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Video goodies: Mk4 and Gillan
There are a couple of items posted on the official Youtube channel worth your attention (in case you’ve missed it).
Deep Purple Mark 4 live at The Capital Centre, Landover, MD, USA, on January 15, 1976. It was the second date of their mainland US tour.
A very energetic short set performed by Gillan for British TV in 1982:
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
awesome MK4 footage.
November 10th, 2016 at 18:04Excellent performance, you MK IV haters!
Now there´s really hoping for a full concert DVD.
November 10th, 2016 at 18:04Absolutely great. The drumsolo is also in circualtion.
They seem to have much for fun than at Budokan.
Great picture quality.
November 10th, 2016 at 18:41Aaaahhh… me so happy!…. I’m all a shiver… & the sound of this music, sends a permanent shiver, down my spine… Smiles’ to ya.
November 10th, 2016 at 21:40Two opposite ends of the scale here … a tiered lost Deep Purple and a vibrant Gillan in peak performance.
November 11th, 2016 at 13:19I know which show I would have liked to have gone to!
wow
November 11th, 2016 at 15:41Re Mk 4: It might not have been Purple as we knew it, but it was good music just the same, nice groove, nice solo by Lordy. Bolin oozed star quality, feathered shoulders and all, you could have imagined him playing with Bowie. Bolin and Hughes were just made for each other. Had Bolin survived, I always wonder if they would have done something (lasting!) together again after Purple.
Re Gillan: That is what made them stand out, they were never as “safe” as Rainbow or Whitesnake, rough, even frayed around the edges, but with a punkish energy they retained even after Tormé had left. Washed out they weren’t. Brings back fond memories. McCoy’s bass playing left a (lasting!) imprint on mine.
November 11th, 2016 at 16:03Great Gillan! 😎 very Cool
November 11th, 2016 at 17:47If not for the drugs, this line up had what it takes!! Go Jon!!!
November 12th, 2016 at 14:37Mk4 was great and cool as f***k. Though I could understand the attitude of actual 70s die hard purple heads, can’t really comprehend haters nowadays. Gillan on the other hand were a fun band really, went to top 5 mainly because they were fronted by Big Ian. Many OK songs none epic. There I said it
November 12th, 2016 at 22:16Uh, Homeward Strut is rare, very rare and something to behold for lovers of that line-up. But Gillan Off The Record at Gillingham is the exact opposite. It’s massively circulated.
November 13th, 2016 at 10:48the beginning of the end of DP…………..until 1985
November 13th, 2016 at 16:07There is no fresher-sounding DP album from the 70ies than Come Taste the Band. Yes, I too do prefer Machine Head and Burn (CTTB comes in a close third though), but both sound dated and of their resepctive times in comparison to Come Taste the Band. Maybe it was because Bolin enjoyed studio work and was relaxed at it (unlike Blackmore), but there is something vibrant about the whole record that has stood the test of time extremely well. When “Coming Home” rumbles out of the speakers, you still hear the excitement of a band rejuvenated and unleashed today. There is more energy in that track alone than in the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks debut.
November 14th, 2016 at 14:46The Gillan vid is raw, raunchy and excellent! The Mk IV vid – I can’t get past the bass bottoming out on the recording and distorting to all crap. Nice jam besides that. And none of Glenn Hughes high pitched squeals!!
If not for the drugs – There wouldn’t have been a Mk IV!!!
November 14th, 2016 at 21:01I’ve always thought of CTTB as being the funky disco Purple album. And it is.
November 15th, 2016 at 15:01Tommy was a great guitar player and CTTB was a great album. The issues I’ve always had with mk4 was Tommy’s attitude towards playing the basic structures of the Mk 2&3 songs. He didn’t bother to learn them properly. It’s as simple as that!! He wasn’t adding his own personality to them (as some would have you believe) He just didn’t listen hard enough to the nuances that made them so special. Hand on heart, I have never heard anybody play “Burn” so badly and wrong as Tommy and I mean including pub bands!!! As for Lazy…. Dear oh dear.
November 16th, 2016 at 08:24“If not for the drugs – there wouldn’t have been a Mk IV!!!”
LOL, there is more than a grain of truth in that. Even the idea of approaching Tommy Bolin for a session came up after a very drunken night of DC and JL endlessly giving Cobham’s Spectrum album a spin.
Yes they were at that point a cokehead, a smack junkie (and prettty much everything else) and a couple of guys who enjoyed too much a drink, but they could still play music if they got their act together.
That said, even if Blackmore had stayed or Tommy Bolin had been clean or if they had taken someone more reliable like the initially slated Clem Clempson, I rule out that DP would have survived the end of the decade and carried things on into the 80ies. That type of heavily improvisational rock with extended solo showpieces was dying out by the mid-seventies and DP had climbed so high they were facing a sharp drop in popularity which would have put incredible strain on the band (look at what happened to Zep, Sabbath or Uriah Heep in that sme period, they all either split up or radically changed their sound). That neither Rainbow nor Whitesnake nor Gillan could pick up the torch of similar commercial success after DP’s demise wasn’t just that none of the split-groups had quite DP’s magic (though they all had different parts of it), but also that the market appetite had changed. In that way the 76 breakup was good as it paved the way for the 84 reunion that was welcomed by the public, absence makes the heart grow fonder.
But I sure would have loved to see Mk IV on a good night!
November 16th, 2016 at 14:19Bolin’s yank dancing and prancing groove was so different to Blackmore’s stern, dark and dramatic precision, he could have rehearsed for months and never gotten the Blackmore sound and groove right. That just wasn’t in him, but then Blackmore would have had a hard time doing “Bustin’ Out for Rosie” too. But – after the initial shock – I got to like Bolin’s approach to iconic Blackmore riffs such as Burn and SOTW. When Bolin does SOTW on LCIJ, you hear two notes and you know it is him, that playful Bolin groove has something. I even liked his jammy/sloppy version of Lazy.
The way Bolin played he should have perhaps better replaced Mick Taylor with the Stones than Ritchie with Purple.
And I personally think that Stormbringer has more of a disco touch than CTTB, but I was never a disco hater, so neither bothered me.
November 16th, 2016 at 14:34