Cult favourite Anya made it back into the setlist for the first time since what… 1995-ish? Here it is performed on July 15, 2022, at the Peißnitzinsel in Halle, Germany Continue Reading »

Today, July 16th, marks 10 years since dear Jon is no longer with is. Here’s something-something for you to raise a glass in his memory.

Back in 2003 he arrived to Australia to endulge his classical side, but could not play the piano due to an injury. Fortunately, he could still play the Hammond (we are being told that the muscles involved are rather different). An impromptu performance of blues standards with local talent featuring Bob Daisley was arranged and filmed. We’ll take that, thankyouverymuch.

Thanks to Bob Daisley for the clips.

Louder Sound has profiled Simon McBride, including quotes from a recent interview with him:

[…] McBride was always going to be the obvious candidate. He’d already played in the solo bands of Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan and Don Airey, knew how to wrangle Smoke On The Water and all the rest.

“They are quite fussy about how that song should be played,” he says with a laugh. “And there are certain Ritchie Blackmore solos, too, like Highway Star. You can’t get away with playing anything else. But I don’t try to copy how Blackmore or Steve played. You just take the concepts they used and put your own thing to it.”

Morse has described McBride as “a certified world-class guitarist”. Any word from Blackmore?

“It would be lovely if Ritchie gave me his blessing,” McBride says. “But am I worried if he doesn’t? No, I’m not worried. Joe Satriani gave me his blessing, so that’s good enough for me. That’s my childhood hero, so it’s like the hand of God saying: ‘You’re okay.’”

At last, after a career of ebb and flow, McBride seems to have found the win- win scenario his talent deserves. “Y’know, it’s Deep Purple,” he says, grinning. “Who would not want to play with them? They’re all still shit-hot players. On the other hand, I can look at this and think: ‘Well, it’s probably going to help my solo career a little bit too.’ It does feel like I’m living a quadruple life right now. But I’ve become an expert plate-spinner over the years.”

Read more in Louder Sound.

Thanks to Gary Poronovich for the info.

An online lifestyle magazine thrillist has profiled a certain Swiss town with a rich history connected to arts and music — from Lord Byron and Stravinski to Charlie Chaplin and Freddie Mercury. And it starts with a story of Frank Zappa and The Mothers being at the best place around, with a few instances of poetic license. Continue Reading »

The founding member of Nazareth guitarist Manuel “Manny” Charlton has passed away at the age of 80. Roger Glover writes:

Very sad to hear that Nazareth’s guitarist, Manny Charlton, has died.

I last met him about five years ago in Spain after losing touch for many years, and it was a lovely reunion. Nazareth played a huge part in my life in the 70’s. My thoughts go to his family and friends. He shall be missed.

RG

Charlton was the guitar player for Nazareth from 1968 until 1990. After leaving Nazareth he continued a successful career, releasing 14 albums solo and with his own band.

The official Ritchie Blackmore Youtube channel we’ve discovered yesterday has posted 10 more clips of him talking about everything from Jimmy Page to his future in rock, along with a couple of live tracks. The spoken word bits for the most part are taken from the previousy released DVDs. Continue Reading »

A new Ritchie Blackmore Youtube channel, ostensibly official, was inaugurated on June 23, 2022, with this unlisted video. It promises weekly updates of which not much has materialized since then Continue Reading »

A stripped down acoustic cover of When a Blind Man Cries is included on a new live release from Metallica. It is an EP with recording of their performance at the MusiCares MAP Fund Benefit Concert at Club Nokia in Los Angeles on May 12, 2014. It also includes Rare Earth’s I Just Want to Celebrate, Beatles’ In My Life, and Ozzy Osbounes’s Diary of a Madman.

Covers of When a Blind Man Cries became a staple of Metallica charity performances in the past decade, appearing in the annual Bridge School Benefit in 2016, and All Within My Hands benefit show in 2018. A studio version was also released on Re-Machined: A Tribute to Deep Purple’s Machine Head in 2012, and the deluxe version of Metallica’s 2016 album Hardwired … to Self-Destruct.

Thanks to Ultimate Classic Rock and Gary Poronovich for the info.

VWMusic has a fresh interview with Ian Gillan. And it is definitely worth spending your time to go through.

Andrew:
The current lineup of the band is one of the most consistent and creative intonations in Deep Purple’s long history. What is it about this group of players that’s kept things so solid?

Ian:
Well, I hate to say it, but it’s the band’s foundation. It’s in the ethos of the band. Now, I don’t listen to a lot of the young bands, but I’ve had a lot of conversations with young musicians who say they were influenced by Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and the like. To that, I always say, “Well, what else? What other influences do you have aside from that?” They always look at me, and say, “What do you mean, what else? Other influences? We’re a hard rock band, so we’re influenced by hard rock.” And I tell them that we were influenced by Chopin, Beethoven, Howlin’ Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Lonnie Donegan, folk music, big band, swing, and Buddy Rich. I say that and watch their faces shift, and they go, “Well, what’s that got to do with hard rock?” … “Well, that’s the roots of Deep Purple, which is why we can sway in the wind as we do.”

Ian also mentioned that the band has a writing session booked for March 2023.

Read more in VWMusic.

Thanks to Mike Whiteley for the info.

Guitar Player has an interesting interview of two monsters of the said instrument — Steve Morse and John Petrucci — talking to each other. And it’s quite a bit of a mutual admiration society.

“How does anybody play guitar like that?” Dream Theater guitarist and main man John Petrucci says, recalling his reaction when he first heard the music of Steve Morse. “It was the wildest, most incredible stuff I had ever heard. There are moments that you can pinpoint and say they were truly life-changing, and for me, hearing Steve Morse play guitar was one of them.”

It was the mid ’80s and Petrucci was a metal-crazed high schooler and budding guitarist big on Metallica, Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne. “I spent most of my free time practicing, and I thought I was getting pretty good,” he says. “I could play a lot of the stuff by my heroes pretty well.”

One day, a friend’s older brother gave Petrucci a mixtape of tracks by the Dixie Dregs, a band the young guitar player had vaguely heard of, along with a sage piece of advice: “You have to listen to Steve Morse.”

Petrucci didn’t know what to expect when he loaded the tape in his deck. The first song that came up was “The Bash,” an exuberant, revved-up and rocking country jam on which Morse charges out of the gate like a bucking bronco, blitzing across the fretboard and spinning wild chicken-picking licks all over the neck while keeping pace with Allen Sloan’s hyper-giddy violin lines.

“It totally blew my mind,” Petrucci says. “I couldn’t understand how anybody could play like that. I wasn’t very familiar with bluegrass, but Steve mixed it with rock in such an exciting way. His technique and phrasing hooked me immediately.”

Continue reading in the Guitar Player.