There’s a studio outside Cambridge in a place called Harston. It’s run by the son of a very old friend of mine. It’s got a big old analogue desk and he’s a shit-hot engineer. Each day I’d be up at half past five in the morning and work out what we were going to do. We tried to do two tracks a day, then start the third track for the next day, get a little bit of prep in.
Simon told me that at the end of the day that the guys were going out to the car park like: “Phew, we got through that! I wonder what the old boy’s going to give us tomorrow?” Leonard Bernstein said: “What you need for good work is a plan, but not quite enough time to put it into operation.” He was quite right.
John McCoy was interviewed by the Rock Daydream Nation podcast. It is supposed to be a long form chat, of which an excerpt has been posted. Here John speaks about the demise of Gillan band and the bitterness that it left behind. Continue Reading »
BraveWords has done an exclusive interview with Glenn Hughes, taken during his recent visit to Brazil. The interview will be published in parts over the coming days. In the first part, Glenn talks about his stint with Tony Iommi back in the 1980s:
BraveWords: After Sabbath parted ways with Dio, things became a blur when it came to singers. I did a Zoom with Tony Martin recently, and I jokingly asked, “Was there anybody in charge?” And he laughed at me and answered, “No, there was no one in charge.”
Hughes: “You know, Sharon and Don Arden when I was, you know, when Gillan was in the band, after Ray Gillen came in. And then Gillan went back to Purple, I guess. And then Tony calls me in the middle of the night, ‘Hey, um, I’m gonna do a solo album, and I’m inviting you and Ronnie and Rob Halford to do two or three songs each. Are you interested?’ I said, ‘Of course I’m interested. Your solo album. Of course I’ll sing on your solo album. So I went to the studio, Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and the first song we wrote together was ‘No Stranger To Love’, you know? And then he said, ‘Can you come down tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down.’ Then we wrote ‘Heart Like A Wheel’. And it went on for about four days and I’m going, ‘Well, am I singing the whole album?’ He said, ‘We would like you to sing on my solo album.’ So I did. And then the last song, Don Arden, Sharon’s father came in, ‘Well, we think we should call it Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath.’ Yeah. See, I wasn’t really singing about dark shit, you know. So I sang on Tony’s solo album, and it later became Sabbath.”
Don Airey has appeared on the Music Buzzz podcast talking about his latest solo album Pushed to the Edge and many other things — from Duke Ellington to John Sykes.
How did the Deep Purple job came about for you?
DA: Jon fell ill. And they had some sessions, they had some festivals [lined up] and Roger phoned me up. He said, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ ‘I’m conducting an orchestra at a Welsh festival.’ He said, ‘What are you doing the day after?’ I said, ‘Nothing much.’ He said, ‘Well, DEEP PURPLE needs you. We’re doing the [a festival in] Skanderborg [Denmark]. Jon’s ill. Can you stand in for him? Just three gigs.’ I said, ‘Okay. Can you send me the setlist, Rog?’ He said, ‘Oh, setlist?’ He said, ‘Whatever you fancy.’ I had a run-through in the afternoon with Steve Morse. He had a number called ‘The Well-Dressed Guitar’ that Jon would never learn. So with me coming in, he saw his chance to get it in the set. So he taught me ‘The Well-Dressed Guitar’. So that was included in the set as well. So I went on stage and I just had to wing it, really. You either do or you don’t… I stood in for Jon for 20 gigs and then thought nothing more of it except how wonderful it’d been. And then they phoned me up and said, ‘Jon’s left. We’ve got four names on the to-do list, all of ’em yours. Would you join?’ I said, ‘I’ll have to sleep on it. Yes.’
You can find the podcast on Megaphone and many other podcast platforms. Look for Music Buzzz Episode 118. It is about half an hour long.
Thanks to Blabbermouth for the heads-up and the quote.
MetalTalk celebrates 50 years of the famed Knebworth festival by talking to the Knebworth House custodian, Henry Lytton Cobbold.
Knebworth 1985 saw the legendary Deep Purple concert that holds a special place in the band’s history and in the annals of rock music. This was a massive one-off UK reunion show by Deep Purple (Mark II lineup) as part of their Perfect Strangers world tour. This is one of many shows that Knebworth House custodian Henry Lytton Cobbold covers in his new book, Knebworth – 50 Years Of The Greatest Rock Venue In The World!
Held on 22 June 1985, the Return of the Knebworth Fayre also featured Scorpions, UFO, Mountain, Blackfoot, Mama’s Boys and Meat Loaf. “I was there,” MetalTalk’s Mark Taylor said. “It will be the 40th anniversary in one month’s time. It was my first ever festival, and I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“I’ve got the recordings of all the bands, except for Scorpions, who were not professionally recorded that day because they just released World Wide Live. Scorpions were absolutely superb that day, as were Deep Purple.”
Good news, everybody! It was rumoured that the band is working on a new album, and the rumours have now been confirmed by the Rolling Stone Brazil magazine (usual caveats about reverse translation apply). The publication is dated May 7, 2025.
The two Ians — Gillan and Paice, bassist Roger Glover, keyboardist Don Airey, and guitar player Simon McBride spoke to Rolling Stone Brazil directly from Nashville, the city in the United States where they are working on what should become a new album, their 24th studio album and the successor to =1 (2024), which was highly praised for bringing back a heavier sound.
Regarding the album, they were rightly dismissive, as the conception process is still in its early stages. Paice, responsible for most of the group’s responses, comments:
“We’re not recording yet, but we’re very, very close. We’re picking and choosing the best songs we’ve come up with. Right now, we’re here in Nashville with Bob Ezrin [producer], and we’ll probably go into the studio in 10 or 12 days or something. Then we’ll see what happens. If it’s good, you’ll hear it. If it’s not, you’ll never hear it.”
The interview concluded with a round of questions for each of the band members on their non-DP projects. Gillan was asked about the Born Again remixes, Glover — about Butterfly Ball, Airey — about Pushed to the Edge, McBride — about Recordings 2020-2025, and Paice — about parting ways with Whitesnake in 1982.
Louder Sound has a feature on Gary Moore. Of interest in our quarters are several episodes when his path crossed with members of the Purple family, particularly his collaborations with Glenn Hughes.
It was also in 1979 that Moore met former Deep Purple singer/bassist Glenn Hughes. Lizzy were in Los Angeles, where Hughes now lived, readying for a US tour. Scott Gorham introduced them at LA’s numero-uno rock star hangout, the Rainbow, and by the end of a very long night they were best buds till the end.
The self-titled G-Force album, released in May 1980, was heavily tipped for the top but sank without trace, helped on its way by the fact that Hughes was nowhere to be found on it – not instrumentally, not vocally, not even any co-writer credits. The two Gs had fallen out after a heavily coked-and-boozed Hughes tumbled over a table at his birthday party and Moore had laughed. They didn’t speak again for years.
Moore was used to people he worked with smoking dope and snorting coke; it was the 70s. But despite an over-fondness for downers when he was younger, Moore didn’t do drugs. He was a drinker. So he tolerated Hughes’s coke habit. Hughes recalls: “Gary didn’t tell me not to do it until 1984, when I was properly high around him.”
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