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”.

Track listing:

CD One: Trouble (1978)

1. Take Me With You
2. Love To Keep You Warm
3. Lie Down (A Modern Love Song)
4. Day Tripper
5. Nighthawk (Vampire Blues)
6. The Time Is Right For Love
7. Trouble
8. Belgian Tom’s Hat Trick
9. Free Flight
10. Don’t Mess With Me

CD Two: Live At Hammersmith (1978)

1. Come On
2. Might Just Take Your Life
3. Lie Down
4. Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
5. Trouble
6. Mistreated

CD Three: Lovehunter (1979)

1. Long Way From Home
2. Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues
3. Help Me Thro’ The Day
4. Medicine Man
5. You ‘N’ Me
6. Mean Business
7. Love Hunter
8. Outlaw
9. Rock ‘N’ Roll Women
10. We Wish You Well

CD Four: Ready An’ Willing (1980)

1. Fool For Your Loving
2. Sweet Talker
3. Ready An’Willing
4. Carry Your Load
5. Blindman
6. Ain’t Gonna Cry No More
7. Love Man
8. Black and Blue
9. She’s A Woman

CD Five: Live… In The Heart Of The City (1980)

1. Come On
2. Sweet Talker
3. Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues
4. Love Hunter
5. Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
6. Fool For Your Loving
7. Ain’t Gonna Cry No More
8. Ready An’Willing
9. Take Me With You

CD Six: Come An’ Get It (1981)

1. Come An’ Get It
2. Hot Stuff
3. Don’t Break My Heart Again
4. Lonely Days, Lonely Nights
5. Wine,Women An’ Song
6. Child of Babylon
7. Would I Lie To You
8. Girl
9. Hit An’ Run
10. Till The Day I Die

CD Seven: Saints & Sinners (1982)

1. Young Blood
2. Rough An’ Ready
3. Bloody Luxury
4. Victim Of Love
5. Crying In The Rain
6. Here I Go Again
7. Love An’ Affection
8. Rock An’ Roll Angels
9. Dancing Girls
10. Saints An’ Sinners

CD Eight: Live At Reading Rock ’79 (1979)

1. Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues
2. Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
3. Steal Away
4. Belgian Tom’s Hat Trick
5. Mistreated/Soldier Of Fortune
6. Love Hunter
7. Breakdown

CD Nine: Live At Reading Rock ’80 (1980)

1. Sweet Talker
2. Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues
3. Ain’t Gonna Cry No More
4. Love Hunter
5. Mistreated/Soldier Of Fortune
6. Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
7. Fool For Your Loving

DVD

• Promo Videos 1978-1982
• TV Performances
• Official Bootleg: Live at the Capital Centre, Washington, USA 1980

Snakebite EP (1978)
33rpm seven inch white vinyl

Side One

1. Bloody Mary
2. Steal Away

Side Two

1. Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City
2. Come On

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.

Thanks 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.

Martin Popoff has a follow up to his Purple family book. The new book is called The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events ’80-’11.

This picks up where that book left off, offering a few modest milestones within its pages, namely:

• the most comprehensive information on the Gillan band ever stuffed in a book
• the largest amount of detail as pertains the Whitesnake story ever presented
• a fair bit of Blackmore’s Night as well as Joe Lynn Turner and Glenn Hughes solo
• all the play-by-play from Perfect Strangers up to Purple happenings this summer

Also, as with the first one, I’ve made sure that the content was all 100% fresh over and above my first two Purple books, Gettin’ Tighter: Deep Purple ’68 – ’76 and A Castle Full Of Rascals: Deep Purple ’83 – ’09, all 296 pages, including all-new interview footage, all-new quotes from archival press, all text, all. 513 pictures.

The Text:

296 stuffed pages offering an exhaustive and detailed timeline of Purple milestones from 1980 until right now, often to the day, including some similar bands, influences, cultural milieu, tour stuff, recording sessions, charts, singles, certification news, break-ups, personal stuff, trivia for miles, and lots and lots of artist quotes to add to the entries, turning the book into a quasi-oral history but loaded with factual matter. But as you’ve noticed, this is about FAMILY. So the text weaves, in and out of the story of Purple proper, the dastardly diaries of Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan, Blackmore’s Night, all the solo projects, guest slots, a li’l MSG, Gary Moore, Black Sabbath and Black Country Communion, always with contextual explanation plus rare and very cool archival advertisements of shows ‘n’ records ‘n’ singles.

The Graphics:

A hefty 513 of them, usually rare, archival, historical shots of record ads, LP and 45 sleeves, CD singles, Japanese issues, picture discs, tour posters and newspaper notices, ticket stubs, endorsement ads, tour program covers, other foreign country releases, and again, contextual things. It’s a gallery, flowed and framed by fully 50,000 words of beautifully displayed timeline, which brings us to.

The Design:

This book marks my second project with awesome Calgary-based designer Bill Harris, and what he’s created for the look of this thing is a triumphant reprise of the first one, same breezy, readable mix of yummy graphics, pull quotes, classy typestyles. a pleasure to flip through and touch down upon the trivia and the rare pictures from deep Deep history. You’ll love it – a killer, comprehensive companion piece to the first edition.

Price including shipping:

US orders: $35.00 US funds
International orders (air mail only): $45.00 Cdn. funds
Canadian orders: $38.00 Cdn. funds

The book is not up on the Martin’s website yet, so wait a couple of days or email him for ordering info.

The new Black Country Communion live DVD Live Over Europe was recorded during their summer tour and will be released on October 24 with Blu-ray to follow on November 15th. Watch the trailer:
Continue Reading »

In July 1971 Colin Hart, a Geordie lad from South Shields, was on his first tour of America as a roadie for Matthew’s Southern Comfort. The group was part of a three-band bill with The Faces and Deep Purple. Following the tour he joined Deep Purple’s road crew. Ian Gillan just knew Colin had to join the Purple entourage after seeing him pour a pint of beer over Rod Stewart!

Colin devoted over thirty years of his life to these great rock musicians. This is his story and indeed theirs. A tale of excess in terms of greed, petulance, anger and devotion. It is counter balanced by extremes of pure talent, showmanship and, of course musicianship. He was the constant ‘man in the middle’ through all of the break ups, make-ups and revolving door line-up changes. Joining them at twenty-four years old and leaving thirty years later, he was there every step of their rock ‘n’ roll way. A story of two of the most innovative, often copied, rock bands; seen through the eyes, ears and emotions of their ‘mother hen’ (as Jon Lord described him). He was their minder, chauffeur, carer, provider, protector, father confessor & confidant. In truth he is the only one who can tell this tale of both bands as he was the only one there on the road throughout the life of, not one, but both gigantic bands.

Hart endured a roller coaster ride, working for Purple, during the band’s most successful period. He was there when the casino burnt down in Montreux, and witnessed Smoke On The Water being born; the legendary concerts in Japan; the break-up of the Gillan / Glover line-up; the auditions that saw David Coverdale join the band, and the California Jam performance in front of 400,000.

When Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in early 1975 and formed Rainbow, Colin went with him and continued as Rainbow’s tour manager through the ever-revolving line-ups. He was invariably the man who had to break the news to many of the hopefuls that auditioned for the band: “We’ll get back to you” being the stock reply!

In 1984 when Blackmore disbanded Rainbow for the Deep Purple reunion, Colin naturally resumed his role with these rock giants as they embarked on a world tour that included the hugely successful 1985 US leg – the second biggest grossing US tour that year after Bruce Springsteen. A déjà vu situation occurred as Colin was in the middle of yet more band break-ups as first, Gillan departed, Turner joined, Gillan returned and Blackmore departed, while Steve Morse emerged to take the band into the new millennium, although for Colin his thirty years on the road with two of the biggest bands in rock history came to an end in 2001.

A Hart Life is written with life-long friend Dick Allix, former drummer with sixties band Vanity Fare. Hart tells the story of his life from humble beginnings in South Shields, to setting up home in California with Rainbow, and eventually settling in Florida, where he still lives today: Of touring the world several times over with two of Britain’s greatest bands Deep Purple and Rainbow; a story that also crosses paths with Jimi Hendrix, George Harrison, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Def Leppard, The Scorpions and Iron Maiden to mention just a few! A truly fascinating insight into the world of rock ‘n’ roll from the other side of the stage.

A Hart Life

The life story of Deep Purple and Rainbow’s tour manager

Colin Hart with Dick Allix

Includes forewords by Deep Purple and Rainbow bassist Roger Glover & Colin’s nephew Paul Mann.

ISBN: 978-0-9557542-7-2 (Hardback) / 978-0-9557542-8-9 (Deluxe slipcase with bonus book)
Format: Hardback (234 x 156 mm)
Pages: 272 (including 16 photo pages, 15 b/w, 73 colour images)
Price: £19.95 (Hardback) / £35.00 (Deluxe edition)
Publication date: 3rd October 2011

Deluxe edition is limited to 300 copies. Includes a bonus book Hart’s Life 1971-2001: 80 pages of photos and memorabilia from Colin’s collection including tour itineraries, faxes and letters, unavailable elsewhere, plus a reproduction of Deep Purple’s 1974 Burn tour programme, all housed in a slipcase. N.B: This edition is not available to the trade and can only be ordered directly from Wymer.

Don Airey’s new solo album All Out is now available on Music Theory/Mascot.

Besides Don himself, who handled all the keyboards, musicians on the album are: Bernie Marsden (Guitar), Carl Sentance (Vocals), Darrin Mooney (Drums), Keith Airey (Guitar), Laurence Cottle (Bass), Joe Bonamassa (Guitar), and Rob Harris (Guitar).

Track list:

1. The Way I Feel Inside (feat. Bernie Marsden)
2. Estancia
3. People in Your Head (feat. Joe Bonamassa)
4. B’cos (feat. Rob Harris)
5. Running from the Shadows (feat. Bernie Marsden)
6. Right Arm Overture
7. Fire (feat. Rob Harris)
8. Long Road (feat. Keith Airey)
9. Wrath of Thor (feat. Rob Harris)
10. Tobruk

The album was recorded and mixed by Ewan Davies at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire, UK.

Order it from a store near you:

Thanks to Nathan Sage for the info.