Well, the 2024 remix of Machine Head is upon us, and Louder Sound has a brief overview. The print edition of the Classic Rock magazine has announced issue 326, out on March 28, 2024, with the very Purple cover story.
In issue 326’s cover feature, band members and other stars talk about their favourite Deep Purple songs. Plus: how Machine Head was a triumph snatched from the flames of disaster.
Read the new release overview and Classic Rock teaser in Louder Sound. The print copy of the magazine issue can be ordered here.
PS. The release appeared on the streaming services yesterday, and we gave a listen to the Montreux 1971 show. It indeed appears to be a bootleg quality, albeit above average for that time.
Another Classic Rock reprint in Louder Sound — the awful year for Black Sabbath that was 1984. Demise of the Gillan-fronted lineup is very much included.
When, during their debut UK show at the Reading Festival in August 1983, Sabbath encored with the old Purple warhorse Smoke On The Water, there was disbelief, then disdain, then ridicule. It later emerged that they had also considered playing Purple’s Black Night. More astonishingly, with ELO’s Bev Bevan having become the latest drummer to replace Bill Ward, at short notice, guitarist Tony Iommi (at Bevan’s quiet urging) had actually suggested they have a crack at ELO’s Evil Woman. “But every time Iommi counted it in, it would make us all fall about laughing!” recalled Sabbath’s keyboard player Geoff Nicholls.
The world tour, stretched over seven excruciating months, would become legendary for all the wrong reasons. A week before Reading, bassist Geezer Butler narrowly avoided arrest when he threw a Molotov cocktail from his hotel room window, destroying another guest’s Ford Cortina. Three weeks after Reading, cops were called to a fight at a club in Barcelona, begun after the bouncers took exception to Gillan ‘jokingly’ setting fire to one of their waiters. Running to escape the mass brawl, Butler was arrested after jumping into the back of a police car, mistaking it for a taxi.
Read more in Louder Sound.
Louder Sound has republished a contemporary feature on the first Flying Colors album, released in 2012. It originally appeared in the Prog magazine from the Classic Rock stable, and was based on the input from all five members of the band.
What’s gone almost unknown until now is that Kerry Livgren almost became a member of Flying Colors. Livgren and Morse [then Deep Purple’s guitarist] had worked together in Kansas during the 1980s.
“The album’s executive producer [Bill Evans] wanted to put me together with Kerry again in some sort of writing project with Neal Morse,” explains Steve. “Neal and I came up with some song ideas, but when Kerry had his stroke, he couldn’t travel and it kinda ruled him out.”
Nothing composed with Livgren made it onto the record. Morse continues: “So Bill suggested that we work with Mike and of course after that we brought in Dave, which gave us four members.” It was Mike Portnoy’s masterstroke of adding Casey McPherson’s voice that transformed the group entirely. “Let’s face it, we’re not underwear models,” Steve laughs, adding: “Casey made the project real. He gave it direction. Suddenly our songs had the potential to become pop songs.”
Following Transatlantic’s modus operandi, the participants were encouraged to bring only song ideas to the sessions. “Working things up in the studio is also how Deep Purple does it, but I’ve never made an album in nine days before,” Steve grins. “With a group of guys that are very vocal about what they want, it sometimes became pretty hectic.”
Read more in Louder Sound.
Ian Gillan spoke to the Australian podcast Long Way to the Top. The new Deep Purple album was discussed, among other things, and Ian mentioned that it will be coming out in July. Continue Reading »
Elizabeth the opera singer is swooning all over the excessively coiffeured and trench coated David Coverdale. And dancing Vikings. Continue Reading »
Graham Bonnet has teamed up with Marty Friedman of Megadeath fame to record a new version of Since You’ve Been Gone. Continue Reading »
BraveWords quotes a Glenn Hughes’ message posted on unspecified social media:
Currently at home in Los Angeles, but the road is calling me…
Very busy year ahead, touring Europe & the United States, & more continents, announcing soon. Touring until November 25th.
It’s also time for me to record a GH solo album, to center me, & create new songs.
New music is vital for me, it is the Healer.
I will be in Copenhagen in June, recording in the studio.
It’s time for me to release new music in 2025, and play my solo material and retrospective songs of my career live.
To be present in the moment, and to stay free, is all I (we) need.
Sharing good loving vibrations with you all…
See you soon.
Here are a couple of excerpts from what appears the same Joe Lynn Turner interview, published on two different YouTube channels. JLT is reminiscing about his work with Ritchie Blackmore and Yngwie Malmsteen. Continue Reading »
Louder Sound reprints online a Classic Rock magazine feature on Don Airey that originally appeared in issue 249, circa 2019.
Airey thinks they might have wanted him to join [Black Sabbath] full-time, but his decision was made for him when he got a call from Cozy Powell. Rainbow were looking for a keyboard player, and Powell told his old friend he should get on a plane and go for the job. It was not a suggestion. “He said: ‘No arguments. There’s a ticket for you to New York.’”
When Airey arrived in America he was taken straight to meet Ritchie Blackmore. There was a clavinet in the room. “Ritchie walked in and said: ‘Do you read music?’ And he put this piece of Bach in front of me – which I pretended not to know but I actually did. I played it, and he was impressed. And we were off.”
Of all the difficult bastards Don Airey has ever worked with, you’d think that Blackmore was the most difficult bastard of all.
“No, he’s very easy to work with, Ritchie,” he says. “You’ve just got to be ready for whatever voodoo he’s going to conjure up on the guitar. If people are difficult to deal with, it’s because they’re looking for the next step musically. It’s your job to try and be there for them to make it happen, and maybe contribute a little on the side.”
Read more in Louder Sound.
Dweezil Zappa discusses his mix of Machine Head and compares it to the original Continue Reading »
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Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing