The official Now what?! web site has published the second installment of Roger Glover’s diaries:

AUGUST 2012
21 Tuesday

I fly to Lisbon and connect to Faro, where IG meets me. Twenty minutes to his house. He gives me warm welcome. Like me, is raring to go. We have some great sounding tracks and both of us are bristling with ideas. Although IG has got ideas for some of the tracks, there is still a lot of work to be done. For this evening however, we relax, have a meal and sit in his bar in the evening heat over a beer or three and listen to all the tracks. Inspiring. And we’re definitely inspired.

Continue reading on deeppurple-nowwhat.com.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

The album has appeared on iTunes with about a minute and a half previews of all the songs.

Amazon UK has 30 seconds previews, albeit in piss poor quality (you have been warned).

Thanks to Randy Engman and Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

If you are reading this, it means we have moved The Highway Star to a new server, which should hopefully be quite a bit more responsive then the old cranker. In the process we’ve also trimmed the fat a little by discontinuing parts of the site that have seen little to no activity in a while — we have closed our mailing lists and forum.

Apart from that, everything should work pretty much like in the old place. If you see something that doesn’t, let us know.

Truly yours,
the team

Back in 1990 Gillan toured in Georgia, then a part of the USSR. While in Tbilisi, Big Ian and his wife Bron kept up with their custom of renewing their vows in every country they visited. And let me tell you, back in the day Georgians had a reputation of the people who know how to trow a party.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen and Georgian News TV (head over there if the video does not display).

To commemorate release of the new album, Classic Rock Magazine will publish a limited edition special issue (number 184):

A limited edition with a foil cover, it includes 12 pages of additional Deep Purple content including Q&A’s with all members of the band and an extended buyers guide by long-term fan and Purple expert Geoff Barton.

The issue will be on sale April 24 and can be preordered directly from the publisher.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

It appears that the ill-fated appearance in Nepal, first scheduled for March 15, then postponed until April 26, now has been scrapped alltogether. Metal Hammer quotes a statement from the band’s management:

The agreed fee was not paid as per the contract they had with the promoter of the show, Richard Coram, of Talent Brokers in Dubai.

Despite several assurances, Talent Brokers failed to deposit the fee into its registered escrow account, even though the band’s management allowed extra time for payment to be made.

Deep Purple are deeply concerned that fans may feel that the band have let them down, and that those who bought tickets may not have been refunded. The band wish to make it abundantly clear they were ready, willing and able to come to Nepal. Nevertheless, in view of Talent Brokers’ failure to comply with its payment obligations under the contract, the band had had no alternative but to withdraw from the performance.

Gillan adds to this:

I hate it when this sort of thing happens – the first time ever in Nepal and it gets cancelled.

I want to assure everyone that our management and agency bent over backwards to make this work. But every promise from the promoter was broken. Things dragged on to the last minute and then went past the deadline for our equipment to be delivered.

Deep Purple will go through hurricanes, earthquakes, riots, and all kinds of hazards just to get there and do the show – but you do need competent connections to be able to achieve this.

We are truly miserable that we couldn’t get there and would love to come over at the first opportunity.

Thanks to Yvonne Osthausen and Metal Hammer for the info.

It’s come as a big surprise, but today Edel Records offer a select few of you a chance to hear then new Deep Purple album, Now What?! in an exclusive world wide web streaming event.

Marking a new first in internet activity for the band, one lucky person in each time zone will get a chance to hear the new album stream at 12 pm your local time via the record company. The link will only show until the lucky person in each time zone has found it. Happy hunting folks!

For those of you who miss this, there will also be an exclusive online event later in the evening where the band will perform the whole album in its entirety live. This link will become available later in the day.

Naturally, we at The Highway Star are very excited about all this new fangled Purple promotion. Do enjoy! 🙂

NOW What?! has been produced by Bob Ezrin, one of the most important rock producers of all time (Pink Floyd, Alice Cooper, Kiss and many others) it features 11 new songs. It was recorded with no musical rules… and it shows a modern and fresh production… to the point that Deep ?urp!e have never sounded so close to the spirit of the 70s in the last 20 years as they do NOW. The record has the excellence and elegance of „Perfect Strangers“ and the wild freedom of Made in Japan.

It will also be released as a limited edition with a bonus DVD featuring the band discussing the new album and one bonus studio cover version. It will be released as double vinyl LP and will be released in the UK on April 29th. Worldwide release dates can be found at www.deeppurple-nowwhat.com which will be updated daily with news, lyrics, photos & more.

Bob Ezrin gave a keynote interview on Saturday, March 23, at the Canadian Music Week in Toronto and told the story of how he got to be the producer of Now what?!:

I wasn’t really thrilled with the idea because I didn’t want to be pegged as ‘the guy who does old people,’ so I said, ‘No.’

I got convinced to go see them here at Massey Hall here in Toronto and 15 minutes into the show, they went into this big long fully prog jam.

Steve Morse stood up and played Rock God and played the most amazing guitar I’ve ever heard and then Don Airey filled it with these huge keyboards and then the drums and the bass and everything came in and the whole audience went nuts and then I realized we never see that anymore.

That used to be a staple at every concert you went to when I was a kid. The only people doing that are like Dave Matthews and jam bands but that’s all like hey-yo (toke sound) but this is all like YEAHHH, this was rock power.

I said, ‘If you want to be a contemporary rock band and be relevant give up, forget it, it ain’t gonna happen and I’m not the right guy to produce it. No one will pay this record on radio; no one will care about it in the contemporary business, but I you want to make THAT record – if you want to make that unashamed musically brilliant record, I’m in,’ and they did.

It was Roger Glover one of the great bass players of all time, he said, ‘We want to put the ‘deep’ back into Deep Purple.’ And I said, ‘You’re on. Let’s go.’

Thanks to Noisecreep for the info.

If you’re in Berlin and want to have your own ‘Abbey Road moment’, location of the very atmospheric ‘antique lamppost’ shot from the Now what?! promo shoot has been identified as the corner of Schlesische Straße and Skalitzer Straße. The shot in question appears to have been taken from the upper level of the Schlesisches Tor U-bahn station.

View Deep Purple – Berlin in a larger map

Thanks to pavel for the info.

Roger Glover is talking about his bass amps made by Danish company TC Electronic:
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