This one’s from Review Fix, and focuses on Classic Rock guitar players. Everyone has an opinion, to be sure, but this list offers justifications along with the names, which is a nice change from the usual here’s a set of names approach.

Read the details at http://reviewfix.com/2009/07/our-ten-best-episode-11-classic-rock-guitarists/

Rockpages Web Magazine in Greece conducted an exclusive interview with Ian Gillan before the recent band’s appearance in Athens. And as it is often with the Big Ian’s mind process it’s all in there — state of the British health care, prospects for a new album, the writing process, idiocracy, Cold War, and Darwin’s theory — mixed together and properly stewed in one big pot.

Rockpages.gr: Back to the 21st century and Deep Purple. Are there any plans of a new album?

Ian Gillan: I think it’s about time. Although, you can’t put the words “plan” and “new album” in the same sentence, when it comes to Deep Purple. I can smell it coming… there has been the occasional talk… we are thinking about October-November… that’s a good month for writing the new record.

Rockpages.gr: That means you don’t have any written material…

Ian Gillan: We never go into the studio with written material. We’d probably start recording next year. It shouldn’t take long… if you struggle to finish a song after 20 minutes, then forget it… destroy it… start something else. Otherwise, it becomes contrived and unnatural.

Perhaps Ian is just a tad too enthusiastic about the “October-November” timeframe, seeing as the band has only about 3 weeks free of touring commitments in the calendar between the September 24 Sunflower Jam gig (Paicey and Don Airey will be there) and the start of Steve Morse band tour in the US on October 15. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging to hear that the thought of a new album wasn’t abandoned alltogether.

Read the rest of the interview.

Thanks to Sakis Nikas for the info.

Don Airey recently gave an interview to Get Ready to Rock that covers a lot of his career, from the very first gig on a cruise ship to the recent (and now infamous) Oasis story.

What have been your highs and lows in the music industry?

Oh God! Well, the highs, they keep coming thick and fast with Deep Purple. We’ve just had an amazing thing happen to us, taking over from Oasis and getting away with it, at our age, very gratifying. When I first played with Purple with played a concert in a natural amphitheatre in Athens, against a backdrop of rock, 5000 people there, and a full moon. I’ll never forget it. And the keyboard solo I played “Never On Sunday”, they all went mad, it was wonderful.

Low points, I guess the gig after Randy Rhodes died, back out on the road, that was awful. There’s been a lot of low points actually. Some gigs I’ve done and I’ve thought “How’s it come to this?” But if you’re a musician that’s what happens, you just have to keep on going. Playing’s better than not playing, that’s the thing.

Got and read the whole thing, it’s well worth your time.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

German newspaper Suedkurier has an article going into further details of the fascinating story of quick thinking, snap decisions and triumph of open mind that resulted in Deep Purple headlining Rock am See festival in place of Oasis.

Here is the English translation:

Deep Purple save the “Rock-am-See” festival

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Oasis: Cancellation

Last Friday night, Oasis were supposed to play a concert in Paris. Shortly before their gig, the local promoters were informed of the cancellation. The game of domino had begun: At 0:30am, Dieter Bös, organizer of the “Rock-am-See” concert in Konstanz, received a phone call informing him that Oasis would not be playing there either. Bös says he started walking to and fro like a tiger in a cage, writing down names for possible replacement bands, but finally rejected them all. Then came the relieving idea: Deep Purple had played a gig in Arbon, Switzerland that Friday night…

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Deep Purple: Confirmation

So at around 2am Bös calls the tour manager of the rock veterans. At that time, Deep Purple are en route to their hotel in Zurich. Negotiations ensue. Offers are exchanged. Every half hour, the telephone lines between Konstanz and Zurich are busy. Six phone calls and a couple of e-mails later, at around 4:30am, Deep Purple confirm that they will play the gig. Dieter Bös is relieved. He sleeps for three hours and is busy again at 7:30am, instructing his drivers so that Deep Purple reach Konstanz safely. Actually, the band was going to fly back to the US from Zurich.

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Oasis have split — so what? For most of the about 20,000 fans at the “Rock-am-See” (“Rock at the lakeside”) festival, the news was no reason for bad spirits. They celebrated and enjoyed the nice weather and a strong line-up of bands.

What a night! Even one day later, Dieter Bös, business manager of the “Rock-am-See” organizers, can hardly believe what happened during the night from Friday to Saturday. “It was just surreal”, he says, tired, but relieved, during an interview with the Südkurier newspaper on Sunday. One day before, he had experienced the absolute worst-case scenario for a concert organizer: The infamous Oasis were to play the last gig of their world tour in Konstanz, Germany [It actually was the last but one. The very last one was a festival next day in Milan, Italy, where Deep Purple took headliner’s spot once again. — THS]. The media buzz was tremendous when the organizers announced the booking the well-known band — the joy and happiness lasted until about twelve hours before the start of the festival.

At around 0:30am (cf. chronology in the side bar), Bös received a phone call from Oasis’ management. The scheduled concert in Paris the night before had been cancelled, and the band around the constantly fighting brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher would not be playing in Konstanz either. Guitarist Noel Gallagher had announced earlier that night that he would quit the band, just three gigs before the end of their world tour. One week before, Oasis had cancelled their gig as top-act of the well-known Virgin festival in the UK. At that time, the official reason was: the singer Liam Gallagher is suffering from a laryngitis.

The organizers from Konstanz watched all of this closely. “I had hoped that they would end their world tour in a decent way” says Bös. It is pretty impossible to book a top band on a “maybe”-basis. “That doesn’t work. No band will play along with that” says Dieter Bös. So he took the chance, the anxiety grew with every passing day, and finally, Bös delivered what will probably be his organizer’s masterpiece: Within four hours, he brought a replacement headliner on stage — despite the difficulty that the expectations of fans of Oasis and Deep Purple are quite different. “Still”, says Bös, “I went to the festival area with much more anxiety this year. I had no idea how the crowd would react.” Would lots of plastic glasses be thrown onto the stage? Or would the crows just stand there in silence during Deep Purple’s gig? Oasis fans had traveled a long distance, even from Hamburg — how would they take the anger and the frustration?

What’s amazing: the rock seniors (average age: 61) took the festival arena by storm. Admitted, a part of the audience (about half of the crowd according to the police) left the area shortly before or during the Deep Purple gig, but the 10,000 people that remained celebrated a band that proved with a roaring gig that they are not too old to rock. One hit followed another (“Highway Star”, “Strange Kind Of Woman”, “Fireball”, “Hush”), and when the famous riff of “Smoke On The Water” filled the air, thousands were jumping with the rhythm of the music.

There’s no other way to put it: the organizers had a stroke of luck with this replacement headliner, and even fans that didn’t care about 70’s hard rock admitted that the elder gentlemen presented a phenomenal gig.

A possible alternative would have been to have the Swedish rock band Mando Diao as headliner and book a medium-class band as openers — but this was not possible since the five Scandinavians could not play that late at night due to other commitments. And apart from that: Mando Diao did not really live up to the expectations of a headlining band during their gig. They did deliver their well known hits (“Mean Street”, “Dance With Somebody”) in a powerful way, but too often they got lost in rather ineffective instrumental baublery.

Looking back, says Bös, everything turned out well. Deep Purple had fun, so did the crowd. Bös is relieved. And what about Oasis? There are rumors about discussions with the management concerning the “unprofessional conduct”. Possible consequences included. “That’s no way to treat your fans” says Bös.

Michael Lünstroth and Norbert Faulhaber

Thanks to Roger Glover for sending the article, to Lars Wehmeyer for his quick and excellent translation and to Andree Schneider from The Aviator for arranging it.

Showbiz oriented website Pollstar tells the story behind Deep Purple saving the night at the Rock am See festival:

Waking to a 2 a.m. phone call telling him Oasis wouldn’t appear at that day’s Rock Am See, it took Dieter Boes only a couple of hours to bring in Deep Purple as a replacement headliner.

“There’s not much you can do in terms of getting hold of people at that time of day, but then it struck me that Deep Purple had just played across the border in Switzerland,” he explained. “I tracked down the band’s tour manager and after I’d convinced him it wasn’t a joke, he got in touch with the individual members and they said they’d do it.”

Although Deep Purple isn’t an ideal replacement for Oasis in terms of musical style, Boes said he wasn’t exactly spoilt for choice and the U.K. rockers set went down a storm with the 20,000-plus crowd.

See for yourselves:

Thanks to windi11 for the video.

It’s not often that we get new tourdates this far in advance. German promoter KBK has announced a Deep Purple tour that won’t happen for another 14 months (sic!). The tour of major arenas will start on November 13, 2010, in Trier and finish on November 30 in Stuttgart. Tickets will start going on sale in a couple of weeks, on September 11, 2009. Further details in our Purple calendar.

Thanks to KBK and Nigel Young for the info.

Looks like Deep Purple will continue their sudden Oasis tour into Italy tonight, according to Indipendente Concerti

Following OASIS’ split and the cancellation of their headline appearence at the festival, DEEP PURPLE will replace them. Other bands scheduled to appear a the event are: The Hacienda, Expatriate, Twisted Wheel, Kasabian, The Kooks.

thanks to Francesco of Deep Purple Italia for the info.

Deep Purple added to the bill at Rock Am See.
“It’s with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight. People will write and say what they like, but simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer.Apologies to all the people who bought tickets for the shows in Paris, Konstanz and Milan.” said Noel Gallagher last night. However this means that Deep Purple will be taking the place of Oasis at the Rock am See festival in Konstanz.

This October Steve Morse Band will tour the East Coast of the United States. We have 13 confirmed dates, starting on October 15 in Maryland and going until October 31 in Atlanta. Check our Purple calendar for full listings.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

JLT spoke to Classic Rock Magazine’s Geoff Barton about Ritchie Blackmore’s reaction to Over The Rainbow:

At first Ritchie was fine about it all. Then certain people – two of them – who are very close to him started to put ideas into his head.

Then Ritchie suddenly became very antagonistic. Things got so bad that he insisted Jurgen – his own son – couldn’t use the name ‘Blackmore’. Jurgen’s full name is Jurgen Richard Blackmore – it says so on his birth certificate.

So, he ended up sending a copy of that to Ritchie, to prove he had every right to the name. Thankfully, that’s all behind us now, and everything’s back on an even keel.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net for the info.