The Dead Daisies have just announced a massive European tour this summer. It will start in early June and wrap up 2 months later. The dates are a mix of The Daisies supporting the likes of Foreigner, Judas Priest, and Whitesnake in bigger venues and headlining the smaller ones. Most of the shows have been rebooked from 2020 and 2021, so if you still hold the tickets check with the local promoters and/or venues for the validity.

Full details in our calendar.

Joe Satriani recently spoke to Los Angeles radio station KLOS, and within the hour long chat several Purple related topics were touched upon.

The first time I heard ‘Hush,’ it just came to me through the radio at the perfect time of my life. So that just became ingrained in my psyche. It’s part of the soundtrack of me growing up. And hearing that at Jones Beach in the summer… Everything that was happening for a young kid like myself, that was the sound I loved.

As I became a musician and guitar player, I followed the band up until… I guess it was ‘Live in Japan.’ And, and then, of course, by then, the journey had taken me somewhere else, I got into all kinds of music. And I started to kind of drift away from what they were doing. But part of what I consider to be real heavy rock, is what they did, on the first few albums.

And I’ll tell you a funny thing. When I got the call to replace Richie in the band, of course, I turned it down immediately. Because I just thought nobody can replace Ritchie Blackmore. You just can’t do that. And then, of course, I changed my mind, because I thought, ‘I really want to play with these guys.’ And I’m willing to accept abuse from the fans. [laughs] Like get on stage or in a room with these guys and play.

I wound up getting some cassettes from Roger [Glover] a week before I had to fly to Japan to start the tour. And so I was really cramming. And the cassettes I think were from a Stuttgart show where Ritchie had left halfway through the show. So there’s guitar for the first cassette. And then the second cassette comes in, and there’s no guitar. And that’s what I had to learn, the show from there. So I get to Tokyo, and we have one rehearsal in this medium-sized, very acoustically dead room. The band is set up, just like they would be on stage, and I plugged in and we played ‘Highway Star’ and I… I could not believe it.

Because in that room, that band sounded exactly like ‘Machine Head.’ It was freaking me out. They were so good. Each person – John, Ian, Ian, and Roger, they just sounded exactly like they do on that album. And I was so impressed with their musicianship, their kindness, their acceptance of this kid from Long Island, who’s suddenly ending there in the band. It took a long time to wrap my head around that. Every night that we would play, I kept thinking like, ‘Wow, what am I doing in this band? This is, Rock Royalty to me.’ Luckily, I had so much to remember. That first set of shows in Japan was really about me remembering how not to screw up the show. Because they were a well-oiled machine on that tour. And I just wanted to make sure I didn’t screw up.

Thanks to Ultimate Guitar for the heads up and the transcription.

The Dominus Orchestra (we’ve introduced them last month) is hosting a release party for their live album A concert tribute to Paice Ashton Lord’s – Malice in wonderland. The party will be held in a suburb of Athens on April 30, 2022. Drop by for some fun and frolic if you’re in the neighbourhood.

Who: Dominus Orchestra
What: Malice in Wonderland tribute release party
When: April 30, 2022, at 9pm
Where: Johnny Rock bar
Irinis 2, Nea Filadelfia 143 41, Greece
Ειρήνης 2, Νέα Φιλαδέλφεια Αττικής 143 41

Thanks to andreas leutgeb for the info.

Classic Rock has a piece titled The story of Hush, the song that blasted Deep Purple into the US charts and beyond, and it is exactly what it says on the cover. Complete with quotes from the man who at the time was living in the same general neigbourhood, albeit had very little to do with the actual original ’68 version — Roger Glover.

A racing pulse, shrieking organ fills, impossibly catchy chorus… Hush blasted out of speakers in the summer of 1968, taking the newly formed Deep Purple into the upper reaches of the US chart. First recorded by American country-soul singer Billy Joe Royal, who’d been gifted the song by his friend Joe South, Hush came to define early Purple in its mercurial fusion of psychedelic R&B and hard-nosed rock.

Purple’s Hush might not have happened at all, had it not been for Vanilla Fudge’s epic revamp of a Motown classic the previous year.

“Vanilla Fudge had covered a Supremes hit [You Keep Me Hangin’ On] and turned it into something else,” explains Purple bassist Roger Glover. “And that was such an inspiration. That’s what the band tried to do with Hush: put their own spin on it.”

Continue reading at Louder Sound.

David Coverdale will host a new six part show on UK’s Planet Rock radio. The first of the shows will air this coming Saturday, March 12, 2022, at 1pm, with special guest Joe Elliott. Subsequent installments will broadcast the same time weekly until April 16th.

Planet Rock radio is available in the UK on DAB, on their free app, on Freesat, Sky, and Virgin Media TV, and also online. Caveat: in theory, the latter is also available only in the UK and asks to confirm your postal code when trying to access from what it thinks is “abroad”. Little birdie tells us that ‘SW1A 1AA’ works just fine, thankyouverymuch and God save the Queen. 😉

Thanks to Planet Rock for the info.

Graham Bonnet Band has a new album. It is called Day Out in Nowhere, and is due to be released on May 13, 2022, via Frontiers Records.

The album features a number of performance and co-writing guest appearances, including our own Don Airey.

Similar to the first two [Graham Bonnet Band] albums, it will reflect different eras of my career, but with a contemporary twist. I’m also delighted to be playing with the original members of the Graham Bonnet Band: Beth-Ami Heavenstone who has been my constant partner (on and off stage) since meeting back in 2012 and guitarist Conrado Pesinato, who’s innate musical style elicits some of my best songwriting. Conrado and Beth-Ami also produced this record which made the process seamless.

Track listing:

1. Imposter
2. 12 Steps To Heaven
3. Brave New World ft. Roy Z
4. Uncle John
5. Day Out In Nowhere
6. The Sky Is Alive
7. David’s Mom
8. When We’re Asleep ft. Mike Tempesta, John Tempesta
9. It’s Just A Frickin’ Song ft. Don Airey
10. Jester ft. Jeff Loomis, Kyle Hughes
11. Suzy

Graham Bonnet – vocals
Beth-Ami Heavenstone – bass
Conrado Pesinato – guitar
Alessandro Bertoni – keyboards
Shane Gaalaas – drums

Video for the opening track Imposter:

Thanks to BraveWords for the info.

The Dead The are back in the studio, working on a new album tentatively due out by the end of 2022. Brian Tichy is back doing the drum duties.

Brian & Doug hit the LA studios… Set up drums today and gettin' sounds tomorrow before the recording process starts!! 🥁🚀👍🏻
Let the ROCK begin! ⚡️⚡️#TheDeadDaisies #InTheStudio pic.twitter.com/O2sqjDADpZ

— The Dead Daisies (@TheDeadDaisies) March 7, 2022

Officially day 1 in the studio for the new Dead Daisies record! We can’t wait for you to hear it! 🎵🤟🏼 pic.twitter.com/q6z4XLCFwv

— The Dead Daisies (@TheDeadDaisies) March 8, 2022

The have also released another live track in the Live From Daisyland series — it is Bustle and Flow recorded last November at the Rock City in Nottingham, UK.

Thanks to Blabbermouth and Gary Poronovich for the info.

Ian Paice and Steve Morse were guests on the recent Hangin’ & Bangin’ podcast, and that’s with Carmine and Vinny Appice in attendance. Behold the rock’n’roll royalty convention, where Steve tells about learning to fly from the birds, and Paicey explains peculiarities of the Cockney rhyming slang. Continue Reading »

The band has just released the following statement:

As a rule, Deep Purple is apolitical, but on this occasion…

Words of Roger Glover:
‘Like many performers, we have occasionally performed private concerts for fans in various countries. We are an apolitical band and in no way, was our intention ever political. It was music.

These days are different. We condemn Putin’s military for the atrocities to innocent men, women and children in Ukraine. and we apologize to our Russian and Ukrainian fans that the shows have been cancelled. We live in hope that we can fulfill those dates in the future. ‘
RG

Words of Don Airey:
Watching the news that Russian missiles have just destroyed the Opera House in Freedom Square Kharkiv, where DP played almost exactly 20 years ago, memorable for Ian Gillan donning a tutu he found in a dressing room cupboard and proclaiming himself “Deep Purple in Frock”, for the gear arriving at 7pm and somehow the show starting at 8pm, for an old apparatchik single-handedly trying to make the young audience sit back down during the set with such zeal that he had a seizure, and next day on the way back to the airport my asking about a statue ”Is that Lenin?”, Roger Glover replying, “Well it’s definitely not McCartney”.

A different day today

I have just written to Dmitri Medvedev, former President and now head of the Russian Security Council, returning the autograph he gave me at the dinner for Deep Purple at the Gorky Palace in March 2011, in protest at his various statements post invasion.
DA

Words of Ian Gillan:
If speaking out means we shall never see our Russian friends again, then that is a big sacrifice, but nothing compared with never again seeing our Ukrainian friends who are being killed to satisfy the psychopathic ambitions of the Russian leader.

I would like to see Russians on the streets in their millions, to show their disgust at the Ukrainian invasion, and I’d like to dream that very quickly, Russia can find some modern leadership that will bring them back into the world as friends. We have so much in common.
IG

Words of Ian Paice:
What’s happening is beyond distressing. It’s criminal and should be treated as such.
The invasion of Putin’s army into Ukraine, (because that’s what it is), I hope will turn out to bring his ultimate downfall.

And that someone who is “functioning mentally in the 21st century”, can lead the Russian people back into the fold.
IP

Words of Steve Morse:
I’ve always thought music should be non-political, and cross every border as the universal language. As a citizen of a deeply divided country, one thing here that everybody agrees on is: Stop this attack on a Country who voluntarily disarmed their nukes to satisfy all the big players. Stop, lower your guns, turn back, help others on the way back!
SM

The message is accompanied by Child in Time lyrics that we written in 1969, at the height of the cold war.

Upcoming shows in Ukraine and Russia have disappeared from the band’s website a couple of days ago and now are for sure cancelled.

Almost 20 years ago to this day, in March 2002, Deep Purple played a show at the Meteor Hall in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro), Ukraine. These were the vegetarian times by todays standards… Continue Reading »