While in Nashville working on the new Purple album, Ian Gillan spoke to Guitar International. The interview mostly evolved around the WhoCares project, with briefly touching Jon Lord’s memory at the end:
Robert: With so many years of working with tremendous bands and creating great material was it difficult to pick the songs that would make up the [WhoCares’] 2 CD set?
Ian Gillan: Yes, it was quite a task. I had to turn my studio upside down for old tapes and cassettes but with the help of Max Vaccarro at Edel Records in Hamburg I think we have ended up with an intriguing collection. My favourite today is ‘Dick Pimple’ a perfect example of Deep Purple at work in the studio.
Robert: Can you share a favorite memory about Jon Lord as a remembrance to him?
Ian Gillan: Unfortunately my fondest and most hilarious memory of Jon is something I couldn’t possibly make public [Laughing]. However, he was a wonderful man, a great musician and an avuncular source of inspiration to me and many others. I wrote a line which is included in one of the new songs, ‘…souls having touched are forever entwined’.
Robert: What can people do to help your cause?
Ian Gillan: Buying the record would be most helpful.
Apparently Glenn Hughes may be now banned from visiting the entire country of Azerbaijan. Glenn was in the neighbouring Armenia with Derek Sherinian earlier this month to perform with a local band called The Dorians. After the concert in Yerevan, they went to the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is disputed between the two countries, and played another gig there on September 13. They even met with the local authorities. It is the official policy of Azerbaijan government that any foreign nationals who visit Nagorono-Karabakh without their permission automatically become personae non gratae in their country.
Rumours of a new supergroup comprising Joe Lynn Turner, Michael Anthony, and Carmine Appice started flying over ’em old interwebs a couple of days ago. JLT has issued a press release denying this:
Both Appice and Turner have officially dismissed this news as a rumor.
The musicians said that there was never any press release sent out by either of their media representatives or their record companies. While both of them agree that they have had casual conversations about musicians they would like to work with, including Michael Anthony, this news of the formation of a “supergroup” is not official or confirmed.
Turner admits, “Carmine and I are longtime friends and we have talked over the years about working together on future projects. These are conversations musicians like us often have all the time. These conversations are not ‘official news’; it is just casual talk. Like many artists, we exchange ideas about people we would like to work with if given the chance. Names like Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Michael Anthony are all musicians we both admire but we never released any official news stating that we were planning to launch this so-called supergroup.”
Turner and Appice would like to specifically apologize to bassist Michael Anthony (Van Halen, Chickenfoot) and his fans for any confusion this rumor or any casual conversations might have caused.
Appice confirms, “We had nothing to do with the publishing of any of this news about this project and neither of us talked to any journalists or media people ‘on the record’ about a possible supergroup. Having said all this, Joe and I have worked together in the past and can’t rule out the possibility of working together in the future.”
There seems to be a lot going on in the BCC camp these days, with PR campaign for the new album kicking into high gear and what not. So, instead of putting up a bunch of separate short news items we decided to consolidate them here.
You can absolutely legally download for free (in exchange for an email address) the song Confessor from the upcoming Afterglow album here.
Glenn Hughes’ appearance on a BBC morning show happened on September 19. You can watch the interview fragment where he talks about why he’s paying tribute to Jim Marshal and why his pinkie is in a cast (of sorts).
BCC’s apparently the only 2013 performance in UK, on January 5 in Wolverhampton, has been announced just a few days ago. Planet Rock even started a ticket presale. It has already been cancelled due to, as the press release puts it, “unforeseen circumstances”. People who have already purchased the tickets will receive a full refund.
Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson and Yvonne Osthausen for the info.
Paul Mann, who was instrumental in reviving of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra and is conducting the studio recording (to be released at the end of the month), has written a detailed essay on his engagement with its inspirational composer. The essay has been published in the Arts Journal.
The 28-year-old Jon Lord, with no experience at all of writing for orchestra, had a matter of three months in which to produce a full scale Concerto armed with nothing but Cecil Forsyth’s Orchestration, his prodigious imagination and a lot of coffee. Returning to his London flat each night, often after a Deep Purple gig, he spread himself out on the floor (he didn’t have a desk big enough) and composed in ink, straight into full score. (“I later learnt to use a pencil”, he said, somewhat ruefully.)
That the resulting work is so rich in invention, sound in structure, and sophisticated in craftsmanship says a great deal for the white heat of Jon’s inspiration. The fifty-minute piece broke new ground at the time, and seems only to have grown in stature across the intervening forty or more years.
On September 7 Ian Paice hosted a tribute to his brother in law and in arms, the late great Jon Lord. The concert took place in Palermo, Italy, where he performed with the student orchestra of Conservatorio Vincenzo Bellini conducted by Alberto Maniaci.
This could very well be the first time he have performed Jon’s Bourée:
Speaking if Paicey, last week he was on the Classic Rock Radio discussing the upcoming Sunflower jam and the new Deep Purple album. The interview is now available for online replay (MP3, 42MB).
Thanks to Federica1401 for the video and Yvonne Osthausen for the info.
A very interesting interview with Nick Simper from Canadian blog Music Legends published back in August, which unfortunately have received very little attention. Nick talks about the current live music scene in Britain, the story of Hush and why it turned out so different from the Billy Joe Royal’s version, the importance of Vanilla Fudge influence to the development of Deep Purple style, and many other things. Continue Reading »
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Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing