Don Airey, the mainstay of the band for the last 20 years, is celebrating his 75th birthday on June 21, 2023. Many happy returns, sir!

Joe Lynn Turner appeared on The Real Music Observer podcast. It starts with talking about music (Slaves & Masters, in particular), but quickly deteriorates into JLT ranting. About stuff. And nothing says ‘level-headed individual’ better than a good old-fashioned rant into a wide angle lens. /s

Proceed at your own peril. Continue Reading »

Our contributor Tobias Janaschke writes:

Hello from the Baltic ocean,

I would like to take this opportunity to say a few open and appreciative words to/about Ian Gillan:

This man (like the others) gives everything for this band and is the only one who cannot change his instrument — his voice.

And he has no reason to!

The whiners always point out that he can’t scream like he used to… Funnily wise, the same don’t say how wonderfully Ian can SING. Expression, dedication, and skill on a level never seen before.

Check out his latest rendition of When a Blind Man Cries

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Ian, I raise my glass to you,
Tobias Janaschke

We raise our glasses too.

Thanks to Tobias for the passionate words, and to Steel of Silesia for the video. It was taken on June 12, 2023 in Kraków, Poland.

In the latest installment of Question Time with DC (hat airs on Whitesnake TV), the aforementioned DC shares a story of how he traded autographs with Hollywood icon John Wayne (the Alamo, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo not included).

There used to be a lovely dark bar at the Beverly Regent hotel called the El Padrino bar. And the amount of discreet assignations that went on there was quite remarkable. Anyway, I’m sitting there with our agent at the time, having a drink, and we have a show coming up at the weekend – this is Deep Purple.

And I went, ‘Oh my God. There’s John Wayne, for God’s sake.’ John Wayne in the corner with this beautiful young blonde. I’m sitting there tortured, going, ‘I should get an autograph for my mum. It would be amazing.’ And I’m going, ‘I can’t. I can’t do it. Oh, fuck it.’

So I got up, and I’m in those big snakeskin high-heel platform boots, and I wander over. And it’s happened to me a thousand of times. I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr Wayne. I’m so sorry to disturb you.’ And the blonde just sort of looks away, like, ‘Here we go.’

And he goes, ‘Yeah, kid.’ I went, ‘Listen, my mum’s a huge fan.’ I said, ‘Could I ask you for your autograph?’ He said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ And he got a coaster, and he wrote ‘To Win. Love, The Duke. John Wayne’.

And I went, ‘Oh my God. This is amazing. Thank you so much.’ He said, ‘What are you doing in this place?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got a show at the weekend.’ He went, ‘Really?’ And he stands up, still a very imposing man. But his suits were kind of hanging off him – he’d kicked cancer.

And he went, ‘What’s the name of the group?’ And I said, ‘Deep Purple.’ He went, ‘God, my daughter’s been driving my office mad. It’s been sold out forever. Could you do anything?’

I said, ‘Just a moment, Mr Wayne.’ So I went over to the agent, got all the numbers for his office and came over. Then they asked me for my autograph. So I thought that was pretty spectacular.

Thanks to Louder Sound for the transcription and to James Gemmell for bringing it to your attention.

A three part documentary about the Montreux Jazz Festival, titled They All Came Out To Montreux, will air in the UK on BBC Four starting at 10:15 PM on June 16. The film was directed by British filmmaker Oliver Murray. If you are interested in music documentaries, you might have seen his previous works Ronnie’s — about the fabled Ronnie Scott’s club in London, and The Quiet One — about the founding member of Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. His latest work tells the story of the legendary festival and its founder, ‘Funky’ Claude Nobs. It includes performances and testimonials from over 70 artists — from our own boys to Shania Twain.

The documentary was completed last year and received world premiere on Swiss TV in March 2022.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

Graham Bonnet appeared on the Vintage Rock Pod(cast), talking about his illustrious career, starting all the way from back in the 60s. Almost half of the conversation dealt with his days in Rainbow. That segment starts at about 7’15” into the podcast, however, we encourage you to listen to the whole 50+ minutes thing — it is quite entertaining.

BraveWords helpfully transcribes the “hair story” bit. And as you can imagine, Graham’s story differs from Ritchie’s version significantly:

VRP: The famous haircut thing, the very famous video of Ritchie talking about the haircut and having you locked in a room, and you snuck out to go and get your hair cut. And then he was raging with you, and that’s one of the reasons he fired you and all this sort of stuff. And I know you’ve rubbished it over the years, but can you tell us a little bit more about that famous story?

Graham Bonnet: Yeah, he’s embellished that story a bit. He’s adding to it every time I hear it, I’m surprised that story is still travelling along after all these years. What actually happened was we were in, I can’t remember, maybe in Scotland, I think, actually. And I was with my ex-wife, and my hair was getting like this, like it is now. [indicates to his current hair length] I’ve been off the road for so long. We go back on the road in a month. But I didn’t have my hair cut when I was off the road. And you could see I’ve got a fucking ponytail back there.

Anyway, so I was walking around the city with her — I think it was Edinburgh, and my hair was quite a long of fist. And I said to her, ‘I’m going to get a haircut while you go and shop.’ So I went to get a haircut and that was it. That’s all I did. And there was no guard on the door or anything like that. In fact, I saw our road manager, let’s say about three months ago, and we were talking to him and laughing about that story. He said, ‘I wasn’t put on the door to guard you.’

I know, but isn’t it a great story? So I just had my haircut. So I walk out on stage that night. Richie hadn’t seen me all day. We never saw each other all day. It was always just showtime, that’s when we all saw each other. And I sort of come on last. They’re doing the intro to song called ‘Eyes Of The World’, the intro song. And I come running on, and he looks at me and goes… flabbergasted. And he disappeared. He went behind the amps, went behind the stack and didn’t come out. And he played there all night.

And next day, Ritchie called a meeting. He said, ‘I want to see everybody in my room.’ We all went to his room in the Holiday Inn somewhere, and we walk in and, what is it? What’s the matter? We thought it was something really serious. And he looks at me, and he goes, ‘It’s Graham’s hair.’ And everybody burst out laughing — ‘What? You called a meeting about that?’ and Cozy just said, ‘oh for f*cks sake.’ You can imagine what he said, give me a fucking break. And everybody else said, ‘what about his hair?’ [Ritchie:] ‘Well, he had it cut. I thought he was being mean to me. I thought he’s insulting me by having his hair cut because I’m always saying his hair is too short.’

And he always did you always say, ‘well, your hairs a bit short.’ And because everybody else in the band had longish hair. It wasn’t long long. It was longish. And so that was the meeting. I just thought he was a complete fool, but Ritchie, bless him. As I said, every time I’ve seen that interview or another interview, he brings that up. And it’s magical, because I didn’t know what I did that day, but he’s telling me what I did. Guard on the door and I went out the window. And then what happened? I’m waiting for something. Hit by a car. He always adds a little bit. But I think it’s good. Just going out the window is good enough because we’re like seven floors up, so, you know, of course, you know.

VRP: Tie the bedsheets together. Yeah, that’s it.

Graham Bonnet: Fucking parachute, you know. But it’s Richie, bless him. I know, I know. After that, I know. He loves me, I love him, too, you know. And after that, everything calmed down. It was okay.

VRP: And you mentioned in there that you love Ritchie, and he loves you. He’s got a reputation, obviously, as being one of the greatest guitarists of all time. But as well as being someone that can be difficult at times, that’s probably a nice way of putting it. So what were your memories of working with Richie? What’s your relationship like with him?

Graham Bonnet: Well, that was the most difficult thing I had, was a haircut.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info and the quotes.

Black Country Communion has been resurrected. Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Derek Sherinian, and Jason Bonham are working on their fifth album right now, at the Sunset Studios in Los Angeles.

The band is pencilled in for the Keeping The Blues Alive At Sea cruise next spring. The cruise would be sailing from the Port of Miami to Cozumel, Mexico, March 18-23, 2024. Black Country Communion played their last to date show on the same cruise in 2018.

Update (June 4): in somewhat related news, The Dead Daisies have announced a few days ago singer John Corabi returning to the fold, with bassist Michael Devin joining the band as well. This officially ends Glenn’s affiliation with the project.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info, and to Uwe Hornung for the reminder regarding The Daisies.

While on tour in São Paulo, Brazil (the gig there was on April 22), Roger Glover spoke to Rock Hard Greece.

Among other things, he was asked about the possibility of announcing a “special” final show:

No, I don’t think that’s a great idea. I’ve never liked that idea. In fact, I don’t even like the idea of announcing the last show: ‘And here they are. This is their last show.’ I mean, the stress involved in that would be ridiculous. Where would it be? When would it be? For me, the ideal ending for Purple is that we just carry on until it stops. No announcement. We’re not gonna announce, ‘This is the last one.’ People would buy tickets: ‘Oh, this is the last one.’ It’s an exercise in making money. It’s not very good. I’ve never liked it. I’d rather go and play and play and play and play, and one day when something happens and one of us drops dead or gets really ill or whatever, [we say], ‘Well, that’s that.’ And leave it at that.

Yes, it ends rather abruptly, but that’s what we’ve got.

Thanks to Blabbermouth for the info.

Several bootleg quality audio tracks purported to be from the 1984 tour rehearsals have been posted on Youtube. Continue Reading »

Two branches of the massively overgrown family tree came together in Pennsylvania on May 26. Reb Beach, last seen with Whitesnake, came on stage to jam with the Steve Morse Band on a blues standard. Smartphones were on hand. Continue Reading »