A short, but quite substantial interview with Glenn Hughes Continue Reading »

Guitar.com has a very short interview with Steve Morse, where he weights in on the digital vs analogue amp debate:

With any digital amp, I’m not able to get the interaction between reducing the level of the guitar in the input and having the tone change from distorted to slightly distorted to smoother and to clean, like I can with the ENGL. That and maybe the clinical tiny little artefacts of digital distortion that I still can hear when I interact with it and do a lot of changes.

However, if you were to do a set part where you’re just chugging along, hardly anybody would be able to tell if you were playing through a digital amp or not. However, if I were to be soloing and playing a super-saturated sound and then switch pickups and bring down the volume to about three out of ten, you would hear that it’s not the same roundness, or full. It’s an elusive quality that hasn’t really been captured by modelling amps.

When I play gigs, it’s always me using my ENGL tube amp. And I do carry it myself sometimes, but on tour the road crew carries it. But mostly, they just lift it into a case, and it just wheels onto a truck in a case. On these dates, I’m going to be bringing the ENGL.

Thanks to Guitar.com for the quotes.

Black Country Communion have released an official video for the single Enlighten from their upcoming new album V. We’ve been able to witness an unofficial one back in March, when the song was premiered live. Continue Reading »

Bristol 24/7 has a review of a new book The West’s Greatest Rock Shows 1963-1978, complete with the cover photo of Deep Purple Mark 3 on stage in all their bell-bottomed and platform-shoed glory, and excerpts covering reviews of several local gigs, including said Mark 3 at the Colston Hall in Bristol, on May 20, 1974.

The Burn album was another commercial and artistic triumph for Deep Purple, but it was all change in the ranks for what’s become known as Mark III of the band. Out went Ian Gillan and Roger Glover; in came the phenomenal Glenn Hughes and the unknown David Coverdale (whose previous career highpoint, lest we forget, had been working in a boutique in Redcar). But behind the scenes, Ritchie Blackmore was expressing increasing disgruntlement. He was not happy with the soul and funk influences brought in primarily by Hughes, which he described dismissively as “shoeshine music”. And on this tour he was paying particularly close attention to aptly named American support band Elf – the most diminutive act to play the Colston Hall since the Small Faces. After his departure from Purple the following year, he would recruit most of them, including vocalist Ronnie James Dio, for his new band Rainbow.

Ian Gregory was at the back of the stalls. “There was no obvious sign then of the tensions,” he recalls. “Purple were on fire. The first half of the set was almost all of Side A (in old money) of the Burn album: Burn, Might Just Take Your Life, Lay Down, Stay Down. Ritchie teased Lazy before they played Mistreated and then went on the Mark II stuff. The interplay between Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale was electric. The people around me were in awe.”

The coalescing Mark 3’s stay at the nearby Clearwell castle gets some coverage as well:

At the time, the Grade II listed castle boasted a recording studio in its basement, which became especially popular with rockers, including Led Zeppelin, Bad Company, Peter Frampton and Queen. Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath claimed to have seen a ghost there while recording Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Eventually, the band managed to spook themselves so much that they refused to stay overnight. “I thought, fucking hell: we got this place in the middle of nowhere so we could start writing, and everybody has terrified themselves that much that they’re driving home at night!” writes Iommi in his autobiography, Iron Man.

Purple were made of sterner stuff, though that didn’t stop notorious prankster Ritchie Blackmore attempting to terrify fellow members of the band – especially the new recruits. “Ritchie got there first,” writes Glenn Hughes in his autobiography. “I arrived second and got a good choice of bedroom, unaware that he had wired my room up and put speakers in the closet, and of course at three o’clock in the morning there were these ghostly wails. Blackmore had waited up to do it. When you’re in a 700-year-old castle and you hear that, it’s pretty spooky.”

Read more in Bristol 24/7.

Metaltalk has a brief and, frankly, rather superficial review of the Singapore gig. Of interest, might be the setlist, which can give an idea of what to expect throughout the summer. At least, until July 19th. Continue Reading »

Early rock’n’roll guitar pioneer Duane Eddy has passed away:

Duane Eddy, a pioneering guitar hero whose reverberating electric sound on instrumentals such as “Rebel Rouser” and “Peter Gunn” helped put the twang in early rock ‘n’ roll and influenced George Harrison, Bruce Springsteen and countless other musicians, has died at age 86.

Eddy died of cancer Tuesday at the Williamson Health hospital in Franklin, Tennessee, according to his wife, Deed Abbate.

Ritchie Blackmore responded to his death:

Just heard about the passing of the wonderful Duane Eddy who was my first guitar idol with songs like Rebel Rouser, Shazam, Some Kind Of Earthquake. I would always rush out and buy his long playing records. My favorite all time tune from him was The Lonely One.

He was a brilliant guitarist in his own right. He was the first guitar player with that deep bass sound which I loved. Unfortunately, I never saw him live, although I tried to see him playing on a couple of occasions. One particular time, when I was 12, I went to London airport to meet him. I sat there for hours waiting, so I could get a glimpse of him. After 2-3 hours, I asked the ground staff what time his plane would be in as it was obviously delayed. They told me his plane actually came in early and I missed him. That was my first of many futile attempts to see him. But I would play his music night and day.

He was very kind to me last year, because I had missed him on so many occasions, he sent me a Gretsch Guitar as a present for Christmas. I couldn’t believe it.

He will always be my number one inspiration from the time I took up the guitar until now. He was so unique in his playing.

The world has lost a great guitar player. A truly unique guitar player.

Our hearts are with Deed and his family.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

The first single from =1 is upon us. Continue Reading »

Steve Morse has appeared on the Stalwarts Of Music podcast. From inside his tractor in Florida, no less. The Bandland festival is mentioned as “happened last month”, so the interview must have taken place some time in January 2024. It’s a long chat, with lots of hay overturned, and Steve’s tenure in Purple discussed in depth. Dig in! Continue Reading »

A gentleman going by Mr. Zero has published in his blog a pretty detailed write-up of Tommy Bolin’s collaboration with Alphonse Mouzon on the latter’s album Mind Transplant. That recording, along with Tommy’s work with Billy Cobham, got him noticed by the big boys and an audition with Deep Purple a year later.

> The Real Thing <
Here’s where the story really unfolds for me.
Tommy Bolin (1 Aug 1951:Sioux City, Iowa – 4 Dec 1976: Miami, FL) had left the ‘James Gang’ in Aug ’74 & he & Stanley Sheldon (19 Sep 1950: Oattwa, KS) on Bass & Mike Finnegan (26 Apr 1945: Troy Ohio) on Vocals & Keyboards & Guille Garcia on Percussion & Marty Rodriguez on Drums were trying to reform a new version of ‘Energy’ which fell apart in a mere 3 weeks, although some demo recordings were made like “Sooner Or Later” (found on ‘Whips & Roses:2’), “Side Walk Strut” & “Shot My Baby Down” this Line-up did perform @ least 1 live show in Denver as a 9 song live tape exists. Then Bolin & Sheldon recorded 3 demo songs for Dr. John’s ‘Hollywood Be Thy Name’ in Nov ’74 the title track “It’s Your Freedom” & “Stick With Me”. Also sometime in ’74 Bolin sat in with ‘Weather Report’ & recorded 11 songs, perhaps as demos or jams.

Bolin was always prone to sit in with anyone who would let him, one time he had sat in on a jam with Mouzon & Coryell of ‘Eleventh House’ in a club in Boulder, CO. sometime in late ’74, Mouzon knew of Bolin by his guitar work on ‘Spectrum’ (1973 Atlantic Records), by; Billy Cobham (16 May 1944: Panama) with Jan Hammer (17 Apr 1948: Prague) both formerly of the ‘Mahavishnu Orchestra’. Mouzon was wanting to record a Fusion Jazz LP of his own, in the vein of ‘Spectrum’, so Mouzon booked some studio time on 6 Oct ’74 @ ‘Glen Holly Studio’ (named after the street it was located on), in Beechwood Canyon- Hollywood Hills, with Bolin on guitar, as it was one of Bolin’s favorite places to record, because it was owned by Bolin’s sometime business partner; Phillip Polomeni (23 Jul 1951: Brooklyn, NYC, -3 Feb 2014: L.A.) along with Stanley Sheldon from Bolin’s band ‘Energy’ & Rocke Grace on Keyboards. As with almost any sessions held at ‘Glen Holy Studios’ they were recorded,

Read more on mrzeros.com.

And we’ll leave you with some very topical fusion extravaganza for your listening pleasure:

Thanks to Uwe Hornung for the Mr. Zero’s link.

Ian Gillan was interviewed by Singapore’s The Straights Times. He spoke about the gig Deep Purple are about to play in the country and the upcoming new album:

We haven’t done a show since before Christmas because we’ve been working flat out on a new record. So everyone is like a caged lion at the moment. We’re going to explode with energy when we hit Singapore. Everyone’s very excited.

We’re going to do one song from the new album. It will also be the world premiere of its live performance, which is very exciting too.

I found myself being asked by a robot to prove that I’m a human being by filling in a matrix of traffic lights. And I tried, but they were all blurry and hard to pin down, and I failed to prove to a robot that I’m a human. The world is going totally insane.

And I suddenly had this desire for simplicity. So I started doodling, and I made a long equation. It was a really long, complex equation, but it equalled one. This is what we do in our lives every day, all these complications.

Read more in The Straights Times.