Yahoo carries a short interview with Don Airey, attributed to DPA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur). Like many other of his publicity appearances these days, it was done on the occasion of his upcoming solo album Pushed To The Edge. Continue Reading »

A second single The Last Goodbye from the upcoming Candice Night’s solo album Sea Glass has been released. This is the track with Ritchie Blackmore making a guest appearance on guitar, but lowering your expectations is in order. There are no fiery solos, and his contribution can be described as ‘some acoustic accompaniment’. Continue Reading »

The Bass Player magazine (part of the Guitar World stable) has a short interview with Bob Daisley. It inevitably steered towards his stint with Rainbow, before turning the sights on Ozzy.

The Rainbow record you appeared on, 1978’s Long Live Rock & Roll, you played on only a few tracks?

“The reason I just played on some of the tracks was because some of them had already been done with Ritchie playing bass on them ‘cos they didn’t have a bass player while they were recording.

“I played my ’61 Precision bass on Kill the King and Sensitive to Light, and on Gates of Babylon I used an early ’50s Fender Precision. Amp-wise, I used Ritchie’s 20 watt Marshalls and 4x12s.”

“Ritchie and Ronnie were great songwriters and they didn’t need any input. They wrote the stuff, put it together and we just played it. Though I had a fairly free hand; I wasn’t told to do that much. But Ritchie did have strong set ideas on what he wanted.”

Read more in Bass Player.

Vocalist and violinist Ginny Luke (of Meat Loaf’s band The Neverland Express fame) has a new album out. It is called Devil at My Heels and, along with original material, features a cover of Burn. Continue Reading »

Roger’s bass playing rarely get the same recognition as the other musicians in the band. Here’s one example when it does — a professional, Berklee educated, and Deep Purple hating (shock! horror!) bass player learns the Highway Star bass line and discovers the beauty of it.

For bass players, tackling a Deep Purple song means stepping into a world of groove-driven rock, and Highway Star is no exception. Roger Glover’s driving bass line locks in with Ian Paice’s drumming to push the song full speed ahead.

In this video, Sharon jumps in as fast as possible, breaking down the bass line and figuring out what makes it tick. With a mix of groove, pentatonic phrasing, and a few tricky surprises, it’s way more than just root notes. Can she keep up with the energy and speed? Watch and find out!

Thanks to Scott’s Bass Lessons for the video.

Here’s the original Deep Purple improvisation vehicle Mandrake Root, performed on November 14, 1970 for French TV show Chorus, and now all cleaned up and upscaled to HD by the latest wonders of technology undistinguishable from magic Continue Reading »

A couple of vintage Ian Gillan interviews on Louder Sound.

First, was a 2015 contemporary chat with Geoff Barton on the occasion of another snub of Deep Purple by the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame (the band was eventually inducted next year). As such, the interview was a part of Classic Rock feature celebrating the band, in spite of the Rolling Stone-affiliated HoF snub.

Which was the first Deep Purple track you heard, prior to joining the band?

I had the first three albums, but I can’t remember the first track I heard._ This Bird Has Flown_ was possibly the one. I’m not sure. It could have been April, could have been any of them, really. It could have been Hush. I had them all on my old gramophone.

How was it going from your previous band, Episode Six, into the melting pot that was Purple?

It seemed quite a natural transition to me. Joining with Roger at the same time made life easy. We joined not just as a singer and bass player, but also as a songwriting team. We were ready for everything except success. That’s the only thing we hadn’t been trained for.

Did you feel a sense of rivalry with other bands?

I don’t think we felt any sense of competition. It was the fans and the press who made big things out of the so-called rivalry between Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. All the bands used to drink together. We never even thought about competitiveness.

Continue reading in Louder Sound.

The second one is a reprint of an interview taken by Malcolm Dome, originally appearing in Metal Hammer issue 155, dated July 2006. This interview deals with Born Again and revolves around numerous anecdotes from the stint, most of which you probably have heard before — from joining the Sabs after having one too many at the pub, to the life-size replica of Stonehenge.

It was agreed that the newly configured Sabbath would record the album at Manor Studios in Shipton, Oxfordshire, a complex that was then owned by Richard Branson]. But, as the singer recalls, the process was anything but normal. In fact, the whole situation was slightly surreal.

“I hardly ever saw the rest of the guys,” he says. “I’d work in the studio during the day, and party at night. Tony and Geezer would party during the day and sleep at night – or something like that. Here’s how it would work. I’d go into the studio until about 5pm. And as I was leaving, the rest of the guys would arrive. We’d probably talk very briefly, and I’d tell them what I thought of one or two ideas they’d recorded the previous night. They would work until about midnight, then go to a club in Birmingham, and get back to the studio about 8am, at which time I was up and boiling the kettle for my first cup of tea – just as they’d be ready to crash out and sleep! It was crazy, but it seemed to suit all of us.”

Continue reading in Louder Sound.

Thanks to the stalwart commentator Uwe Hornung for the 2015 link.

An outfit called Rock ‘n’ Roll Grad School talks to Dr. Donald Airey about his new album. If you’ve been paying attention, you may have already heard bits and pieces of what Don has to say here. Nevertheless, here it is Continue Reading »

Steve Vai shares with Music Radar a couple of stage mishap stories from his stints with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake.

Vai recalls a similar incident on stage with Whitesnake and the band’s singer David Coverdale.

“It wasn’t too different,” Vai says. “Fast forward a couple of years and I was playing Jones Beach Theater with Whitesnake, playing that big heart guitar in the rain.

“I usually do pretty good footwork. I never go down. You get this foot radar, knowing where the pedals are, so you can act like a rock star.

“I was backing up and knew the monitor was behind me, so I was moving to step over it, but I had these spurs on my boots.

“The spurs caught the monitor and again I was up in the air, staring at my feet and landing on my back, completely out.

“And this time I had this giant triple-necked heart-shaped guitar on top of me!

“I opened my eyes and this time it’s David Coverdale standing over me saying, ‘Steven, darling, are you okay? Are you alright?’

Here Steve Vai talks in 2024 to the Backstage Pass Rock-News podcast about his time in Whitesnake:

Thanks to Music Radar for the mild amusement.

Truemetal.it has an interview with Don Airey on the occasion of his new solo album Pushed To The Edge about to be released. The conversation also veered to discuss other parts of Don’s illustrious career — just check out the anecdote of parting the Red Sea at six o’clock in the morning to meet Jerry Garcia. Hopefully, such stories will be part of the book he is working on:

You mentioned some of the stories from your career, and I imagine you could have so many more to tell. Have you ever thought of writing a biography?

Well, I’ve written a lot of it down. I’m kind of writing the book, and the publishers are interested. “How are you doing?”. I’m always halfway through, you know, because career keeps going on [laughs] and on and on [laughs]. But I’m going to finish it this year. So, I’m making a determined effort. I know I’m quite amazed when I look back at some of the things I’ve done and what I’ve been through. It’s quite unusual, especially now. You know, it’s so long ago. It’s a different world that we live in now to the one I grew up in, musically. So many things have changed and yet nothing’s changed, you know, with music, really. It’s the same story. You know, what you need is a tune and a riff. When you’re somebody who looks alright and can sell it, you know. I remember Crosby, Stills and Nash saying something. The first time they toured, they toured for the girls. The second time it was for the money. And the third tour was for the music. [Laughs] And that’s something that always stuck with me. Being in a band, for me, when I first joined a band when I was in my teenage years, life changed. My life changed. I went from being a rather lonely, academic kind of guy who was interested in Chopin and Schumann to… You know, the world opened up to me, even though it just meant playing different places in my hometown. But sometimes going 12 miles to do a gig. And of course, you know, chased by girls and making new friends. It was very exciting. And it’s still the same, really.

Read more on Truemetal.it