From deep-purple.net:

“John Coletta, former manager of Deep Purple and Whitesnake, died on July 9th 2006. Tony Edwards approached 35 year old John, managing director of an advertising agency (in an office above his own), to help him launch Deep Purple in late 1967. Coletta remained an integral part of the management of the band through the years 1968 to 1976, often touring with them. After the group split, the two managers set up their own operations but retained their interest in the band’s back-catalogue. John took on David Coverdale’s Whitesnake, and managed them for many years. In recent years John lived in Spain, and was involved with concert promotion there until he became ill last year. He had also been working with Derek Lawrence on some record ideas.”

Jon Lord’s “Concert for Group and Orchestra” will be performed live in Italy by an Italian jazz trio and the “Arturo Toscanini Foundation” orchestra. The jazz band’s members are Vito Di Modugno (organ) , Mimmo Campanale (drums) and Massimo Sutera (bass). Special guests will be guitarist Ricky Portera and popular Italian singer Alberto Fortis.

The shows will take place 20 July in Salsomaggiore Terme (Parma) and 21 july in Rimini. Full details on Deep Purple Italia.

Holland’s musicians magazine “Musicmaker“, has a coverstory (6 pages) on Deep Purple in their latest issue (06/06), which is available in shops in the Netherlands and Belgium since July 5th. Musicmaker has spoken to all bandmembers (except Ian Paice, although he is featured in the article). All instrumentalists list their gear for the current tour.

Mick Box of Uriah Heep has collected a bunch of famous names in rock to sign a white Telecaster which will be sold on eBay with the proceeds going to a cancer charity. Among the people who signed the guitar is the current line-up of Deep Purple and David Coverdale.

Mick has also posted some pics from the gig Uriah Heep did with Deep Purple in Bad Brückenau.

I’m back home from Hell Blues Festival in Norway. Last friday 22.05, Deep Purple went on stage. It was an outdoor concert and it was quite cold. Deep Purple made a solid concert with a mixture of old and new songs.
Pictures Of Home
Things I Never Said
Strange Kind Of Woman
Rapture Of The Deep
Fireball
Wrong Man
Steve Morse guitar solo and jam
Well Dressed Guitar
Junkyard Blues
When A Blind Man Cries
Lazy
Don Airey keyboard solo
Perfect Strangers
Space Truckin’
Highway Star
Smoke On The Water
Encores:
Hush with Ian Paice drum solo
Black Nigth with Roger Glover bas intro
23.42 it all was over.
I might write more in a review later. Pictures will be up as well.

Take care
Benny Holmstrom

It has come to our attention that producer Drafi Deutscher, one of the people who worked on Perfect Strangers (the recording that launched the reunion era) passed away on Jun 9th, at the age of 60. You can read his long and extensive biography (in German, please note) at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drafi_Deutscher

The guys in Deep Purple like soccer and soccer players apparently like Deep Purple. According to news agency Associated Press, Croatia’s World Cup soccer team will attend the Deep Purple show in Bad Brückenau, Germany tonight.

A Billboard magazine interview with Montreux Jazz Festival founder Claude Nobs started a rumour that there was a possibility of a one-off reunion of Deep Purple’s classic Mk. II line-up featuring Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord. Everyone involved are now denying this. Here is a comment from Roger Glover:

We are NOT looking for Ritchie (or Jon for that matter) to join us in Montreux. We have contacted our friend Claude Nobs to find out what he was thinking of and he has told us that he didn’t say that. He claims he was misquoted. As a rumour mill, the internet is beyond par; I am still being asked about “Jon Lord’s Dream”, a complete non-story if ever there was one.

Ritchie Blackmore has the following statement on his website:

Most ridiculous rumor of the month! Truth regarding the upcoming Montreaux show is: Ritchie and his representatives have never been approached by the members of Deep Purple, their agents or the organizers of the Montreux concert. The only way that this office has heard of the show is through the fans who apparently are being mislead by false rumors. As you all know, Ritchie left Deep Purple in 1993 – 13 years ago. Ritchie will not be making an appearance at the Montreux show.

Last night in Osnabrück I managed to witness the most interesting Purple gig I’ve ever seen. During the second song (Things I never said) Don´s – or better still Jon´s old – Hammond stopped working, also the keyboard on top of he Hammond, “which is used in many of our songs,” said Gillan.

So Don had to go on playing with the keyboard on his right side only and the syntheziser. For several minutes the technicians tried to fix the Hammond, then they gave up. And so we got versions of DP songs, that were never played before and probably never will again, I think. For example a beautiful piano version of Lazy…

Don showed that he is a master of improvisation, but seemed to be lucky, when it was all over: On stage he fell on his knees and seemed to thank heaven, that everything went that well.

“I hope not,” he told me – grinning – afterwards, when I said to him, that I hope to get a bootleg of this show somewhere. But if anybdy gets one in his or her hand – I´d be thankful to hear from you… It was really a very special evening…

The setlist was the same as in the previous shows, with Living Wreck dropped and Wrong Man added to the set.

Friedhelm Wenning

The boys were back in town, or better said – in the city of the future as Gillan ironically described the venue during the show. However, reframed by the giant excavators from past times the band was in absolutely brilliant condition. Spirits were high on stage whereas the Trinity of Gillan/Glover/Morse had its lion’s share in spreading fun.

The frontman joked that he would have seen English kickers Crouch and Beckham amongst the crowd and later on he was temporarily barely able to sing due to his laughters caused by some irritating but intentionally made tones coming from Morse’s guitar.

The setlist was the same as in Grefrath but added by a long and fulminate version of Speed King with improvisations of some old rock’n’rollers. Even Elvis was covered. Pure madness.

The one and only reason for some criticism is well known: Three tracks from the recent album are definitely not enough to call it the Rapture Of The Deep Tour. Certainly, all of us will never forget the good old songs from Swiss times but their time is running out.

I have no problem listening to these songs. On the contrary, I like and adore them. But the band should add at least two more tracks from the current stuff. The audience would appreciate it. There is also no need to remove the one or other track from Machine Head. They could only play a quarter of an hour longer and that’s it.

But back to a positive final comment: As long as Deep Purple will give such excellent performances as seen in Ferropolis there is no further room for any disappointment. Until now, I have seen the band a dozen of times.

May they remain stainless for still a long time.

Volker Thiele