Metaltalk has an illustrated review of Glenn Hughes doing his Deep Purple set at the Maid of Stone Festival on July 22:

Maid Of Stone – Saturday. By the time the Headliner, Glenn Hughes, arrived, we had stopped caring about the rain and the weather. Many had since departed, yet those who stayed to the bitter end, bitter being the operative word as the wind had not eased, were presented with a pure masterclass of Deep Purple classics.

Though, in view of their soaking wet and cold state, probably many fans were happy for the headliner to play a shortened set, this was my one main gripe of the weekend. How come the Headliners played the same length of time as all the rest of the bands on the bill?

Surely, they were entitled to more than an hour. Answers on a postcard, please.

That said, this was a well-packed hour, and despite a slippery stage, Glenn brought his ‘A’ game to the park. Playing a set built entirely around Deep Purple songs, this was a delight and a wonderful slab of nostalgia with which to finish the day.

Continue reading on Metaltalk.

Photo: Robert Sutton/MetalTalk

Goldmine magazine has another one of those top-something lists (yep, we can hear the eyes rolling from all the way up in our editorial ivory towers). But it is a list on a topic rarely discussed outside the hardcore fan forums — it’s a top 20 of Morse era tracks, and it’s rather eloquently penned by Martin Popoff. So try it out as food for thought. We are sure each one of you has an opinion on the matter. 😉

20. “The Surprising”

We begin this tour of wonders with a vaulted progressive epic from the band’s second album with Bob Ezrin producing, namely Infinite from 2017. What I love about this one is how busy Ian Paice is on the mellow bits (with Steve playing spaghetti Western), and then how two minutes in, the song explodes into a heroic Middle Eastern-tinged heavy prog, featuring spooky, cool keyboards from Don Airey. Don features prominently in the ethereal cool-down as well, and then there’s even more surprises. “The Surprising” was the fourth single from the album, whatever that means.

Continue reading in Goldmine.

Thanks to Mike Whiteley for the heads-up.

Cherry Red Records has a 6CD live box of Gillan (the band): Back In The Game – Live (1978-1982). It includes:

• Live at The Marquee 1978
  Recorded at The Marquee Club, London, 27th December 1978; with guest appearance from Ritchie Blackmore
• Live in Tokyo 1978
  Recorded at Shinjuku Koseinenkin Hall, Japan, 23rd October 1978
• Live at Hammersmith 1980
  Recorded at Hammersmith Odeon, London, 14th October 1980
• Live in Aachen 1981
  Recorded at Eurogress, Aachen, Germany, 17th June 1981
• Live in Glasgow 1982
  Recorded at the Apollo, Glasgow, Scotland, 6th November 1982
• Live at Wembley 1982
  Recorded at Wembley Arena, London, 17th December 1982

Promotional blurb includes a disclaimer about sound quality of some “material drawn from various, non-standard sources”, so probably there’s no magic happening here. Please report if you have heard this particular release. See the label site for further info and complete track listing.

Thanks to dal1962ton for the heads-up.

Geir Myklebust posts on his blog a Rainbow Rising review by Geoff Barton that first appeared in the issue of Sounds from May 22, 1976:

“WITH RAINBOW’S music I intend to carry on and expand upon the essence of Deep purple — aggressiveness — and at the same time add a kind of medieval feel to it all.”
Thus spake Ritchie Blackmore in a SOUNDS interview dated August 2, 1975 — the last time, to my knowledge, the one-time Deep purple guitarist visited Britain. Of course, it’s been even longer since he actually played here and while this is disappointing I can’t help but feel, in a twisted, abstract sort of way, that this lengthy absence from his home country hasn’t altogether worked to his favour.
Bearing in mind the recent, much-discussed poor British displays of the Tommy Bolin incarnation of Deep Purple, Ritchie Blackmore is now, to most people, a hazy, indistinct, albeit fond, memory. A good deal of mystique surrounds not only the man but his band as well.
For, at the moment, Rainbow is an uncertain, undiscovered property, not being the band that appeared on last year’s amorphous debut album. Gary Driscoll, Mickey Lee Soule and Craig Gruber have long since left the fold, only Blackmore and vocalist, lyricist Ronnie James Dio now remain. The rest of the group is, to British audiences at least, new and untried.
The Rainbow has, however, been carefully crafted, put together with no small amount of precision by Blackmore and Dio. The outfit now comprises, besides the aforementioned duo, Scottish bass player Jimmy Bain, late of Harlot; Tony Carey, Keyboard player, California-born, ex- of a band called Blessings; and old-timer Cozy Powell on drums, whose past credentials vary from the ‘Ruff And Ready’ Jeff Beck Group to a teenscream ‘Dance With The Devil’ solo career.

Continue reading in My Things – Music history for those who are able to read.

Back in May, when Steve Morse was intermittently touring with his eponymous band, he spoke to WITH 90.1 radio station, broadcasting out of Ithaca, NY. They have published the transcript of the conversation. Here are some Purple-related bits, not that the rest is not just as interesting…

Q: Did your technique or style change at all after playing Deep Purple songs for 28 years?

SM: Yeah, I think so, in my phrasing and just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more patience with letting things develop. But you can hear that, and a little bit more relaxed approach, a little bit more competence at improvisation. And I’m not driven so much to cram as much in as possible into a segment. So yeah, I feel I’ve grown as far as being able to write and improvise more melodically.

Q: I saw you with Deep Purple on the 2002 tour with Dio and Scorpions, and was impressed that the band’s musicianship was still so strong.

SM: When I first joined them, we only committed to four shows together – they weren’t sure of me, and I wasn’t sure of them, especially since I didn’t want to be in a nostalgic band where the guys couldn’t play anymore.

I was warming up, with just me and my amplifier, and I played something. And Jon Lord had just sat down at his organ and played the exact same thing back to me without any hesitation. I played something else, and he played that back and then modified it. And then I played that new modification back to him. By then, the whole band was on stage playing a beat underneath us – even Ian Gillan started playing the congas – and it was just this wonderful, organic jam. And that’s what really brought me into the band – like, here I am trading licks with a keyboard player who has ears like a great jazz pianist. I couldn’t believe it.

And then when Jon left, Don Airey turned out to be just as capable with the musicality – he had a different style, different personality, and different upbringing, but he was exactly the same caliber of musician, so I was very impressed.

And from his mention of Janine, sounds like she’s doing fairly well:

[…] I’m focused on helping my wife transition back to the land of the living. We’ve had appointments all this week, and it’s been just constant stuff. But it’s definitely worthwhile and this is definitely what I was meant to do.

Read more on withradio.org.

Simon McBride gives the rundown of his stage rig, admitting in the process that he’s not terribly technically minded, and talks a bit about the whole experience of playing in Deep Purple. Continue Reading »

European channel Arte TV this year is showing performances from the Jazz Open Stuttgart festival. Deep Purple are playing at the festival on July 18, 2023, and it will be broadcast live online, as well as made available for replay for 90 days afterwards. Live broadcast starts at around 21:00 CEST and is expected to last for an hour and a half.

[Update Jul 25]: The show has been posted on Arte.tv, where it will be available for your viewing pleasure until October 22, 2023. Little birdie told us, that this ditty allows you to, ahem, watch the show offline.

Thanks to Joerg for the heads-up.

RAMzine has a preview of the updated edition of Illustrated Biography, listed by the publisher as slated for shipping in September/October 2023. The book is now called Deep Purple – The Visual History 1968-76.

Unlike many other similar books about bands of this stature, this isn’t just a collection of pictures. The contents are divided up under a series of headings from Deep Purple’s inception in 1968, examining every ‘mark’ stage up to 1976, including albums and personnel, and incorporating comments from and details of everyone who played in Purple in this period, including how they joined the band, plus details of short-lived members like Nick Simper and Rod Evans. Ritchie Blackmore gets a 30-page spread and, if you look closely, you’ll even see him smiling in one of the pictures. The book’s mostly factual, with Charlesworth rarely incorporating his own views about whether a line-up change had improved or detracted from the band. Nonetheless, this is still an interesting read with a few surprising little nuggets of information … Rod Stewart, when with the Jeff Beck Group, being looked at as a possible frontman when the band’s being put together in ‘68? Glenn Hughes approached to join the embryonic ELO before joining Purple?… and for Purple fans young and old, there’s something here for you all to enjoy, not because the book is amazingly brilliant or rammed with controversial comments, but because it’s an enjoyable trawl through the first eight years of a remarkable band. It’s a safe bet their story from 1984 onwards will be nothing like as exciting a ride as their ’68-76 period.

Read more in RAMzine.

German edition of the Classic Rock magazine has “Das making-of Machine Head” as the cover story for their July/August 2023 issue (a.k.a. #121). This may or may not be somehow related to the English version of the same story published earlier this year. Anyways, our correspondent on the ground tells us that there’s nothing in the German story that we haven’t known before. The issue can be ordered directly from the publisher.

Thanks to Tobias Janaschke for the info.

Roger Glover posts a eulogy to an old friend Mo Foster:

Deep sadness at the news that Mo Foster has died. I met him on the Butterfly Ball sessions in 1974 and we always remained friends. Not only was he a warm and charming man but an inspiring bass player and endowed with a superb sense of humour. His book British Rock Guitar was, and is, both insightful and wickedly funny. One of a kind. He will be sorely missed.

My condolences to his wife Kaye and all his family and friends

Roger Glover
4th July 2023

Jeff Beck & Mo Foster perform Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in 1980: