Ian Paice’s drum kit auction from early March was a resounding success, raising £11,600 for charity. Following up on that, Ian is putting up some memorabilia from the Turning to Crime sessions: a set of drum heads (sold individually) and a couple of sticks used to record the album, and the inmate plaque used in the mugshot for the album artwork.
Steve Morse appeared on the Sea of Tranquility podcast talking about the upcoming Dixie Dregs / Steve Morse Band tour, history of Dixie Dregs, prospects for making new music, leaving Deep Purple, Jerry Goodman, possibilities of collaboration with John McLaughlin, and cool new guitar gadgets. Continue Reading »
North American tour dates for Deep Purple have been announced. The summer tour will start on August 14, 2024, in Florida, and work its way up the East Coast, with a couple of detours into the heartland, and a couple of token Canadian dates tucked in. This tour is also billed as =1 More Time Tour. Apart from the Durant, OK, gig on August 18, Yes will be supporting for the rest of the shows. The Oklahoma gig is apparently Deep Purple only.
Ticket presales start today, April 9, at 12pm local time. Presale password is SMOKE. On sale to general public on April 12 at 10am local time.
The record company might insist it’s still Machine Head’s 50th anniversary, while David Coverdale reminds us that it is indeed one of the California Jam. Continue Reading »
It is with great disappointment that Deep Purple will not be performing at the Pandemonium Festival shows (or Newcastle side-show) in Australia this month.
Deep Purple never wants to disappoint, and so this is a difficult piece of news for us to share with our fans.
News reports have already confirmed that Deep Purple will not be part of the revised line up.
Deep Purple hopes to return to Australia very soon.
The band were supposed to appear as the part of a travelling festival / package tour Pandemonium 2024, along with Alice Cooper, Blondie, Placebo, Dead Kennedys, Wolfmother, and several other acts. A couple of weeks ago, tour organizers got themselves into a splash of hot water, when reports started circulating that the events have been cancelled due to poor ticket sales (cheapest general admission tickets for a single day festival are AUS$260, i.e. approx US$170). These reports were vehemently denied by the promoters, yet at the same time the Australian dates were quietly dropped from the official Deep Purple websites without any explanation. That’s when we decided to remove the ‘confirmed’ status from our calendar, but not to mark them as cancelled yet.
On April 5, 2024, Blondie have released a statement citing “…we — Alice Cooper and Blondie…” as still appearing at the festival, followed by the list of featured bands. Deep Purple are conspicuously absent from that list. The message from Deep Purple’s management (as seen above) has followed the next day. The festival website and ticket vending outlets are expected to be updated after the weekend.
One of the more unusual members of the extended Purple family has passed away. The ‘rocking abbot’ Notker Wolf has died on April 2, 2024, at the age of 83. In 2008, he arranged for Deep Purple to play a gig in the picturesque abbey courtyard in Benediktbeuern, Germany, just south of Munich. His own band opened, and then he was invited on stage to jam with the main act on Smoke.
Here is the contemporary news report on the event:
Back in 2008, Ultimate Guitar has published a 1975 vintage interview with Ian Gillan, conducted just before the release of Ian Gillan Band first album Child in Time. It is preceded by a long-winded explanation from the interviewer on how stupid he was in his younger years.
On with the main course:
Could someone find a similarity to Deep Purple in the new songs?
Well, to be quite fair, I think you could. Yes. I think you could probably say that certainly; Deep Purple as it was when I was with them, it’s the same voice and it’s the same singer. My attitude to writing has probably matured a bit, but then again I’ve benefited from a 2-year layoff. It’s got a freshness to it that has occurred to me, anyway. There must be a link obviously because I write the words and the tunes to the stuff I sang with Purple. And I’m writing the words and the tunes to what we’re doing now. We’re writing very much in the same sort of way. Everyone is writing what they’re playing, if you know what I mean. We just tie it all together and fortunately it’s working very nicely. It’s a similar writing formula to the one with Purple. I think probably when we go on the road, we won’t be such a loud band this time. Not that I don’t like the volume, I do like the volume very much. But the players are different kinds of players.
From the depths of Geir Myklebust’s archives emerges another vintage feature from the same time, based upon an interview with Roger Glover and Ian Gillan, conducted by Pete Makowski in a certain Swiss town. It was originally published in the issue of Sounds dated March 13, 1976.
Montreux is essentially a retiring home for rich persons. Like Brighton only a bit classier. It’s a place where a millionaire can spend his last years in the healthiest of surroundings before pushing off to that great Swiss deposit account in the sky.
It’s also the home of the Montreux jazz festival which, so the city’s tourist officer informs me, is overtaking the legendary Newport jazz festival in popularity and repute.
Montreux is also now the location for a new venture. The Mountain recording studios which have been installed into the brand spanking new casino building and is run by Jack Grod and his attractive American singer wife Anita Kerr.
Although it started business last July in time for the aforementioned Jazz festival it celebrated its official press opening only a couple of weeks ago which is how I got there.
As it happened Ian Gillan and Roger Glover were present there at the same time on business. Gillan was completing work on his new album with Glover acting as producer.
Almost three years after the Casino incident the ex Purple vocalist and equally ex Purple bassist find themselves at the same location that acted as a catalyst for the album that broke Deep Purple worldwide. Could this be more than fate?
On with the story…
Publicity blitz on the occasion of Machine Headremix continues with Roger Glover’s interview to Rolling Stone India.
What’s coming up for Deep Purple in 2024?
Well, a lot of people want to know, ‘When are you going to end? When are you going to finish?’ I know some bands do this, they say, ‘Right, this is gonna be the last concert.’ I just don’t want to do that, because there’s too much emotion involved. Too much pressure, too much stress.
I think the best thing to do is just play and play and play and then stop. The stop will come obviously from health or something like that and that’s life, but it’s a natural ending. It’s not an orchestrated last hurrah. Every night should be a last hurrah. Every gig should be, you imagine, it’s the last gig you’ll ever do. That’s how we think.
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