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Elegant precision
We haven’t seen opera singers being properly awestruck by our boys doing their thing in a while on these pages, so here you go. Continue Reading »
Put a spring reverb on it
Stereophile has a review of the Machine Head 50-ish anniversary reissue with comments from remix producer Dweezil Zappa:
Zappa’s changes to “Lazy” are more subtle. He discovered a noise issue that had to be dealt with. “If you really listen to what’s happening with the rhythm track, it’s a blues progression very much in the same world as the song ‘Green Onions’ (the 1962 instrumental hit by Booker T. & the MGs). It’s a faster ‘Green Onions.’ When you listen to the new version, where Ritchie is playing rhythm guitar under the keyboard solo, I put a spring reverb on it to give it more of a ‘Green Onions’ feel, which isn’t on the original. You’ll also hear that the vocals in ‘Lazy’ are much more up front. And the harmonica solo is louder.
“The other thing about ‘Lazy’ is that on the master recording, the guitar tone, his main lead tone for his solos, is very different than what ended up on the record. It was much brighter, closer to what you hear in the beginning of the song. The problem was that while it was being recorded, they had some kind of technical issue where noise was introduced into the recording. You hear a lot of crackling. They had to muffle and mute the guitar tone in terms of the EQ to get rid of that. When I first got the track, I thought with modern tools I could get rid of that noise. But when I did that, it didn’t have the vibe. It was brighter, but it didn’t sound like the original vinyl anymore.”
Read more in Stereophile.
Too country for classical
Steve Morse has recently appeared on The ProgCast. Once again, it is one of those long form video chats that became popular recently due to the pandemic. It’ll be worth your time to set aside at least an hour to go through it. Caveat: the conversation mostly revolves around Dixie Dregs and the early days of Steve’s career, with only a scarce mention of his Purple tenure. Continue Reading »
Pure, raucous, and uninhibited
Ian Gillan provided his top 5 favourite Purple tracks to Louder Sound:
Mary Long (Who Do We Think We Are, 1973)
“I’d like to point out that I’m choosing these songs spontaneously, they could all change tomorrow. I like Mary Long because nobody had written a song like that before. [The name Mary Long was a composite of the ‘moral crusaders’ Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford, who were particularly active in the 60s and 70s. Its opening lines were: ‘Mary Long is a hypocrite/She does all the things that she tells us not to do’.] I was twenty-something years old and full of opinions.”
Read more in Louder Sound.
The law of gravity still works
In this short clip, Roger Glover, Don Airey, and Ian Paice talk about old rumours. Continue Reading »
Sense of groove
Hot on the heels of his predecessor, Glenn Hughes’ top 6 list appears in Louder Sound:
Burn (Burn, 1974)
“We were at Clearwell Castle when Ritchie said: ‘We should write song called Burn.’ He had the idea of the title already. The five of us wrote that song together in the Castle’s crypt in the key of ‘G’; Jon’s Bach instrumental, inserting the riff… it felt magical. Burn is such a great, dramatic rock track. It stops, starts, turns around, and there’s the Bach influence and vocal harmonies. It was completely different to anything that Deep Purple had ever done before. It ticked all the boxes of those that questioned whether the new line-up could work.”
Continue reading in Louder Sound.
A buzz and a bounce
A couple of months before the recently featured Roger’s favourite Deep Purple tracks, Louder Sound had published a similar list from Paicey:
Highway Star (Machine Head, 1972)
“Not how it started in the studio, Highway Star became a monster on stage. And it’s still a monster. It’s almost like a template of how a hard rock band playing a rock’n’roll tune should be. It was really well-performed on the Machine Head record and the solos from Jon and Ritchie are incredibly interesting. The feel of the whole thing is so right.”
Continue reading in Louder Sound.
Speaking of Louder Sound features, there’s also a short story of how back in 1971 Roger got into a bit of bother with HM Customs over his newly acquired Rickenbacker 4001.
Thanks to MacGregor for pointing out the Paicey feature.
Put everything on six
Steve Morse and Dregs’ bassist Andy West show their 2024 stage setups and talk about the gear. From picks to speaker cabinets, and everything in between — it’s all here. Continue Reading »
Sudden understanding
Louder Sound lists Roger’s seven favourite Deep Purple tracks
Hard Lovin’ Man (Deep Purple In Rock, 1970)
“Unlike concert halls, studios are very dead spaces. But the live sound we got on stage changed the band; it made us animated and aggressive. We started making violent music. With Hard Lovin’ Man there was no toning down, it was full-on. Even in the studio, Jon was still rocking his Hammond back and forth. That song was a breakthrough for us because it defined what we did on stage.”
Continue reading in Louder Sound.
No time to lose
That awesome Italian tribute band Strange Kind of Women didn’t lose any time learning and rehearsing the freshly released single and performed it at their gig on May 4 in Graz, Austria. Continue Reading »
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing