equipment and then had the roadie light a broom, which had a petrol-soaked rag on the end of it to ignite the lot. Of course, it did ignite – because the fumes just exploded. Within a half-hour, there were blue lights flashing. The police, the fire brigade and ambulances were all coming in and there was complete chaos. Everything was on the front page of the Sunday papers the next morning and it was all quite rock ‘n’ roll. [Laughs]
Analog Planet has an extensive interview with Roger Glover, accompanied by a brief review of =1. Roger talks about the new album, the bad old days, various Machine Head remixes, including the latest, working with Bob Ezrin, and many other things.
Mettler: None of us are perfect strangers to any of that, to borrow an album title of yours. And it’s, what, 40 years old now, since it was released in [October] 1984 [on Polydor], so I think we need another box set from you guys. Is Purple gonna continue with historical box sets like the Machine Head one? Glover: I’d love to see a remix of Perfect Strangers, and a remix of The House of Blue Light [released in January 1987, also on Polydor]. I would love to see that. There are a few technical problems, though. We can’t find the tapes for Perfect Strangers. We can’t find anything for that.
Mettler: Oh, man, that’s a bummer. Glover: (shakes head) Yeah, I know. I know. We do have about 40 multitrack reels for The House of Blue Light, which we did on 48 tracks, believe it or not — but to go through all that and find the one that we used would take a lot of time and money.
As a unit, Deep Purple swing with a panache expected of seasoned pros who have perfected their craft through the decades. Tracks such as Portable Door and Sharp Shooter groove along with a care-free attitude of a band fully enjoying the privilege of still being able to rock out at its collective age.
There’s nothing like a new Deep Purple album to make me feel like a teenager once again. Having just celebrated my 60th birthday, I was happily transported back in time after hearing “=1” from the British icons. As with most Deep Purple releases, the new album was made loud to be played loud.
Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger has a fairly rare beast — an interview with Bob Ezrin. It is published in German, so all the usual caveats about reverse translation fully apply here.
Today, studio technology is very different from when you started out with Alice Cooper. In the 21st century, you no longer capture performances live in the studio; you create them on the screen.
For the new Deep Purple album «=1» I actually put together a collage of the best performances from different versions of the song, without losing the spontaneity of the first versions. But my work on the computer is not that different from that with analogue tapes. In 1973 I edited the piece «I Love The Dead» for Alice Cooper from song snippets that were all only four bars long. So please don’t say anything against digital recording technology. I love the tools that are available to me today.
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![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/paice.jpg)
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing