Posted by Nick on Wednesday, July 8th, 2026, filed under Blog. You can follow comment on this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.
My first concert by the band—an incredible experience. Even though Joe Lynn Turner was on vocals, Ritchie Blackmore played at the highest level, sending the fans into a state of pure ecstasy. P.S. I even made it into the video (at 3:27).
Only those who lived behind the Iron Curtain, where a very few rock artists from West ever dropped in up until 1990’s, will understand why this underrated line-up of DP brought emotions pretty much equal to The Beatles coming to the country, when they finally arrived for the 1st time ever.
This was an amazing gig, turbo charged with excitement and with some stellar playing as MK VI was really well oiled machine at the end of the S&M Tour then. The emotional weight of the concert was truly something else and that probably was upstaged only once, when Mk II visited Poland for one night only in late October 1993.
Both of these concerts felt like the miracles finally started to happen and dreams were coming true in front of our own eyes.
I was there, first row opposite Roger. Stayed half-deaf on my left ear for few days. I think it was one of the best shows on that tour propelled by audience reaction. After encores Jon Lord appeared on the stage saying warm words to us – can’t remember now exactly what he said but only that the music is an international language which all can understand. My next time was Zabrze 1993, also in first row…
Jon’s children’s sunglasses were of unfortunate nature in a fashion sense even at the time, but other than that I find very little to fault with that performance. If lyrical abstraction and depth was more or less irrelevant to you (and to a lot of people it is), then Mk V were a fine rock band.
PS: “When she left no fur“, what a subtitle revelation that is @06:53! So the song ‘Burn’ is really about skin rash as opposed to fire?
When I left the Mk V gig at Hammersmith in London, I was content and thought “ok, Mk II this wasn’t, but it’s worthy in its own way”. I still stand by that. Turner wasn’t the greatest fit, but he gave all. And the band played well and at ease. It was probably unrealistic at that point that Ritchie’s dream of playing in a Foreigner-type band (with extra-loud keyboards!) would still come true with DP, but by the same token you could say that Roger, Jon and Little Ian lost some of their kudos and were not confident that Purple could morph into an AOR band, so they reverted to what they knew (and perhaps also liked better; if Jon and Little Ian had been AOR fans they could have ten years earlier taken the offer of Billy Squier when he tried to poach them from WS with money).
Reverting to Mk II cost them Ritchie in the midterm, Mk 2.3 were never gonna last with that kind of baggage.
To some people, Big Ian is irreplaceable and that’s alright, he’s so idiosyncratic that his absence is always gonna leave a void (notably in the lyrics dept and when it comes to outlandish vocal melodies). DC, GH, RJD and JLT all tried, but never got there.
It would be fantastic if only they would release Cd/ blu ray combo of this concert. We can then at least have one official live recording of the mark v also .
JLT is a great singer and song writer and his music in the Rainbow albums and salves and masters is immortal. I would love to see him inducted in the R&RHOF with Rainbow members. Peace ✌️
please quote your source on this: “if Jon and Little Ian had been AOR fans they could have ten years earlier taken the offer of Billy Squier when he tried to poach them from WS with money”
Mathias, it was either a Jon Lord or an Ian Paice interview in Germany’s musician magazine FACHBLATT around the time of the early 80s Whitesnake Come ‘N Get it tour. Billy Squier was the opening act and what an opening act he was! At the gig I saw (in Heidelberg or Mannheim) he and his shit-tight band (well-honed from a long tour with Queen in the States where they had usurped the main act promoting the controversial Hot Space) gave WS a hard time that night, WS really had to battle.
At the end of the tour, both Jon and Little Ian were approached by Billy’s management – DC got wind of it and wasn’t amused – to jump ship for Billy’s band which featured great musicians like Kenny Aaronson on bass.
The money offered was apparently excellent – Billy was flavor of the month at the time and an arena headline act already in the US, his album Don’t Say No had charted at #5 in the Billboard 200, stayed there for two years and went multiple platinum – but it would of course have meant for the DP elder statesmen to commit to crisscrossing America for the next 12 to 24 months. So they both turned it down (only for Paicey to get fired from WS not much later).
Billy was of course like many US musicians a lover and admirer of English rock royalty, it would have been the ultimate vanity knighting for him to have two ex-DP members in his band. And at the time, WS couldn’t even get arrested in the US of A.
I have often wondered how things would have turned out had Jon and Ian said yes. I think it would have been extremely lucrative for them at a time when the original WS was going into a period of turmoil and of Stalinist purges. I also thought that Sqier’s music wasn’t halfbad, he had a real knack for good melodies, a tuneful and elastic voice plus was a great performer. And he ruled American FM radio at the time. I remember being in Detroit for a few weeks at the time and the FM stations power-played Don’t Say No 24/7. If I’m honest I even thought that Lonely Is The Night was a Zeppelin tune when I first heard it on the radio, thinking to myself: “Lookee here, Plant & Page have written themselves a veritable hit for once!” I thought for years it was a track from In Through The Out Door! 🤣
@12 Uwe – yes Billy was a very talented chap. Used to get him mixed up with Rick Springfield for some reason.
Piper’s music was pretty good; thought his first few solo LPs were even better. Well-deserved success. Which left him living well to this day, decades after he dropped off the charts, due to his “sampling” royalties.
Maybe one day he’ll write an autobiography. He certainly “paid his dues” prior to hitting the big time – it would be interesting to read about his early groups with future members of Dead Kennedys and the New York Dolls.
broke Squier’s back with a belligerently male rock audience via MTV. You tell me, Skippy, were we really that bigoted as rock fans in the 80s? What’s wrong with a guy dancing (quite well actually) for himself, Mick Jagger did that in Stones videos all the time?
I have no idea whether Billy ever was or is gay, and I find the Rock Me Tonite vid not nearly as “stereotype gay” as some Priest vids from the period which did them no harm at all:
https://youtu.be/LKuuHfMx3CQ (I mean did anybody deem Rob’s prancing about on a speedway in the car race scenes particularly hetero-athletic? 🤣)
But to some people, Billy’s approximated modern dance routines seemed to be an early version of this, from a film released 13 years after the Rock Me Tonite vid:
@15 Uwe – don’t recall seeing that video before. (I’m with Dan McCafferty – when asked what his favorite TV program was, he said he liked it best when the TV was off.)
Does Billy say it ended his career?
Maybe. Or, could it have had more to do with the fact that he had lost his earlier hard rock edge, and was sounding like Foreigner circa 1978…. While by the mid-80s rock fans were gobbling up “hair metal” acts like Van Halen, Ratt, Quiet Riot, etc? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaAXahz80Pc&list=RDRaAXahz80Pc&start_radio=1
In fairness to the haters, Billy’s video IS campier than anything Mick Jagger, Stephen Pearcy or DLR ever did. Coming across as unintentionally funny in some spots.
Re Freddie Jackson, if Billy Squier had been a black man a bit of dancing in one of his vids would have certainly NOT alienated his audience nor led to accusals of effeminate or gay behavior.
#8: Great idea, I would buy it. I had tickets for the JLT lineup’s show in Irvine, California. Then they went and cancelled the show! Didn’t get to see DP until Steve Morse joined, around 1998 they did a great show at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. (Then several more in later years at the Greek Theatre in Hollywood.)
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan5.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/glover3.jpg)
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
My first concert by the band—an incredible experience. Even though Joe Lynn Turner was on vocals, Ritchie Blackmore played at the highest level, sending the fans into a state of pure ecstasy. P.S. I even made it into the video (at 3:27).
July 9th, 2026 at 05:55Only those who lived behind the Iron Curtain, where a very few rock artists from West ever dropped in up until 1990’s, will understand why this underrated line-up of DP brought emotions pretty much equal to The Beatles coming to the country, when they finally arrived for the 1st time ever.
This was an amazing gig, turbo charged with excitement and with some stellar playing as MK VI was really well oiled machine at the end of the S&M Tour then. The emotional weight of the concert was truly something else and that probably was upstaged only once, when Mk II visited Poland for one night only in late October 1993.
Both of these concerts felt like the miracles finally started to happen and dreams were coming true in front of our own eyes.
July 9th, 2026 at 07:05I was there, first row opposite Roger. Stayed half-deaf on my left ear for few days.
July 9th, 2026 at 09:50I think it was one of the best shows on that tour propelled by audience reaction. After encores Jon Lord appeared on the stage saying warm words to us – can’t remember now exactly what he said but only that the music is an international language which all can understand.
My next time was Zabrze 1993, also in first row…
Jon’s children’s sunglasses were of unfortunate nature in a fashion sense even at the time, but other than that I find very little to fault with that performance. If lyrical abstraction and depth was more or less irrelevant to you (and to a lot of people it is), then Mk V were a fine rock band.
PS: “When she left no fur“, what a subtitle revelation that is @06:53! So the song ‘Burn’ is really about skin rash as opposed to fire?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mygpUlYjqdo
I’m having an epilany of a moment: DC is a so much better lyricist than I ever thought!
July 9th, 2026 at 19:10Jolene in excellent form, I always loved her version of Burn and the swing she put into S&M songs but also in historical songs!
You could tell Ritchie was happy on that tour, the overall sound of the band was better than on previous tours, there was more precision, although,
but he kept ruining songs like Lazy, Child in Time and others by insisting on playing them too fast!
July 9th, 2026 at 22:19insoportable JLT!!!!
July 9th, 2026 at 23:41When I left the Mk V gig at Hammersmith in London, I was content and thought “ok, Mk II this wasn’t, but it’s worthy in its own way”. I still stand by that. Turner wasn’t the greatest fit, but he gave all. And the band played well and at ease. It was probably unrealistic at that point that Ritchie’s dream of playing in a Foreigner-type band (with extra-loud keyboards!) would still come true with DP, but by the same token you could say that Roger, Jon and Little Ian lost some of their kudos and were not confident that Purple could morph into an AOR band, so they reverted to what they knew (and perhaps also liked better; if Jon and Little Ian had been AOR fans they could have ten years earlier taken the offer of Billy Squier when he tried to poach them from WS with money).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mZkMD7cDnk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoDf3l2xZ9Y
Reverting to Mk II cost them Ritchie in the midterm, Mk 2.3 were never gonna last with that kind of baggage.
To some people, Big Ian is irreplaceable and that’s alright, he’s so idiosyncratic that his absence is always gonna leave a void (notably in the lyrics dept and when it comes to outlandish vocal melodies). DC, GH, RJD and JLT all tried, but never got there.
July 10th, 2026 at 00:28It would be fantastic if only they would release Cd/ blu ray combo of this concert. We can then at least have one official live recording of the mark v also .
July 10th, 2026 at 00:51JLT is a great singer and song writer and his music in the Rainbow albums and salves and masters is immortal.
July 10th, 2026 at 07:41I would love to see him inducted in the R&RHOF with Rainbow members.
Peace ✌️
Speaking of Blackers, apparently he’s been cleared to fly (on a plane, you understand!) because he is currently on vacation in Nafplio, Greece.
July 10th, 2026 at 09:42@7 / Uwe
please quote your source on this:
July 10th, 2026 at 19:48“if Jon and Little Ian had been AOR fans they could have ten years earlier taken the offer of Billy Squier when he tried to poach them from WS with money”
Mathias, it was either a Jon Lord or an Ian Paice interview in Germany’s musician magazine FACHBLATT around the time of the early 80s Whitesnake Come ‘N Get it tour. Billy Squier was the opening act and what an opening act he was! At the gig I saw (in Heidelberg or Mannheim) he and his shit-tight band (well-honed from a long tour with Queen in the States where they had usurped the main act promoting the controversial Hot Space) gave WS a hard time that night, WS really had to battle.
At the end of the tour, both Jon and Little Ian were approached by Billy’s management – DC got wind of it and wasn’t amused – to jump ship for Billy’s band which featured great musicians like Kenny Aaronson on bass.
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/licensed-image?q=tbn:ANd9GcQKNCjV7hh5KP644tKoiCh5MOYMYlCxuQtsPLurLr_dDFEa-Z5ymjmGyxJJOueoiocj7Cqu5Bj87lAWboI
The money offered was apparently excellent – Billy was flavor of the month at the time and an arena headline act already in the US, his album Don’t Say No had charted at #5 in the Billboard 200, stayed there for two years and went multiple platinum – but it would of course have meant for the DP elder statesmen to commit to crisscrossing America for the next 12 to 24 months. So they both turned it down (only for Paicey to get fired from WS not much later).
Billy was of course like many US musicians a lover and admirer of English rock royalty, it would have been the ultimate vanity knighting for him to have two ex-DP members in his band. And at the time, WS couldn’t even get arrested in the US of A.
https://youtu.be/2KCdNMRcprs
Piper, his band before he went solo, hadn’t been entirely without Purple influences either:
https://youtu.be/VwbHGZr4Jz0
I have often wondered how things would have turned out had Jon and Ian said yes. I think it would have been extremely lucrative for them at a time when the original WS was going into a period of turmoil and of Stalinist purges. I also thought that Sqier’s music wasn’t halfbad, he had a real knack for good melodies, a tuneful and elastic voice plus was a great performer. And he ruled American FM radio at the time. I remember being in Detroit for a few weeks at the time and the FM stations power-played Don’t Say No 24/7. If I’m honest I even thought that Lonely Is The Night was a Zeppelin tune when I first heard it on the radio, thinking to myself: “Lookee here, Plant & Page have written themselves a veritable hit for once!” I thought for years it was a track from In Through The Out Door! 🤣
Hope that helped!
July 11th, 2026 at 00:46Stathis @10: That is great news, I hope it does him, Candice and the kids some good. Thanks for sharing.
July 11th, 2026 at 16:05@12 Uwe – yes Billy was a very talented chap. Used to get him mixed up with Rick Springfield for some reason.
Piper’s music was pretty good; thought his first few solo LPs were even better. Well-deserved success. Which left him living well to this day, decades after he dropped off the charts, due to his “sampling” royalties.
Maybe one day he’ll write an autobiography. He certainly “paid his dues” prior to hitting the big time – it would be interesting to read about his early groups with future members of Dead Kennedys and the New York Dolls.
July 12th, 2026 at 05:04Legend/conventional wisdom has it that the allegedly “too gay“ Rock Me Tonite vid
https://youtu.be/_Hbiv0tCirU
broke Squier’s back with a belligerently male rock audience via MTV. You tell me, Skippy, were we really that bigoted as rock fans in the 80s? What’s wrong with a guy dancing (quite well actually) for himself, Mick Jagger did that in Stones videos all the time?
I have no idea whether Billy ever was or is gay, and I find the Rock Me Tonite vid not nearly as “stereotype gay” as some Priest vids from the period which did them no harm at all:
https://youtu.be/UxV7GTbqC10
https://youtu.be/LKuuHfMx3CQ (I mean did anybody deem Rob’s prancing about on a speedway in the car race scenes particularly hetero-athletic? 🤣)
But to some people, Billy’s approximated modern dance routines seemed to be an early version of this, from a film released 13 years after the Rock Me Tonite vid:
https://youtu.be/yBPm2Xom_y4
Sometimes I’m not even entirely sure whether I really like rock fans. 😑
July 12th, 2026 at 20:29“Toto, we‘re not in Long Island anymore … we must be somewhere in Greece …“
Stathis, I have a hunch what Family Blackmore might be doing at the newly reported vacation spot, working on Candice’s career of course! 🤗
https://youtu.be/5zH8oPc0i_8
July 13th, 2026 at 02:19@15 Uwe – don’t recall seeing that video before. (I’m with Dan McCafferty – when asked what his favorite TV program was, he said he liked it best when the TV was off.)
Does Billy say it ended his career?
Maybe. Or, could it have had more to do with the fact that he had lost his earlier hard rock edge, and was sounding like Foreigner circa 1978…. While by the mid-80s rock fans were gobbling up “hair metal” acts like Van Halen, Ratt, Quiet Riot, etc?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaAXahz80Pc&list=RDRaAXahz80Pc&start_radio=1
With Whitesnake’s HM era to follow soon after.
Not to mention the mainstream acceptance of thrashier stuff like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=455-CIgc7co&list=RD455-CIgc7co&start_radio=1
In fairness to the haters, Billy’s video IS campier than anything Mick Jagger, Stephen Pearcy or DLR ever did. Coming across as unintentionally funny in some spots.
Interesting that Billy’s hit didn’t stop Freddie Jackson from having one with the same title the following year
July 14th, 2026 at 00:30https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8HjwlUWuLU&list=RDR8HjwlUWuLU&start_radio=1
If top-notch-human-analyst Joe Rogan, a man to whose views many males worldwide subscribe (so I’ve heard), is to be believed …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OoKf9FCWJk
(We need definitely less Joe Rogan here.)
Re Freddie Jackson, if Billy Squier had been a black man a bit of dancing in one of his vids would have certainly NOT alienated his audience nor led to accusals of effeminate or gay behavior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovo6zwv6DX4
July 14th, 2026 at 15:16#8: Great idea, I would buy it. I had tickets for the JLT lineup’s show in Irvine, California. Then they went and cancelled the show! Didn’t get to see DP until Steve Morse joined, around 1998 they did a great show at the House of Blues in West Hollywood. (Then several more in later years at the Greek Theatre in Hollywood.)
July 22nd, 2026 at 02:28