Deep Purple Live at Jones Beach Theater, September 1, 2024
– reviewed by The Highway Star reader Albania. Photo: DP WebCrew.

The guys were on fire and delivered an excellent show at the iconic Jones Beach Theater on New York’s Long Island on September 1, 2024.

Having been on the road for the prior two days at a soccer tournament for my 11-year-old, going to the September 1 show was going to be a showtime decision for me. After a four-hour drive from MA to CT, I got home at a somewhat reasonable hour to be borderline willing to buy two tickets last minute, pick up a friend nearby and drive together an hour and a half to the Jones Beach show.

YES had played a couple of tunes by the time we got there. They sounded great and are highly skilled as musicians. The current singer sounds a lot like Jon Anderson. Steve Howe is very impressive as a guitarist and harmonized very well with the singer.

After a two-year, $20 Million renovation, The Jones Beach Theater reopened its doors in July of 2024. It is an impressive venue with a capacity of 15,000. The uppermost tier was empty; my guess is that there were around 12,000 people there. It was a mix of ages, with a somewhat noticeable middle age component present.

DEEP PURPLE sounded great and came across as energetic. They were sharp and exciting. Little Ian and Roger were tight and thunderous. Simon feels even more at home than the first/prior time I saw him with DP in East Brunswick, NJ, in February of 2023. Big Ian was wonderful overall. He exuded happiness and was charismatic and sharp, especially with his in-between-song stories/anecdotes. Don was solid as ever and delivered the mighty wall of sound that has for some time now become his signature with the Purps. The new material (see setlist below) sounds great live and went down well.

The Purple show moved at a fast pace, especially compared to YES (at least the YES part that we were able to catch). Within the opening notes of Highway Star, the crowd got on its feet, but, to my dismay, most people gradually sat down out of respect for those that preferred to stay seated. That is understandable. Every now and then you could see pockets of people that were itching to get and stay up, but chose the opposite so that they would not block the view of seated folks behind them. This all changed with the opening chords of SOTW, with pretty much the whole crowd staying on its feet for the remainder of the show.

After the uncertainty related to the prior few days’ long-distance driving, the so-so food, and some sleep deprivation, I am glad that in the end I was able to muster enough willpower to go to the September 1 gig at Jones Beach, NY. It was an excellent show and the guys did not disappoint. I am now counting the hours until the September 3 gig at the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, CT. This time it will be five of us, including a first-timer.

Here are three words for those that are in doubt: GO SEE THEM.

SETLIST (Jones Beach Theater, NY, September 1, 2024)
Highway Star
A Bit on the Side
Hard Lovin’ Man
Into the Fire
Guitar Solo
Uncommon Man
Lazy Sod
Keyboard Solo
Lazy
Show Me
Portable Door
Anya
Bleeding Obvious
Space Truckin’
Smoke on the Water

Encore:
Green Onions
Hush
Black Night

Louder Sound reprints Ian Gillan’s 1973-84 out-of-Purple career retrospective that originally appeared in the Classic Rock magazine issue #92.

There has never been a dull moment in Ian Gillan’s career. From his 60s bands The Moonshiners, The Javelins and Episode Six to his three separate stints in Deep Purple, via an unlikely one-album service in Black Sabbath, he’s been a fixture of the British rock scene for decades.

But there’s one period of his long and sometimes chequered past that often gets overlooked: his solo years between 1976 and 1982, fronting The Ian Gillan Band and, subsequently, Gillan.

These days, with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore long out of the picture, Deep Purple feels like a happy family. That wasn’t always the case. In 1973, a pissed-off and disillusioned Gillan intended to quit both the band and the music industry for good.

“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” he recalls today. “I had more money than sense. Well, I didn’t actually have the money, it was held for me in various bank accounts. But all I had to do was ask for it.”

Continue reading in Louder Sound.

Here’s a nicely filmed audience video of the complete show in Holmdel, NJ, from August 31, 2024. Continue Reading »

Once being in Stockholm, Don Airey spoke to Roppongi Rocks. He revealed that another Deep Purple album is in the plans, and his solo album, tentatively called Push to the Edge, has been finished and is pencilled for release in 2025. Continue Reading »

Ritchie Blackmore reminisces from his bar about various encounters with Eric Clapton he had over the years. Continue Reading »

Engl has introduced a new Steve Morse Signature 20 amplifier. It is a compact, 20-watt all-tube amp. Here’s Steve explaining what, how, and why Continue Reading »

A pretty well put together 20-minute documentary about the formation of Deep Purple. For whatever reason, the channel that published it does not allow us to post it here, so you’ll have to head to YouTube to watch it. Continue Reading »

Our ever so vigilant trainspotting department presents you with news of science and technology.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in USA reports about their new telescope becoming operational after a successful launch into space on August 16, 2024 on board of the NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-R (PTD-R) satellite. The instrument is of a new design for both an ultraviolet and short-wave infrared monolithic telescope in one compact package. The gadget, thus combining ability to observe in both red and blue sides of the spectrum, was aptly named Deep Purple.

“Our observation campaign will begin the week of Sept. 2 and we will survey the Earth background, the galactic bulge and other satellites in orbit,” said Principal Investigator Jordan Smilo.

The proud LLNL Space Hardware team with their Deep Purple creation. Somebody in this picture gotta be a fan.

Meanwhile in Europe, a project to recover energy and other valuable resources from, ahem, urban waste with the help of purple bacteria was also named Deep Purple:

The DEEP PURPLE concept relies in a versatile, integrated and flexible Multi-Platform Biorefinery, based on the metabolism of Purple Phototrophic Bacteria (PPB) to extract and recover high added-value compounds for the bio-based industry such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), ectoine and cellulose in 2 demo sites (ES, CZ).

Somebody must be a fan over there too. Please, do step forward if you are reading this.

BraveWords reviews the Cincinnati gig from August 21, 2024. This, being a specifically musical website, digs quite a bit deeper than the other two recent offerings.

While Yes’ set was perhaps more orchestrated and focused more on earlier material, Deep Purple, on the other hand, gave us a more jam band feel, and played some deeper cuts. Kudos for not playing the same show over and over. I wish more bands varied their set lists. Purple does not have many special effects – just a screen. The stage is pretty bare except for the band. “Highway Star” led off the set. I can’t think of a better song to get the energy pumping. They then went straight into new material with “A Bit on the Side” from the new =1, and then deeper cuts from In Rock, “Hard Lovin’ Man” and “Into The Fire.”

Read more and check out the photo gallery in BraveWords.

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the heads-up.

New Noise magazine reviews the Chicago show from August 23, 2024:

Last time I caught Deep Purple was in 2018 during their tour with Judas Priest, so be able to catch them once again, especially on their 50th anniversary tour was even better. Considered to be pioneers in metal and hard rock, Deep Purple made waves originally as a prog rock and psychedelic rock band eventually shifting over to a bigger, heavier sound becoming looped in with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as the “unholy trinity of British hard rock and heavy metal in the early to mid-seventies”, thus being dubbed as one of the three bands that truly mattered in the early ‘70s. It was this reputation that would carry them into legendary status inspiring acts ranging from Metallica to Aerosmith to Van Halen to Pantera and the next wave of British metal such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. Still at the top of their game, Deep Purple even released a new record this summer titled =1 all while performing in sold-out arenas, rock festivals, and amphitheaters, demonstrating that while Deep Purple may be the old dogs on the block, that doesn’t mean they still don’t have a little bite left in them.

Read more and check out the photo gallery in the New Noise magazine.