Whitesnake have announced US and Canadian dates for their farewell tour. The trek will start on August 17, 2022, in New Hampshire and wrap up on October 21 in Las Vegas. Most of the dates DC & Co will be supporting Scorpions, with a few gigs headlining on their own: New Hampshire, Providence RI, and Roanoke VA. The tour is scheduled at a rather leisurely pace, with breaks between shows as long as 6 days. Which leaves open the possibility of adding an odd gig here and there.

Tickets go on sale to the general public on May 13 at 10am local time. Presales start on May 10 at 10am local time. Presales password is farewell, albeit even the official site is not sure if it’s lower case or upper and advises to try both.

Full details in our calendar.

Joe Satriani gave an extended interview to Vintage Rock, where he explained how Deep Purple influenced his latest album called The Elephants Of Mars:

You do have these cinematic qualities in your music where certain visuals and shapes must be popping into your head when you’re writing and playing.

Yeah, it is important. As I mentioned many times in the social media interviews about that song, the title track, I’m listening to something that I played and it got me thinking: How am I going to be motivated to finish this song? And I realized I needed a backstory. And so I concocted this story about the scientists terraforming Mars, and by accident, they create a whole race of gigantic sentient elephants. And they can communicate telepathically to the colonists that are working on the newly terraform Mars. They can play crazy rock sounding music with their trunks and they get together with the guitar playing head of the revolutionary group to take back control of the planet from evil corporations — you know, a typical comic book kind of story.

That got me really excited because I thought that’s funny, it’s crazy science fiction, but it’s also kind of funny. So when I told the story to everybody else, everybody got in the right mood. Kenny’s drums are just really a celebration of fun, the way he plays, right from the beginning. I think it gave Brian the artistic license to just be really rude, to lay down a really rude bass part. All the way to the end where I think Rai was the last person to add the keyboards. He added a kind of a Jon Lord, a Deep Purple kind of distorted organ part. We had been talking years ago about how we love the vintage Deep Purple and how we love Jon Lord. When you tell that story to everybody, everyone gets in the mood and they go, “Now I’ve got this artistic license to really be crazy, to be a irreverent, to try some different things.”

The question of his stint in Purple also came up, and the answer was an interesting one. For a long time the canonical story have been that he could not become a permanent member of the band and record with them due to contractual obligations. He now reveals that there were also other motives.

You’ve had opportunities to join bands. You could have joined Deep Purple. But based on the fact that your solo career is your primary focus and you switch out players from one album to the next, would it be fair to say you enjoy the freedom of playing with a variety of other musicians as opposed to being in a set band?

I took my cue from those players that were laying the groundwork for the kind of stuff I do, like Jeff back. I saw the freedom that he had to play with interesting players that would inspire him, to do different things. I thought that’s really great. I love watching him live and I love his albums and he keeps you guessing and he’s always progressing as a guitarist. He just keeps going forward. I love that attitude of just moving forward all the time.

He’s not really hampered like a legacy band where they’re going to have to play their hits. Like when Aerosmith goes out, they’re just going to have to play those songs that are their hits. They got to play “Janie’s Got a Gun,” they got to “Dream On.” They can’t do a concert without it. But Jeff Beck really doesn’t have to do anything he doesn’t want to do (laughs). He can say, “No, this is where I’m at right now, check this out. No one else can do it. I can do it.” (Laughs) I love that attitude. It’s a dangerous move. You miss all that input from a band and you miss the chance that you can go mainstream. It’s very difficult for Jeff Beck to go mainstream like Aerosmith or any other pop band where you’re talking billions of streams and TV appearances and all the awards, that kind of stuff. However, everybody knows and respects Jeff Beck as a player, as a musician, as a composer, and they wouldn’t dream of him changing his attitude. We like him being the iconoclast that he is.

I had that choice to make when Roger Glover asked me to join Deep Purple. I just thought, I’m Joe from Long Island. I don’t belong in this British royalty metal band. I knew I just didn’t belong. I was a big fan of Ritchie Blackmore and I thought I’ll never be able to rectify it. I’ll always feel guilty that I have to copy Ritchie and I didn’t want to do that. I’ve had friends who’ve had successful turns replacing famous people in bands. But I remember what they would always say at the end of it. I remember Steve Vai telling me once, “Joe, if you can avoid it, don’t ever replace anybody famous in a band because the fans — they never let you forget it. You’re always compared to the first guy, the original guy.” So I thought I’m going to take the chance. I’ve got a good relationship with my fans, and we’ll stick together and try to just make better and better albums.

There’s a lot more in the interview, we just touched on the Purple related bits. You can check out the rest at Vintage Rock.

Photo credit: George Laoutaris CC BY-ND 2.0.

Here’s a track not covered too often — Rat Bat Blue, performed by Dario Mollo and the Space-T. Continue Reading »

A track from the upcoming Michael Schenker Group album Universal is intended as a tribute to Ronnie James Dio, in particular to his performance on Rainbow Rising. The track is called A King Has Gone and features Helloween frontman Michael Kiske on vocals, and two of the Rainbow alumni — Bobby Rondinelli and Bob Daisley as the rhythm section. Tony Carey also recorded a Moog synth piece titled Calling Baal that is a separate track that serves as an intro to A King Has Gone on the album (we think something Tarot Woman-esque).

The album will be released on May 27 via Atomic Fire Records. It will feature Ronnie Romero as a main vocalist, who will also join the MSG on the upcoming tour.

Thanks to Sonic Perspectives and Gary Poronovich for the info.

A classical composer follows the footsteps of the opera singer and gives Child in Time a spin. Came for a guitar solo, left with the jaw dropped from vocals. And the drumming. And the organ. And let’s not forget da fundament. Continue Reading »

Another release in the Live from Daisyland series, this time it’s Glenn & Co. take on Burn:

We’re set to radiate some heat with the fourth song from our Live From Daisyland EP, the timeless Deep Purple classic ‘Burn’! A massive crowd favourite ‘Burn’ released back in 1974 became Deep Purple’s concert opener taking over from Highway Star and continues to delight fans to this day. We took a packed to the rafter’s crowd at Rock City Nottingham England on a rockin’ ride with this seven minute plus version of ‘Burn’.

Thanks to BraveWords for the heads up.

Mike Portnoy was a guest on The Prog Report podcast recently, where he spoke about the albums turning 50 in 2022.

There’s some tremendous stuff from 72. Possibly two of the greatest prog albums of all time. That being said, Deep Purple’s ‘Machine Head’ is surely one of the greatest hard rock, early prototype metal albums of all time. And this is just an absolute classic for its time. And I think it’s Deep Purple’s masterpiece. I mean, they’ve put out many great albums, but this is the one that I think cemented them as one of the greatest hard rock bands of all time.

And, of course, the thing about Purple is they did have some prog elements. They started doing some symphonic stuff and jazzy stuff. When you think about what early prog was, it was that kind of melting pot of all those different styles. They had hard rock, prog, symphonic, and jazz, all thrown into this melting pot. And they were all such great musicians, every one of them was so great on their instruments.

This album has all the classics, opens with ‘Highway Star,’ one of the old-time classics. Obviously, ‘Smoke on the Water,’ is one of the most iconic guitar riffs of all time, and probably Deep Purple’s most famous song of all time. But then it’s got ‘Lazy’ and ‘Space Truckin’,’ ‘Maybe I’m a Leo.’ It’s one of those albums where top to bottom… You could rename this album ‘Deep Purple’s Greatest Hits.’ A lot of their live album ‘Made in Japan’ was off of this tour.

So, actually, when I picked a Purple album for Dream Theater to cover in its entirety, I picked ‘Made in Japan,’ because I really liked all of the improv and the jamming stuff that they did on that live version. But most of the songs on ‘Made in Japan’ is the stuff from ‘Machine Head’. This, to me, is their greatest studio album, and ‘Made in Japan’ is also an all-time favorite.

Dream Theater has a tradition of covering a classic album in its entirety at any two-night stands in the same city. While touring Japan in 2006 they did covers of Made in Japan at two shows — January 13 in Tokyo and January 15 in Osaka. The Osaka performance was released in the DT’s “official bootleg” series, with blessings from Roger Glover, who mixed the recording.

Thanks to Ultimate Guitar for the transcription.

Steve Morse has been working with Los Angeles art team SceneFour on creating artwork from his guitar performances. The announcement is pretty scarce on the details as to what exactly kind of art this could be, encouraging you to join the mailing list at stevemorseart.com.

The accompanying video, as well as art collections from other members of extended Purple family (Joe Satriani, Carmine Appice, Billy Cobham) can provide with some clues what it might look like.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

A couple of things that are probably not really news for the people frequenting our site.

Far Out magazine has a story about Lars Ulrich’s favourite band, you know which one:

His love affair with music dates back to a concert in 1973 in Copenhagen at the K.B. Hallen when he witnessed Deep Purple in action. Ulrich’s father was famous in their native land, and the full red carpet treatment was rolled out for the pair. Having a bird’s eye view of Deep Purple made Ulrich become fixated with the group, and even now, no group in the world matters to him as much as them.

In 2016, he even had the ultimate honour of inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his speech, Ulrich explained: “This night is a culmination of two musical journeys. One is mine, the other is that of a band that changed my life and rock and roll. When I was nine years old, my dad took me to see Deep Purple on a cold day in Denmark, on a dark cold Saturday night in February 1973.

Read more in Far Out magazine.

And the Ultimate Guitar has a story behind Smoke on the Water. Again, there are no groundbreaking revelations, but it’s a very well put together piece:

Even though the history of heavy music was in no small parts written by songs with simple, powerful riffs, few other riffs can match the simplicity, the impact, and, arguably, the fame of the one that made Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” a timeless hard rock classic without equal.

Ever since “Smoke on the Water” first came out on Purple’s eighth studio album “Machine Head” in 1972, generations of music fans fell in love with its powerful groove, while generations of guitarists got to know it as “The Baby’s First Riff” – hell, even generations of neighbors who never wanted to have anything to do with rock became well-versed in the good ol’ “0-3-5” after generations of little Timmys from the flat upstairs wouldn’t stop ripping through it for hours on end.

In short, you’ll hardly find a more widely known hard rock song, and its famous meta-lyrics gave it an additional layer of distinction. That said, it’s most probable that, as someone who’s reading an article on a site called “Ultimate Guitar”, you already know “Smoke on the Water” and what’s it about – and if you don’t, you need only read the first couple of the song’s verses for the TL;DR version of the story behind it. However, there’s a few more nuances and details that the lyrics inevitably omit and that make the story behind “Smoke on the Water” all the more interesting, and today we’ll be taking a look at the complete picture of how it exactly went down.

Read more in Ultimate Guitar.

Guitar World has a long(ish) interview with Simon McBride, whose profile have certainly got a boost after being tapped for the banjo player job, albeit a temp one, in one of the most influential bands of all time.

To be honest, I’ve known about this for a while. There was talk of it before, since the end of last year. Steve wants to do the shows obviously, because he is the guitar player in Deep Purple.

It’s very unfortunate with his wife… so yeah, it’s very hard for him to leave and come over to Europe. It’s a bittersweet emotion for me, because it’s under sad circumstances, but on the other hand I’m also going ‘Yes!’ because it’s a dream opportunity. It’s a bizarre thing.

I’ve known the guys for a while. I’ve toured with Ian [Gillan] and Don [Airey] a fair bit over the years. I’ve also played with Roger [Glover] and [Ian] Paicey, so I’ve played with them all, just not at the same time! [laughs] Now I get to do that, and I’m very excited about it, running through all those classic iconic songs we all learn when we’re young. Now I get to play them as part of the band. Steve is an amazing guitarist, so I know I’ve got big boots to fill…

Read more in Guitar World.

Simon also has a solo album The Fighter coming out of May 25 via earMUSIC.

And just to leave you with another dose of McBriderism (yes, we’ve just invented the word), here is Simon putting on his best SRV impression while doing a gear demo:

Thanks to Gary Poronovich for the info.