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Slipped Disc reports that Moray McMillin, Deep Purple’s front-of-the-house sound engineer between 1995 and 2004, has passed away. He died of lung cancer.
I had the privilege of meeting Moray on his last tour with Purple in 2004. A lovely man and a consummate professional. Anyone who wishes to pay final respects via a donation, please address them to the hospice that looked after him: The Hospice of Saint Francis, Spring Garden Lane, Berkhamsted, Herts, HP4 3GW, UK.
Roger Glover did an interview with the Swedish based Metal Shrine blog. He spoke about If Life Was Easy, divorce, fatherhood, Barbie Benton, Phil Collins, and touring with orchestras, among other things.
During all these years, were any of these songs stuff that you brought to Deep Purple or were they just made for a solo record?
RG: The thing about Deep Purple is that you don´t bring a song to a writing session, because they don´t like that. I mean, we don´t like that! If anyone brought in a song that was completely finished and all we had to do was copy it, neeehh, that´s not what Deep Purple is. Deep Purple starts its songs… I mean, we don´t write songs for start, they kind of evolve from a series of jams and really what you want to bring into a Deep Purple session, is just a riff or a chord sequence or a rhythm or a line or two and that´s all and then everyone else just kind of join in. There are a couple of ideas that I might have considered for Purple, but we had a writing session and a lot of my ideas went into the writing session anyway, and that was in March. There´s a Purple album bubbling under and we´ll get to it next year.
Read more on Metal Shrine.
Thanks to BraveWords for the info.
Black Country Communion has launched an official YouTube channel. It is promised to be updated on a weekly basis. The latest track posted is the Song of Yesterday (audio only) off the upcoming DVD Live Over Europe. You can also download MP3 of the track from their website.
Thanks to Guillermo Gonzalez for the info.
Don Airey will do a couple more radio appearances to promote his new solo album All Out.
On Wednesday, September 21st, he will appear on BBC Radio Cambridge in the Sue Marchant evening entertainment show. The show runs between 7 and 9 pm, with Don scheduled to appear between 8:00 and 8:30 pm. The show is also picked up by BBC Essex, BBC Radio Norfolk, BBC Radio Suffolk, BBC Three Counties Radio and BBC Radio Northampton. It should be available for listening online for 7 days after the broadcast.
On Monday, September 26th, he will appear on Planet Rock‘s Nicky Horne show. The show runs between 6 and 9 pm with Don scheduled to appear between 7:00 and 7:30 pm. Planet Rock broadcasts worldwide online.
Thanks to Nathan Sage for the info.
Classic Rock reports that a new Whitesnake box set is in the works, scheduled to be released (presumably, in the UK) on November 7. Titled Box O’Snakes: The Sunburst Years 1978-1982, this has every studio and live album from the period, two BBC concerts, a limited edition 7” EP, a DVD, and a 90-page book with “new interview and unseen photos”.
CD One: Trouble (1978)
CD Two: Live At Hammersmith (1978)
CD Three: Lovehunter (1979)
CD Four: Ready An’ Willing (1980)
CD Five: Live… In The Heart Of The City (1980)
CD Six: Come An’ Get It (1981)
CD Seven: Saints & Sinners (1982)
CD Eight: Live At Reading Rock ’79 (1979)
CD Nine: Live At Reading Rock ’80 (1980)
DVD
Snakebite EP (1978)
33rpm seven inch white vinyl
Side One
Side Two
No details on the packaging and (re)mastering status are available so far.
Another interview with Roger Glover — this time with HeadBanger.ru. Turns out a lot can be covered in 15 minutes — broken hearts, butterfly balls, parenting, singing talents, and meetings with presidents. Cue eloquent and insightful.
By the way, have you played this album to your Deep Purple bandmates?
No.
Why not?
When I get copies of the album, I’ll probably give them a copy each. But it’s a strange thing, we don’t really tell each other’s solo careers in between us. I listen to what they do, and maybe they listen to what I do, I don’t know, we don’t talk about it that much. Ian Gillan really likes “Snapshot”, he told this to me, he said it’s a really good album. But it’s not something that you have to do. Right now I don’t have copies of the album. It’s interesting – talking to people like you who have it, and I don’t. Anyway, I will give them a copy of the album, but I won’t play it for them, because I don’t want to be in the same room when they listen to it. This is an uncomfortable thing – if someone plays you a piece of music, you are expected to say, “Oh, it’s great” even if you don’t like it. And I want to give them the freedom to dislike my album without feeling uncomfortable.
And about Purple’s new album:
In a recent interview you were asked why is it taking Deep Purple so long to release a new album, and you answered that there was disagreement in the band about whether you should be doing an album at all these days. Have you made any decision on this matter since then?
Yes, we have. The whole thing about doing an album is that we live in different parts of the world. When we don’t tour, we go home to our families, and it’s very difficult to get everyone to agree to come out and do something when there’s no particular reward. Albums are not the support that they used to be, they are basically a losing proposition. However, I’m of the opinion that whether it’s a losing proposition or not, we should do it. Although I said there was disagreement in the band, it wasn’t meant to say we argue. We have this rift all the time, and we’re still good friends. It’s not a bad thing to disagree. But some people in the band say, “You know, times have changed, it’s now the era of MP3 and iTunes, we should just put out a song or two via the Internet.” It’s not that we don’t want to work or that we have lost our creativity. It’s just that we couldn’t figure out which way to go. But we did actually make the start this year – in March we went to a studio in Spain and had a writing session for about nine days. And it was very productive. Every day we’d go to the studio and we’d just jam and jam. We got out of it a dozen ideas floating around, they are not finished, they are just ideas, some are more finished than others. I think later this year or certainly early next year we will be getting together again somewhere to finish those, and it’s gonna be cool. I’d hope that we will have an album to come out next year. But we’re not gonna release it until it’s finished. (laughs)
Read the rest of the interview.
Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.
This Thursday September 15th, Don Airey will be appearing on the South Wales radio station GTFM on the Rockshow. He’ll be live in conversation with presenter Andy Fox, answering questions about Deep Purple, his new album All Out and his vast 35+ years career playing in Rainbow, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne’s Band, Gary Moore, MSG, Black Sabbath and many more.
The show runs from 9 pm to midnight on 107.9 FM in the South Wales area or online at www.gtfm.co.uk and will be available to listen again after the broadcast.
Listeners can e-mail question to Don at rockshow@gtfm.co.uk or text to 07935 245325.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XedRHy1C8lQThanks to Andy Fox for the info.
Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles has a new interview with Roger Glover conducted by Martin Popoff. It covers a lot of ground, digging deep into the roots, surfacing for some Purple air, and soaring up to his new solo album. Two words come to mind when reading Roger’s interviews: eloquent and insightful.
Wishing to steer away from the heavy stuff so early in our chat, I wanted to know where this roots rock inclination came from. There’s always been a southern rock and Little Feat and Bob Dylan vibe to Roger, on the side of ‘Highway Star’ and the man’s so-called “teenaged eighth notes.” Why?
I think it probably started off with Lonnie Donegan, and the introduction of American music. I mean, I probably heard American music in terms of Johnnie Ray and Frank Sinatra and the big bands and so on, when I was a kid, but skiffle music was different. What went before was so boring to me, and yet skiffle music had such vibrancy and such reality and was so earthy, from the players, the performances, down to the meanings behind the songs. A lot of the songs were blues and gospel because the words have meaning. Whereas, ‘Oh baby I love you’ has no meaning. Well, maybe it does, but it depends on the context. The thing about country and western music is that they actually are so sincere, you believe it (laughs). ‘Oh baby I love you, want you to come back, the kitchen needs washing.’ Or words to that effect. But songs that mean something, I suppose, and of course rock ‘n’ roll blew everyone away, including me. I’m quite proud of the fact that I remember the world before rock ‘n’ roll music, because it was a totally different world. And then when rock music kind of freed performers up to really express themselves, when Little Richard screamed, it was real, it was an emotional sound. It wasn’t the controlled Johnnie Ray sigh or Frank Sinatra, you know, breathing, very controlled. And very well, I’m a big Frank Sinatra fan, don’t get me wrong. But Little Richard and Chuck Berry… oomph! They did the same thing in music then as Jimi Hendrix and Cream did later on. It freed music from the bounds of what had come before. And there are classical versions of the same thing; all the musicians that suddenly found discordance in music. You know, Stravinsky was booed off stage, and yet it’s some of the most fabulous pieces of music you’ll ever hear. So a new sense of freedom is what I was looking for. All music is all music to me. Doesn’t matter what style. The simple answer to your question.
Read more on BraveWords.com.
Thomson Music has released a second Purple-related app for iPad:
The Sunbury Rock Festival was an annual Australian rock music festival held on a 620-acre private farm between Sunbury and Diggers Rest, Victoria, which was staged on the Australia Day (26 January) long weekend from 1972 to 1975. It attracted up to 45,000 patrons and was promoted by Odessa Promotion as Australia’s Woodstock. The Sunbury Pop Festivals signalled the end of the hippie peace movement of the late 1960s and the beginning of the reign of pub rock. In 1975 Deep Purple were head-liners. Folklore is that a fracas developed on-stage between Deep Purple’s roadies and AC/DC’s roadies and members. This app looks back at that amazing period when Deep Purple ruled the charts and the associated audiovisual material highlights the excitement and ‘innocence’ of early Australian rock festivals. A must for all Deep Purple fans and fans of rock music in general.
You can purchase the app at the iTunes store.
Roger Glover explains on his website the convoluted origins of If Life Was Easy artwork. He concludes with an invitation to all fans to take part in a contest:
If […] you would like to win a specially signed copy of If Life Was Easy (don’t faint), here is a little competition…
Visualize text fragments / song titles from the album.
You can paint something, take a photograph, design a CD cover or manipulate one of the photos from the Chiaroscuro gallery to participate. When completed, email a hi-res photograph or a scan of your work to brokenheart@rogerglover.com. The deadline is December 31st, 2011 and the winner (or winners in case of a tie) will be announced shortly thereafter.
Do I have to remind you that it must be your own work? Yes. It must be your own work. By sending it you automatically give us permission to display it. The entrants will have their work shown on this website on or about the 1st January 2012. The judges will be Myriam Freitag, Andreas Thul and me.
Good luck,
RG
And don’t forget to read the whole piece.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing