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An American virtuoso
This is our review of the new book The Aviator: The Life and Music of Steve Morse by Adrian Jarvis, due out on May 16, 2025 via Wymer Publishing.
A few words about the author: Adrian Jarvis is a fan of the band and not a stranger to the topic at hand. His credentials include several Purple books — Chasing Shadows: The Search For Rod Evans (the early version was featured on our pages), Sculpting In Rock: Deep Purple 1968-70, and Infinite and Beyond: Deep Purple 1993-2022.
This Steve Morse biography is (to the best of our knowledge) the first undertaking of this kind. It covers Steve’s life from birth to about the Summer of 2024. Numerous side projects of Steve’s career get various levels of coverage, but mostly adequate. Curiously, the book about a quintessential American virtuoso, is written from a uniquely British point of view. It declares so right on the opening pages by comparing Steve in Deep Purple to pancakes and maple syrup with black pudding and fried egg.
The book is well researched and sourced (including a couple of references to the truly yours website), with numerous quotes, and direct input from protagonist’s collaborators Andy West, Rod Morgenstein, Colin Hart, Paul Mann, and Stephen Bentley-Klein.
It is not without factual inaccuracies that surely will rile up the nitpickers. It must be said that most of said inaccuracies are fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. For example, the “Machine Head tour” was certainly not “abandoned after a couple of so-so gigs”, but proceeded from coast to coast and was well sold and reviewed. Ah, and Ahmet Ertegün most certainly was not the chairman of Capitol Records.
Now onto the good things. The book is well written, at times bordering on waxing poetic, and is an engaging read. To quote the last paragraph of Chapter 7 that takes full advantage of the poetic license:
And perhaps that equilibrium could have been maintained, with Morse’s career carrying on in the same old way for the foreseeable — and maybe the unforeseeable — future. But a glass of water thrown thousands of miles away by someone he had never met, at someone else he had never met, was about to change everything forever.
The inevitable opinions are full of rather astute observations. This is how the author describes the status of the band circa the Now What?! release:
Deep Purple, as a band and as an institution, were noticeably entering that old rocker territory marked ‘uncriticisable.’ In other words, it was now generally recognised that their fans were going to buy what they were selling regardless of its quality and the likelihood of the fan base growing or contracting was so low that it was frankly pointless to be too negative about it all. They were what they were.
All in all, we can recommend the book. We are pretty positive you’ll learn something, or, at the very least, enjoy reading it. It is being published in paperback, and a Kindle edition is also available through your nearest Amazon.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Sounds good. The maple syrup vs black pudding comparison is very apt.
May 15th, 2025 at 20:53I’ve just finished his Purple 93-present day book and it’s a really good read
May 16th, 2025 at 02:01