[ d e e p P u r . p l e ) The Highway Star

DEEP PURPLE - Milan - Idroscalo - July 16, 1999

It was the 6th time for me at a Purple concert in the past 6 years, so I'm getting quite used to these guys! :-)
What can I say... Well, it was absolutely brilliant! Though not all of the band members were at their best (Paicey was great, but it surely wasn't as good as other times, and so was Gillan) this concert was devastating.
The set-list was the same as in the German concerts, with "Black Night" as the first encore, so I won't talk much about it.
They started with the usual "The Boys Are Back In Town/Pictures of Home" thing, and the people went mad! Gillan came out wearing a sort of pijiama, and he was a great frontman all through the show! This guy as a great sense of humour, and it's great seeing him having fun, being fun, a kind of grown-up child who's really great in memserizing the whole audience.
Morse was... Well, I DO LOVE RITCHIE BLACKMORE, he's my favourite guitar player, the real musical genius of the 20th Century... But Stevie is the Deep Purple guitar player now, and he deserves every bit of it. He's great! He played with lot of feelings, and he was the real star of the show. His riff "parade" included Hendrix's "Little Wing", Sabbath's "Iron Man" and Led Zep's "Moby Dick". That was astounding.
Other highlights of the show were Gillan singing "It's Now or Never" (Elvis' "O Sole Mio") during "Speed King", Jon playing the "Turandot" during his solo and most of the classics, that got the whole audience mad! I thought I wouldn't be much interested in hearing "Space Truckin'" one more time but... I WAS ABSOLUTELY WRONG! That song rulezzz!
At the end of the concert I thought that this was the best concert in my whole life, while a friend of mine (who's not a fan of Purple) actually said "after this gig I say f**k off to the whole metal scene of the world!". Isn't that great? ;-)

Daniele Purrone


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