Steven Rosen who was a music reporter back in the 70s writes about his encounter with Ritchie Blackmore in November 1974:

Amidst all of the commotion, Ritchie was standing with one leg propped up on a small practice amp. He was running through what must have been his pre-show routine, oblivious to the commotion around him. When one of the crew asked him something, he continued playing for another few seconds and then raised his head. Without uttering a word, he simply stared at the source of the question and shot him a look that withered. He then lowered his head and continued practicing.

At that moment, I was brought over and introduced to him. Several minutes passed while he continued with his finger exercises, and I actually think he had forgotten I was there. I broke the silence by telling him Creem magazine had flown me out and he muttered something that sounded like an insult. We began. He slipped in and out of this strange English double-talk, but for the most part he remained relatively polite.

Read more and listen to the interview here.

Thanks to GarpJarp for the info.

Ian Paice and Glenn Hughes took part in the ChildLine Rocks charity mini-fest at the indigO₂ in London. This was the first time since March 15th, 1976 that they have appeared together on the same stage. More Black Than Purple reports:

With Thunder’s Luke Morley doing a solid job on guitar they cranked out ‘Mistreated’ and Hughes took the chance to show off his vocal talents with a lengthy improvised closing to the song that had many in the audience aghast by his immense range. Glenn’s keyboard player Anders Olinder kicked off the second number, a somewhat surprising ‘Might Just Take Your Life’ with Danny Bowes sharing the vocals and working well alongside Glenn.

Read more on the MBTP site.

Update (March 16th): Also check out Luke Morley’s diary (Luke is the guitar player in Thunder). Rehearsals on March 11th:

Ian Paice arrives @ 12pm and begins to set his own kit up which is not what I expected! I’d met Ian before albeit quite briefly, when we’ve worked with Deep Purple and he’s a really genuine and funny guy. He explains that 26 hours earlier he’d left Venezuela where Purple had just finished a South American tour. He’s obviously a bit spaced out so we ply him with strong coffee. It’s really good of him to have volunteered to do the gig and he doesn’t stop cracking jokes all day. Nice man!

Glenn Hughes arrives @ 1pm. He hasn’t played with Ian for 30-odd years and it’s 34 years since I saw them playing together in Deep Purple at Lewisham Odeon on the tour to promote ‘Burn’…….. weird!

We run through ‘Mistreated’ and Glenn finishes the song with an ad-libbed vocal work out as only he can! He sings so high that most of the dogs in London SE1 must have been very confused for a while. We then take on ‘Might Just Take Your Life’ and Danny assumes the David Coverdale role. It all goes so well that we only need to run the two songs once. Very strange how I get to be Pete Townshend and Ritchie Blackmore in the same 24 hours!!

Thunder will be supporting Whitesnake and Def Leppard on the upcoming UK dates in June and July.

What night! A legend closing the South America 2008 Tour.

9.30 p.m.: Gillan, Glover, Paice, Morse & Airey. Sold Out, Sound good (7.5/10) and Purple 10/10!

First time in my country, I travelled 400 miles but, this night was something like a dream turns reality! The set list was very similar to Brasil, Argentina, Ecuador …. A big surprise: Don Airey´s keyboard solo including “Alma Llanera”.

Long Live Deep Purple .. Thanks Mr. Gillan, Glover, Paice, Morse, Airey

Set List:
1)Pictures of home
2)Things I´ll never said
3)Into the fire
4)Strange kind of woman
5)Rapture of the deep
6)Mary long
7)Kiss and say goodbye
8)Steve Morse´s solo (including Little wing, Back in black, Sweet home Alabama, Sweet child of mine)
9)Well dressed guitar
10)The battle rages on
11)Lazy
12)Don Ayrey´s solo (includin Alma Llanera)
13)Perfect strangers
14)Space trucking
15)Highway star
16)Contact lost-Smoke on the water

Encore:
17)Hush (introduction: Green Onions)
18)Drums solo
19)Bass/drums- Bass solo
20)Black Night

The concert ends at 11:23 p.m.

I´m flying in a Purple dream

In a recent interview to the Billboard magazine David Coverdale unveiled plans for retrospective anniversary releases:

Also upcoming for Coverdale will be a remastered three-disc set to mark Whitesnake’s 30th anniversary, which he says will “embrace the beginning right up until now — including some Coverdale/Page and solo Coverdale material.” A live Whitesnake DVD is in the works as well.

Thanks to Blabbermouth.net for the info.

Deep Purple’s concert in Quito started at 21:10 local hour. The first 20 minutes of the concert were plagued with sound problems, fortunately they were remedied.

The set was full of all time classics: Space Truckin’, Mary Long, Into the Fire, Pictures of Home, Lazy, Black Night. The highlight of the concert in my humble opinion: the moment when they played Perfect Strangers, just FUCKING awesome. The Battle Rages On, also sounded very, very good.

Steve Morse is a real pro, even if he is not from the hard rock background, he played extremely well, tight and precise. They returned for an encore (Black Night and Hush).

There were moments at the concert that was like been in the Budokan at Tokyo 1972. You had to be there to believe it. Deep Purple are rock dinosaurs? No way! They are in an unbelievable musical form.

At the end of the last year we have started discussion about the state of the music business where a lot of people lamented demise of the physical medium as a primary way of distributing the music.

Nine Inch Nails have recently released their new album Ghosts I-IV which success may indicate the way of the future for other bands. The album is self-financed, self-produced and self-released. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike license, which gives the fans freedom to do anything they want with the music short of selling it. The music, essentially, is free for anybody who wants it.

How are they planning to make a living by giving away their music? Let’s see.

It’s a four-part album available in several forms:

• Part 1 (first 9 tracks) can be downloaded for free from the NIN website. And because the album is released under a very permissive license, the whole album can be absolutely legally downloaded from your favourite file sharing network.
• $5 gives you download of all 36 tracks DRM-free in very high quality MP3 or lossless FLAC, plus a 40-page PDF booklet.
• $10 gives you 2xCD set in a six panel digipack package with a 16 page booklet.
• $39 will get you a 4x vinyl edition which will be released in early April.
• $75 gives you a “deluxe edition” which comes in a hardcover fabric slipcase containing 2 audio CDs, 1 data DVD with all 36 tracks in multi-track format, and a Blu-ray disc with all parts of the album in high-definition 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow.
• And if all that wasn’t enough, there was also a $300 “ultra-deluxe” limited edition package, which had a run of 2500 copies and as of today is sold out.

How did the album do commercially so far? The band have grossed $750,000 in a space of three days after the March 2 release. Without record company backing them up, without a major marketing campaign, etc. Although their bold move made rounds on the Internet and was even subject of a story in New York Times.

So, no, shift to the digital music won’t deprive fans from the ability of getting something to hold in their hands if they really want to.

And with the talk of a new album, I hope somebody in the Purple camp is reading this and taking note. Because I’m not buying the same music twice again. Particularly not a few months after I bought it the first time.

While being in Lima, Peru Ian Gillan gave an interview pieces of which appeared today on Bloomberg’s newswire. The interesting bit is about the band’s plans:

This is a three-year tour and finishes in Russia and then Germany in November. I guess we’ll have Christmas off and then I hope we shall then go into the studio and make another record and do it all over again.

With all due respect, anything that Gillan says should be taken with a grain of salt. But here you have it — no studio work is planned for this year.

Read more of the interview here.

Thanks to George Kikonishvili for the info.

Doogie White, who has recently parted ways with Yngwie Malmsteen, came to the rescue of a Purple tribute band at a charity gig in UK:

Disaster was turned to triumph for another local act on the night after Deep Purple tribute band the Purple Project from Newbury lost their lead singer after developing laryngitis.

At the last minute the band called up Doogie White, lead singer from Rainbow, a band set up by Deep Purple’s guitarist Ritchie Blackmore in 1975, and Mr White gave the audience a performance to remember.

Ah, and the real news here is that Rock of Ages is running an auction of celebrity memorabilia, with the top prize of a private lesson with Ian Paice. The auction, which is running on eBay, closes on Sunday, March 9, at 8.15pm (UK time). Place your bids now!

Thanks to getreading for the info.

Update (March 16th): the auction for lesson with Paicey has raised £789. Congratulations to the very generous winner kyethedog!

In the new installment of his Notes from the road Steve Morse talks about Mexican food, Hammond tuning, justifiable homicides, bureaucracy on the home front, the same abroad, and politics (or not).

Read all about it here.

Thanks to Daniel Bengtsson for the info.

All European tourdates that we had posted for the summer are now officially confirmed. In addition to that, Montreux is confirmed for the closing day of the festival — July 19, plus a couple of French festivals and one in Belgium.

See them all in your tour dates list (and to all of you who got in touch asking for the return of separate listings for each band, it’s on our to-do list, please be patient). Please email us with any local updates, missing or incorrect info, etc.

Thanks to Tatti Oscarsson for the info.