Check out a couple of Lyon reviews (in French).

2006-01-19 Halle Tony Garnier, Lyon, France

4 stars [out of 5]

The T-shirts are out tonight – if they don’t list previous tour dates of Deep Purple, they’re for Iron Maiden or AC/DC. Over the decades, these bands’ public standing has gone from lock-up yer-daughters shock to a fond nostalgia. But Deep Purple’s fan base is so dependable, despite the band having lost their guitarist and co-founder Ritchie Blackmore over a decade ago, that tonight sees them beginning a two-year world tour.

Perhaps its the breadth of their style that has served them so well. Certainly, the guitar solos are there, superbly managed by the hands of Steve Morse, but it’s the piano and organ solos that really capture the imagination. Don Airey plays his keyboards with a gorgeous lightness, sometimes delving towards honky tonk and funk, raising a laugh by leading from an epic solo into a few sneaky bars of Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner.

Like a Barbara Cartland novel, the music of Deep Purple contains a lot more build-up than climax, although Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming, with its vocal lead, reminds us that they can also do pop. Lemmy from Motorhead has said he gets so bored of singing Ace of Spades that he often changes the words, but there’s no such tricks from Ian Gillan, who seems genuinely delighted when they end their set with their classic Smoke on the Water. His whole band are incandescent; men reunited with the thing they love the most.

(c) The Guardian, Sophie Heawood

I was at the opening date of the Rapture Of The Deep world tour and things seem promising.

The band were a little loose, on several occasions they had to check the sequencing on some tunes to make sure they got it right! Gillan frequently consulted a folder of lyrics placed on the drum riser. But they were still belting!

The band was class, and it was great to have it in-yer-face, instead of the arena I saw them in at Wembley. It was bloody loud (a v.good thing) and the mix was generally very good.

It was certainly a thrill to hear them storm on with ‘Pictures of Home’. Gillan manged to get through a plethora of microphones early on. The set list took me by suprise, less hits and lots of Rapture material, which I enjoyed immensely but which pissed off others. Didn’t think they’d do ‘Back To Back’ or ‘Before Time Began’ and was a bit suprised to hear ‘Ted the Mechanic’ and ‘Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming’, though they didn’t quite pull off the latter.

‘Living Wreck’ was a real highlight too. Again, there was little respect shown to the intro for ‘Lost Contact’, which was sad. Steve Morse enjoyed a lot of showcases in his inimitable style. He’s a real mastery of his instrument. The only quibble I have is he didn’t really nail some of his own distorted riffs, marring the glorous lick to ‘Perfect Strangers’ and ‘Space Truckin’. Still, I don’t mind Morse taking risks and it will get better as the tour progresses.

Airey’s keyboards have become integral to Purple and were very inventive, but his solo was too brief and Paicey didn’t get one. Roger Glover did and displayed his class, playing fingerstyle occassionally and melodic nouse.
‘Highway Star’ was perhaps the highlight, with the whole band rocking out at the front and headbanging in time to the music.

The usual features of a Purple gig were there, lots of smiles, air keyboards, general mucking about and throwing picks to the crowd.

As a tour warm up, it was fantastic, with a crowd full of all sorts of people. Lots of kids my age, 17-20 year olds. Pretty girls too! As the tour progresses, they will be sensational.

Sam Knight, London

Whatever you think of the album, it was really good to hear so many new songs. Put into the context of a live show (and without Michael Bradford’s production!) they sounded fine – fitted in really well. With a bit of luck, Mr G might have learned the words (to some of the old ones as well!) by the time the tour comes to you 🙂

The first part of the show was all “What’s coming next?” – and I’m talking about the guys on stage there. For those of us in the
audience it was wonderful. I confess that I was so surprised that it took me a while to realise that it was “Living Wreck” that I was hearing.

Things became a bit more predictable after Contact Lost / WDG. But they still managed to squeeze in another couple of new ones. WDG really has become a crowd-pleaser – not as much as the Machine Head numbers, but not far off.

The three front men were all in fine form, and clearly enjoying it. Don was excellent, with big Ian encouraging us to play “Air Hammond” during his solos.

Paicey – well, I wonder if the years are finally beginning to catch up, and if he was being more economical at first. But I’ll leave that to the drummers amongst you. He always looks so agonised anyway, and certainly by the second half of the show he was really into his groove. Maybe I was just so stunned by the opening sequence that I wasn’t paying enough attention to him.

Ian G said that they are going to be on the road for “two years” – a daunting thought at any age.

Liked the stage set – two racks of lights on the back wall on either side of the album cover backdrop, plus a couple of vertical rows on each side of the stage. The lights were much brighter than they appear in Stephen’s photos – multi-colours, abstract patterns, animation – clean , modern, complemented the music without being obtrusive.

Oh yes – Roger’s Rickenbacker came out for “Smoke”.

Summary – a great start to the tour. Things can only get better as the gremlins and uncertainties are ironed out. Hope they retain the adventurous setlist – seems to me to be a good compromise between playing new/obscure material and playing the crowd-pleasing old favourites.

There is a new tour programme – we only realised this when we were outside afterwards and saw others with it. At a glance it looks good.

Good to meet some new faces and catch up with some old ones – sorry I didn’t get a chance to chat.

Enough from me, I think.

Garry Smith

Right from the off, you could feel that they were going to do the business. Massive smiles all round and a palpable sense of
excitement…what were we going to get?

Now, Pictures Of Home sold me a dummy-I thought that, after using Silver Tongue as an opener on the last tour, that we might get something off the new album and initially feared that we weren’t in for anything new in terms of the way the set list had been put together.

All doubts cast aside as they do a Rapture era track (Things I Never Said) that didn’t even come out in Europe! From there on, I was steamrollered. Every single song notched up the excitement, reaching a crescendo with the back to back classics for the newer fans and still managing to sneak a newie in on the encore.

Everything I’ve seen so far, every comment, every review is talking about a band renewed, refreshed and pushing forward rather than standing still. If the set list remains this current (dare I say it would be nice to here Cascades again ?! Oh, I just did) then there’s going to be a lot more positive reviews and a lot of satisfied fans across Europe as this tour thunders on.

If you are in any doubt or had dismissed this tour after the recent years of classics-inspired set lists, get onto ebay, visit your tout or ticket agent, do whatever you can.

Possibly the most surprising and positive show I’ve ever seen by the band. I’m just checking to see what time I can get off to see the German dates…. pure magic.

Mash

(who thought the show was ok).

This is the correct setlist from last night’s Deep Purple World Tour opening show at The Astoria in London:
Pictures of Home
Things I Never Said
Wrong Man
Ted the Mechanic
Living Wreck
Rapture of the Deep
Back To Back
Before Time Began
Contact Lost
Well-Dressed Guitar
Lazy
Keyboard Solo
Perfect Strangers
Junkyard Blues
Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming
Space Truckin
Highway Star
Smoke on The Water
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
Black Night

Pictures from the show can be found here

I’ve been known to bitch about Deep Purple setlist over the years and after reports from London last night, I have to say that the setlist looks very promising this time with a clear focus on the current line-up. Sadly, I don’t have time to see the band now in January but have to wait until the festivals this summer. I hope they don’t fall into greatest hits mode then just because the festivals have a higher precentage of casual fans.

The setlist:
Pictures of Home
Things I Never Said
Wrong Man
Ted the Mechanic
Living Wreck
Rapture of the Deep
Back To Back
Before Time Began
Contact Lost
Well-Dressed Guitar
Lazy
Keyboard Solo
Perfect Strangers
Junkyard Blues
Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming
Space Truckin
Highway Star
Smoke on The Water
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
Black Night

Pictures from the show can be found here.

What do you think?

Tony Iommi has announced that Ian Gillan will appear on his “Black Sunday” radio show on the UK digital station Planet Rock this coming Sunday, January 22nd. The show runs from 19:00 to 21:00 GMT.
Thanks to DPAS for the information.

After Deep Purple’s concert in Helsinki, Finland on February 1, there will be aftershow party at the club “On The Rocks” in Helsinki. “Dr. Purple” will play there at 23.30.
Thanks to PSOF for the information.