If you like funny tour stories, and as a bonus, if you are a fan of any or all of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Coverdale-Page, Whitesnake, Bryan Ferry, Madonna, The Smiths, Michael Jackson, you should read bass player extraordinaire Guy Pratt‘s book “My bass and other animals”.

The Coverdale-Page/Whitesnake chapter is pretty short but as the rest of the book, very funny. Doing drugs and shopping for bootlegs in Tokyo with Jimmy Page (well, they got to pick whatever they needed, of course) is entertaining to read about. You also get another view of the big rock star David Coverdale. When Pratt was recording the Whitesnake “Restless Heart” album, he stayed at DC’s place in Lake Tahoe. Pratt got to lend a sweater and “a rather spiffing pair of jammies” from DC. He also forced Pratt to take a fishing trip with his tour manager close to his house.

“David called a couple of times to make sure I was all right/having a good time/warm enough/had a hanky/been to the loo.
(…)
Who would’ve thought that this giant, thrusting rock figure would turn out to be the Jewish mother I never had?”

In the small world that is British rock’n’roll, we can also note that Guy’s wife Gala Wright (daughter to Richard Wright from Pink Floyd) is best friends with Jon’s daughter Sara Lord. Pratt writes that he thinks that DC’s way with words are funny. When DC found out that Gala would bring Sara to DC’s house, the first time in 15 years DC had seen Sara, DC said:

“Sara? That Precious flower? Why bring her forth that I may rest my eyes upon her again!”

Pratt also mentions that DC did all his guide vocals during run-throughs in an octave lower than he did when he did the actual recording of the album. This apparently sounded much better but Pratt didn’t dare to tell him.

“But what was I going to say? ‘Hey, David, you know how that ball-busting heavy-metal singing’s all bollocks, yeah?'”

A small German company called BSM will present it’s new treble booster guitar pedal at the upcoming Musikmesse which will be held in Frankfurt at the end of March. The pedal aims at recreating the Mk2 Blackmore’s sound. BSM already has a line of booster pedals built to emulate the tone of various guitar players with several Blackmore models among them. They also have a series of well researched articles on their website on the finer points of Ritchie’s guitars and pickups, amps and pedals and the iconic Aiwa tape machine. They are worth reading for anyone interested in Blackmore’s gear or vintage electronics in general.

Billboard reports that Carlos Santana is going to record a cover of Smoke on the Water for his next album:

Santana hopes to keep the love going on his next album, another project overseen by [Sony executive] Davis that continues the guest-laden path of “Supernatural,” “Shaman” (2002) and “All That I Am” (2005) — only this time adding iconic rock songs to the mix. Among those are Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” with Thomas, the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” with India.Arie and Yo-Yo Ma, Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” with Joe Cocker, the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking ” with Scott Weiland, Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.”

This Sunday February 28, Classic FM will air a brand new interview with Jon Lord along with an exclusive preview of his forthcoming album, To Notice Such Things.

The show goes out on Sunday, February 28 at 9pm GMT.

Listen online via http://www.classicfm.co.uk/ or find your local UK frequency: http://www.classicfm.co.uk/on-air/ways-of-listening/.

Jon Lord’s new album, To Notice Such Things, is released on March 29 through Avi Records. Read all about it on JonLord.org.

Leading up to the 44th Montreux Jazz Festival (which will be held in July), MontreuxJazz.com started a weekly column of ‘behind the scenes’ reminiscences. This week Claude Nobs recalls the events of the Casino fire in December 1971. Nothing really new in his story, but there are photos of the fire that I’ve never seen before.

And once you’re there, check out the festival gift shop that still has the 2006 posters.

Thanks to Andrey Gusenkov for the info.

Back in 2008 Metal-Temple.com published an interview with Neil Carter of UFO/Gary Moore/Wild Horses fame, who is now teaching music at Brighton College. Here are the juicier bits:

A special quote should be given for Glenn Hughes: your impression, working with him?

He was a great influence on me, I loved TRAPEZE and DEEP PURPLE although working with him, albeit briefly was a bit surreal. I am not even sure he registered I was there actually. He made Gary’s life hell at the time and the ‘old school ego’ was still very much to the fore. I hear he has found God now which is better than Mars bars.

And what about Cozy?

Same thing really. I was very disappointed it didn’t work out but, without speaking ill of the departed, he really was rather arrogant, a bit of a let down and didn’t live up to expectations.

Do you listen to any ‘current’ Rock/Metal music these days? In addition, do you still listen to your all-time heroes? Any gigs? QUEEN is touring with Paul Rogers, DEEP PURPLE and URIAH HEEP is still here, LED ZEPPELIN created hysteria when they announced they’d do one single show some months ago… Rock will never die, eventually?

No, sadly, and I haven’t been to a gig in years; in fact, the last one was Gary Moore when he played Brighton with WHITESNAKE. Gary was fine but David Coverdale looked like a pantomime dame and it all looked a bit ‘Vegas’ to me. We spent most of the time giggling. I see in my students the great affection for 70s Rock and it still touches young people so it won’t die. There were some really classic songs in that era and classic bands but some don’t know when to bow out gracefully it seems.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

This coming Sunday, February 28th, Glenn Hughes will appear in a live chat with fans on his website. The chat will run between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. PST. In order to participate you will need to register at his Fan Forum and post at least 1 message. Transcript of the chat will be made available for later viewing on his website.

Tony Carey is back from his cancer woes and have started a new project with J.R. Blackmore. They have teamed up with a metal frau Ela and recorded a song called Silver Arrows (Racing On). The project is billed as EBC Racing Team and the song is dedicated to the 2010 re-entrance of the Mercedes-Benz into Formula 1 racing world (Silver Arrows — Silberpfeile — being the old nickname of the Mercedes-Benz racing cars). Music was written by J.R., while Tony wrote the lyrics and accomplished production duties.

In 2004 Tony had his first contact to the world of Formula One by performing at a charity event during the Grand Prix at the Nürburgring in Germany. He performed a solo set and later was together on stage with the band of Eddie Jordan (owner of a F1 team at the time) for David Bowie’s Heroes.

You can listen to the song and watch the video on EBC Racing Team’s website.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

Glenn Hughes did an interview about his new band, Black Country, with the blog Rock Guitar Daily.

We’re as bombastic as The Who, and as bluesy as Free, but we are doing some different kinds of things in terms of structure, and tempo: 7/8, 6/8, even 5/8 time, so it’s not just a few chords and out. Joe’s just written a song that is just blowing me away. He sings a couple, I sing a bunch, and there’s a few where we’re both singing. We originally had figured mid 2011 for the release, but here we are we’ve got it written, we’ll have it tracked by the middle of March, around the 17th, and we should be done with vocals, and some overdubbing by April the 10th, just before Easter. So, it makes sense for it to come out sooner and now it should be out around September of this year.

In an interview with Dinosaur Rock Guitar, Joe Bonamassa also talks a bit about Black Country.

DRG: So tell me a bit about The Black Country.
JB: Oh yeah. Here’s the thing. My friend Glenn Hughes and I and Jason Bonham and Derek Sherinian are all friends. Glenn and I have been talking about doing something together. What I didn’t want it to be was some half-hearted Bona-Hughes weekend blues record, you know. If we’re gonna do this let’s do it right and start a band. Kevin Shirley got involved. He was like, call Jason and see if he’s interested. We didn’t wanna do a power-trio because it’s been done before and we didn’t want people to think we were some Cream sort of thing. So, let’s get a keyboard player. So we got Sherinian and he’s fantastic. The whole thing really worked from start to finish. We have five tracks in the can right now and we’re gonns do another five in March. We’re gonna see how it goes. People ask when we’re gonna tour. I don’t know, we don’t have a record yet! What do you sound like? I don’t know, we don’t have a record yet. Everybody’s got a day job. Black Country is not something I’m doing 24/7. I mean I have commitments to the album I just made, commitments to 22 people that work with me on a regular basis. I have to maintain these commitments, and I have to write songs for The Black Country and we have a session booked in March. So, we’ll know in the next few months really where we stand. We’re gonna finish this thing in a few months, come hell or high water, and everybody’s committed to that, and we’ll see how it goes. What it’s NOT gonna be, is Zeppelin II, Burn and whatever Dream Theater you wanna pin it to, or whatever Joe Bonamassa record that might be worthy of pinning it to. It’s not gonna be that, it’s gonna be its own entity and it’s very heavy rock. It’s a heavy rock record, but it’s not gonna be done with cleaner guitars, it’s not done with tons of synths. It’s really organic and represents everybody’s inputs. It’s some really exciting songs and the cool thing it’s gonna be an all original record with the exception of maybe a couple of things we may do for fun. It’ll be its own entity and something we can be proud of. It’s no sense in rushing something out that we’re not proud of and all happy with.

DRG: Cool! So what’s your approach when recording this?
JB: I’m playing a Gibson Explorer and a Les Paul with a couple of old Super Leads, really stripped down approach. Nothing majestic. So what if the guitar stutters a bit in the solo, so what if it’s clean but it’s heavy? Heavy-handed old school, you know. Glenn’s the primary singer and I’m happy to let him do it, coz if you’ve got Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen cooking for you, why the hell would you wanna make the salad? He’s fucking brilliant! So, at the end of the day it’s like, I have no ego, I’d be happy to just play rhythms! I think people will be pleasantly surprised at the level of writing and the level of care going into it. I’m excited about it! I however don’t wanna over-hype it. I’m not that happy the rumour is out. My thing is more – here’s the record, enjoy it or not. There’s no pretence going on. It’s like the LA rumours – This is gonna be bigger than bread! No, it’s not. People still need bread, they don’t need this fucking record. So, calm down, let us be creative and let us do our jobs. It won’t come out if it sucks.

Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi have donated 4 Takamine acoustic guitars and a Gretsch drum kit with Paiste cymbals to a musical school in Gyumri, Armenia. The town of Gyumri was devastated during the 1988 earthquake. Last October Gillan and Iommi have visited the school, which is still housed in temporary shelters.

Gillan’s solo concerts with the State Philharmonic Orchestra of Armenia will take place in Yerevan on March 26th and 27th. The entire proceeds from both shows will be directed to rebuilding of the musical school in Gyumri.

Thanks to Blabbermouth and Panorama.am for the info.