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 »

A local paper out of UK, The Hunts Post, reports that Don Airey is spearheading a campaign to save his local pub in Great Gransden, Cambridgeshire, as a live music venue. The pub used to host gigs regularly until 2018, when the new owners moved in. The business didn’t survive the pandemic.

The current landlords have not re-opened The Crown and Cushion, which is a Grade II listed building. It is also situated in an area of conservation and has ‘asset of community value’ status.

An action group of residents called Open the Crown & Cushion, which Don is part of, have appealed to Huntingdon District Council (HDC) to enforce planning law and return their community asset back to the villagers.

In a letter addressed to the action group, HDC’s chief planning officer said: “This remains an active case and we will continue to engage with the occupiers of the pub.”

A spokesperson for the action group said: “The Crown and Cushion is the last pub in the village, where historically, there have been as many as six pubs.

“This makes the survival of pub even more critical. Local residents and the action group continue to fight for the survival of their precious public house.

“It is hoped, eventually, the pub will be able to open with a new landlord and change of ownership, or ownership may be assumed by the village community themselves.”

Mr Airey, added: “There used to be regular Tuesday and Thursday music nights every week, the pub was packed and there were always well-known musicians, eager to play and create a very special atmosphere and great night out.”

[Update Aug 6, 2023]: It looks like efforts to save the pub have been unsuccessful, and the building is now on sale.

Thanks to The Hunts Post, CambridgeshireLive, and Marcus Streets for the info.

David Coverdale appeared on Paltrocast promoting the Still Good to Be Bad reissue. Some of it you may have heard before, and some other probably not.

I can’t not be honest about this, that and the other, who’s the inspiration for this song, who was that… it would be a spilling of the beans, which I’m not interested in hurting anybody, and particularly my family. So I’ve been working now with my head of video on another concept which I think could be significantly more interesting and not as fucking boring as a biography. We’re starting Q.T. With D.C. (video series), so we’re gonna answer people’s questions, some things that they’re curious about.

Thanks to BraveWords for the info and the quote.

A Dutch TV documentary on the history of Love is All, with participation from Roger Glover, Eddie Hardin, Ronnie James Dio, Ray Fenwick, and the book author Alan Aldridge. Everything you wanted to know about the track that to everybody’s surprise charted in that part of the world, and then some. It looks like this was filmed some time before the song accompanied the 1999 performance of the resurrected Concerto.

Thanks to The Deep Purple Podcast for posting the video, and to Uwe Hornung for bringing it to your attention.

A cover of Roger Glover’s Love is All appears as a bonus track on the just released album Golden Age of Music from Arjen Lucassen’s (of the Ayreon fame) new project Supersonic Revolution. Continue Reading »

Louder Sound reprints an article from the Classic Rock magazine on how Paicey landed a Paul McCartney gig thanks to his neighbour.

If Ian Paice were ever trying to impress the person sitting next to him at a dinner party, he wouldn’t be short of illustrious tales and celebrated collaborators to draw upon. The Deep Purple drummer has played with Whitesnake, Gary Moore, the Velvet Underground, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, William Shatner, and of course Deep Purple, which is why we just called him “the Deep Purple drummer”.

You imagine near the top of this impressive roster of stars, though, is the time he got behind the kit for Paul McCartney, playing on the former Beatles’ 1999 record Run Devil Run. He explained to Rhythm Magazine how it came about: “Paul and David Gilmour were friends from the past,” he said. “George Harrison and I were great pals – he lived just a couple of miles down the road and our kids grew up together. I’d met Ringo but never McCartney.

Continue reading in Louder Sound.