Bored with life? Then join Deep Purple today! Travel to exotic places, meet interesting people, and deafen them! Issue 48 of DTB saw yet another change in the running of the DPAS, brought about mostly by the way our record label RPM was taking off and keeping me (and my two partners) increasingly busy. RPM had started a collectors' club which was run by a specialist mail-order label called Cee Dee. They offered to help handle the admin of the DPAS and our mail-order, and this became effective with Issue 48. I handled production of the magazine. It was a little confusing for members at first having two different addresses to work with but it certainly took the pressure off.

The new magazine also covered what had been our very first DPAS convention, held in Sheffield. It was a thoroughly exhausting day but very enjoyable. There was a lot for fans to be positive about within Deep Purple too. The split between "never if Ritchie has gone" and "we'll give it a try" continued, but as the former had a new Rainbow album and tour to be going on with, things had calmed down. Mind you I still got plenty of stick for finding the album less than crucial listening but it remains a largely uninspired Rainbow by numbers affair to me, with any good ideas very short lived. Blackmore took umbrage apparently but has since told people it was a boring album and he was bored! making it. Trouble is he still holds it against us for saying that in the first place!

Purple on the other hand had gone in a different direction and produced an interesting and inspiring album, and one which remains my overall favourite from the Morse era. Indeed had they announced they were going to play this one back to back on the 2007 UK tour instead of Machine Head I'd have been first in the queue for tickets. Issue 48 reported on the album in detail. The magazine also looked at what was to become an increasing phenomena of the new band, touring to places they'd never been to before - allegedly because Blackmore just didn't want to go there. So Mexico, Korea and India got the ball rolling, and it's a spirit which continues to this day (as fans in the most obscure areas of France can testify this year!). Reviews of those early shows appeared in the magazine, along with some reprints of foreign newspaper coverage of the band (in English I hasten to add!).

Retro wise we took a look at the latest archive titles, including the release of the first remastered studio album In Rock, and Connoisseur's offering from Long Beach 1976. To mark the latter we reprinted a nice article on the life of a roadie in Deep Purple. To mark the former, we were allowed to publish in full the lengthy interviews down for the In Rock project, which were full of fascinating recollections and stories. 32 pages again. Jam packed again. The only trouble is... we're sold out - again! It was becoming clear that I'd have to start upping the printing quantities yet again. But it does mean that if you want to fill gaps around this time you'd best do so sooner rather than later !

RECORD REVIEW : Stranger In Us All

Ian and Roger met up after Christmas 1994 in Orlando to do more writing for the new studio album, and were joined by Steve Morse. They'd written a few bits before the shows in Mexico, though in the end all they replaced was Satch's boogie. As we can now hear those days in Mexico probably formed the lyrical basis for nearly all of them!

Purple then broke off for as bizarre a bunch of shows as they've ever done - kicking off in America, moving across to Korea, then down to India and South Africa. The set had been switched around from Mexico and included three new songs - TED THE MECHANIC, PURPENDICULAR WALTZ and SOON FORGOTTEN. "I flew down to see them in Fort Lauderdale" writes Brendan Johnston. "The Dixie Dregs used to do a lot of country type stuff, so Morse's arrangement of Anyone's Daughter was amazing. Gillan was in great form. In all the set lasted 135 minutes, even though they left out Leo which they'd done at Orlando. Seeing the band won over any of my doubts after reading the last Darker Than Blue."

The band then played shows in South Korea and South Africa. Two of the new songs were dropped to leave just Purpendicular Waltz in the set. Highway Star returned to open some shows and Space Truckin' was also added. Child In Time came in and out as Ian felt up to it. One interesting feature was an "unplugged" set on South African radio, featuring Lord, Morse and Glover - just piano and acoustic guitars. They did Woman From Tokyo, When A Blind Man Cries, Child In Time and a Morse track. Alan Turner caught a couple of the South African shows: "The sound was too loud and slightly distorted attimes compared to what I have heard them sound like in Europe. Steve Morse was a disappointment. He is technically brilliant, but the guitar sound was very thin and over processed as with so many players these days. Most of his solos were running up and down the neck at great speed, sounding more like a keyboard than guitar. He lacks the feel and soul as well as the power that Blackmore has. All the shows here were very similar with almost no spontaneity. Still, many peoplereckoned he was brilliant and the rest of the band seem very happy with him. Also they all enjoyed themselves on stage which I did not see much sign of during the '93 shows. Many people were saying that this was the best rock music yet heard in this country which means something as we now get all the major groups playing here."

It was then on for another first with shows in India. To say the local press went bonkers about the two gigs is an understatement, as our cuttings on the magazine cover and elsewhere begin to show: hotels had banners out, airlines advertised which flight the band were on so you could travel with them. There were dozens of reviews, all ecstatic. Most claimed it to be the best rock show ever staged in India. There were several TV cameras at the first show. One of the South Korean shows was also filmed professionally.

After the gigs Ian Gillan spent the last week of April up in Liverpool doing demos for a solo project. He then flew out to Florida the second week of May to begin work on the Purple album. By the end of June six songs had been finished as far as backings and solo were concerned and just awaited vocals. By August some 18 numbers were in various stages of completion. Roger worked on until late October to oversee the finishing touches to the album. On September 5/6th the entire band flew in to London to do interviews with the press for the new album, and tapes were given out to selected journalists. The new album was scheduled for late January 1996, partly to avoid the possibility of clashing with Blackmore and Rainbow. Tickets went on sale for some Feb/March '96 British dates during June '95, more or less unannounced too. And what a tour it looks - venues they haven't played for twenty years or more.

I should've known better, I should've trusted them - but it's not always easy. But whatever mistakes they may have made in the recent past, this new album isn't one of them. Deep Purple have delivered a very grown-up album and in many ways - for me at any rate - pushed rock as practised by older bands in a new direction. Not that anyone else could follow this, it's a direction very much created by the personalities involved and so hard to actually pin down that I'm not sure others could take it on if they wanted to. For this reason it's also a very hard album to actually review - so much is in the feel of it all. But what the hell, nothing ventured...

So we begin in some roadside neon cactus lit cafe listening to "Ted The Mechanic's" tale of life, retold over a Glover / Paice lick, anchoring it all firmly to the floor. "Ready An' Willing" I cried when I first heard it, but the similarities seemed to diminish with each subsequent play and what the hell, it just sounds so good. Morse chucks in a spaceward solo (he's already opened the proceedings by splattering his hands across the frets) and then climbs down for a quieter organ rhythm passage topped by laid-back vocal harmonies. Vavavoom indeed. "Soon Forgotten" also had a brief live outing early in '95. Chunks of heavy guitar, discordant Hammond, with Ian Gillan rising and falling with a sound that reminds me of his work on "Superstar". Jon adds to the strange ambience with one of his weirdest solos ever and closes the proceedings by steaming the organ to a close like some ancient locomotive drawing up at platform twelve. Then cut.

I feared "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming" might lose its way as it starts just like a Morse solo track might. Fear not, with a band to fire off, he's soon getting into forward gear and the band are quickly at full pelt - organs thrashing, bass pounding - on a track that gives proper meaning to the word dynamics. The contrast between the soaring guitar breaks and the heavy section adds to the interest and as it all crashes forward Ian gets to add some truly sonic screams before a lengthy closing passage with Morse again left to doodle away. "Rosa's Cantina" - The man tickling the ivories OWNS this track and instead of giving way to others, proceeds to lavish "Hush" style phrases throughout. A thundering bass joins him, Paicey kicks in and I'm in heaven. Morse contributes enough clipped guitar riffs to make for a cauldron of sound and Ian Gillan sways over the lot. Paicey swings into a slightly military beat for "Hey Cisco" before leading off a head melting jazz-rock riff that Billy Cobham would've been proud of. But whereas for many jazz rockers that would've been it, here things are properly Purpleyfied and the amalgam of styles is fascinating.

The real point of the album is that I'm never stood waiting for the solos. Nobody is dominating anything - it's just a sheer group effort. When they do throw in a break, it never seems to dominate - just kind of feels as if it belongs there. Morse's influences are fairly fundamental musically but again it feels natural. How much his arrival has inspired the others and therefore contributed to this new freedom is of course something only the band can say but they don't half sound good on it. The nearest feeling I can get to describe it is "Fireball". It's not another "Fireball" - but what it does share with that record is a new way of looking at rock. Nobody had ever thought of doing what Purple did on that album and the band themselves didn't realise what they'd achieved on it until it was too late. To me what "Purpendicular" at its best shares with it is that sense of innovation. Of taking the tried and trusted, mixing it with all sorts of musical ideas and influences and coming up with something different. Yes they've mellowed and it doesn't often bite quite as hard and the guitar players long gone and "Fireball" is my desert island disc choice but, even for it to come to mind as I think about this new album is something of a surprise - albeit a very pleasant one.

This series of six BBC TV documentaries screened in the summer of 1995 was in production for months. The DEEP PURPLE edition was finally shown on July 7th. It's the first serious attempt to document the band on UK TV screens, and the first lengthy show on the band since The Concerto was screened by Omnibus back in 1970!! The filmed interviews were lengthy and thorough. There is a pre-production version lasting some 90 minutes, but this lacks the linking clips of the Family Tree itself. They had hoped to make the Purple episode longer than the others but weren't given a suitable time slot so it had to be cut back and a lot of the pre-Purple material was lost. Had they just gone straight from the split to the reunion, it might have made a more coherent story but all in all it was entertaining. Most non-Purple people we know who saw it enjoyed it.

I'd really like to thank Roger Glover for his input, both on the remastering of the extra tracks and for organising the band interviews. This is the first time any of the band have ever got involved with one of these historical projects and it shows what a difference this can make.

EMI have been really pleased with the results and have also put out a CD single, coupling "Black Night" with an otherwise unavailable match-mix of "Speed King", and this also came out as a rather smart looking 12" numbered edition on coloured vinyl. Although vinyl is struggling, EMI felt it worth doing a special pressing of the album which came out in October '95. The original gatefold sleeve has been used, just amended inside, while the CD booklet pages have been arranged across the two inner bags. As a final touch the discs are pressed in coloured vinyl and there is a sticker on the front. This edition is not very easy to find, so if you want a copy you may need to order it (EMI 7243 8 34019 1 8).

Finally I had a short note recently which I found touching:
"Dear Simon. I recently received a copy of the In Rock anniversary CD as a birthday present. I was interested to read in the notes that the Hanwell Community Centre played such a major part in the album's development. Around this time I was a tubby schoolboy of 14 who used to spend his time hanging around the centre, helping the caretaker do odd jobs and so on. I was hanging around outside the room that the bands used to use in the main - it was room A, first on the left as you went in through the front doors - when their roadie Ian Hansford asked me if I would like to give him a hand to load the gear on the truck as he'd been left on his own (their other roadie hardly ever used to turn up). I did so and after this I became a sort of honorary roadie and used to help Ian set up and then sit in the room while the band rehearsed. I also remember going with Ian in the truck to the Marshall shop in Ealing Broadway - now turned into a shopping centre. I remember being asked to leave the room sometimes while the band had a meeting, also Richie would sometimes go AWOL from rehearsals and there would be some frantic phoning around to try and find him and get him to come over. I also helped Uriah Heep a few times, that is until I somehow managed to break off part of their organ lid! Anyway, if you ever see Ian Hansford ask him if he remembers a kid called Dave!" Dave Pring.

The King Biscuit Flower Hour, for those who don't know, is a syndicated US radio show lasting about an hour. It has long been known that the programme makers recorded Deep Purple on their 1976 US tour and that parts of the set have been aired over the years. However only about half an hour of the show has ever been used. When it first went out, the makers aired about 20 minutes and filled the rest of the show with some of the Mk 3 Kilburn concert recorded by the BBC. Subsequently, they have reworked the 20 minutes to include two different songs from the Mk 4 show but still insisted on using the Kilburn material as well!

Now at last, the original tapes are available. Why were there two versions of some tracks? It quickly dawned on me that what we had here was not just the Foxbat gig, but two gigs from the '76 US tour! However, this wasn't quite the exciting discovery it might have been. The first recording turned out to come from Springfield, MA on January 26th, some eight shows into the US tour. Sadly, whoever was in charge of the recording ballsed things up rather badly. Burn, Lady Luck and Love Child were all there, but Gettin' Tighter faded out at around the 15 min. 30 sec mark. There's not too much missing, but it would be difficult to disguise. We get a full version of This Time Around, followed by Comin' Home, which fades in about two thirds of the way through, so is again beyond salvage. The rest of the tape is intact - Stormbringer, followed by encores of Going Down and Highway Star.

Apart from the recording problems, the actual performance was far from perfect too. I can't have been the only one to feel this way for as I struggled on, I became aware of an extra singer on stage in places. Sounding uncannily like Glenn, the extra voice started mimicking a screaming section and suddenly announced "it's no good, I can't get it" . Bingo. Glenn must have been dragged down to try and overdub some extra vocals and replace one or two of the ropier bits. In copying me the tape, the engineer had just left all the channels open on the desk, and we'd unwittingly stumbled upon a long lost attempt to salvage the recording. Well, whatever they tried didn't work, and this left King Biscuit with little choice but to re-record the band at Long Beach Arena show on Feb 27th 1976. This was a lucky break. The engineers managed to record the entire gig, and the band themselves played pretty much one of their best shows of that tour. They were really cooking in places.

The tapes were mixed in Germany in March '95 by Gary Lyons (used to be in Ten Years After). I had serious reservations about the end result - and still find it hard to believe Jon's keyboard was that low on the master - but an early offer to have me sit in on the mixing was never repeated and it was quite obvious that despite my worries they weren't going to redo it just for some organ solos. The CD had to be a double to get the full show on, so as a bonus we included one or two tracks from the earlier gig just to give a comparison. The catalogue number is Connoisseur DPVSOP CD 217. I quite wanted to keep the old bootleg title too, as most fans would recognise it, though I suspect it has pu-zled the less expert purchasers.

Inevitably with such a borderline release not all the response has been positive.
"Last Concert In Japan always made me weep at how bad it was, so I was desperate for a convincing Mk 4 performance. I was still disappointed. I am far from anti-Tommy, but live - oh dear! Right off with Burn he plays the riff wrong and lacks imagination. As for Glenn he is so annoying! Why did he feel the need to sing and overplay it at every opportunity. Georgia had me in stitches - he seems to be going for notes only a dog could hear! I felt sorry for Coverdale who is relegated to part-time singer, and really struggles on Love Child too. So it's a crying shame Mk 4 still have nothing released that will do them justice live." Ron Bellamy.

Rainbow started work ona new album early this year, recording through until April time. The CD was taped at Long View Farm in Massachusetts. Rainbow Moon as a name was eventually ditched in favour of the more familiar. The tour began in Finland with one show in Helsinki, one in Sweden and one in Norway - the band reportedly having set up to rehearse in Copenhagen before the gigs began. The set-list: Spotlight Kid, Too Late For Tears, Long Live Rock' n Roll, Hunting Humans, Wolf To The Moon, Difficult To Cure, Still I'm Sad, Man On The Silver Mountain, Temple Of The King, Black Masquerade, Ariel, Since You Been Gone, Perfect Strangers, Greensleeves (with vocals), Hall Of The Mountain King - encores of Burn and Smoke. Stand & Fight was done at the first show but then dropped. Lazy and Light In The Black were both rehearsed. Swedish radio recorded the Stockholm show on Oct 2nd. The band moved on to Germany for fifteen shows there (and in Austria), and Rockpalast filmed the October 9th show in Germany.

To catch up a little, their new singer was confirmed as Dougie White. He's been around a bit, and was working with Cozy Powell for a time prior to getting Blackmore's call. Indeed he was even a member of the DPAS back in the early '80s. Just prior to joining Ritch he'd been up for a job in a band called PINK CREAM 69. This brought the complete line-up to - RITCHIE BLACKMORE - guitar (you knew that didn't you?!); DOUGIE WHITE - vocals; JOHN O'REILLY - drums; PAUL MORRIS - keyboards; and GREG SMITH - bass. O'Reilly bit the dust before the touring even began and was replaced by CHUCK BURGI from a previous Rainbow line-up. Smith had been working with Alice Cooper, while both he and O'Reilly played with Joe Lynn on tours in '93 and '94. Family Tree fiends will be happy to know O'Reilly was also in a band called CPR who had Steve Morse do some guitar on their album.

To other matters: Blackmore has also been talking more about this idea to record an album of medieval material . He's taken melodies from C 16 tunes and, plans to have flutes, other guitars etc. on it. Candice will do the vocals and they may try and do a few shows if it works out.
That's about it then. What do you mean Rainbow have done a new album? Oh well, I suppose if we must we must...

Rainbow's comeback CD follows very much the pattern, direction and sound heard on Straight Between The Eyes and Bent Out Of Shape. Indeed you'd hardly guess that twelve years separated the latter from this new offering. Sadly, for those of us hoping the blistering guitar work he exhibited on that last ill-fated Purple tour in 1993 was the prelude to an equally devastating move forward in the studio, this CD fails to deliver anything like the goods necessary to enable Blackmore to recover some of the standing lost during the final Purple debacle in 1993.

WOLF TO THE MOON sets the scene, a standard medium paced Rainbow rocker. On first hearing Dougie White sounds almost identical in style and approach to Joe Lynn Turner. A little bit coarser round the edges perhaps, but it's clear Blackmore wants this formularised rock voice whoever supplies it. The track itself is a very one dimensional and inauspicious beginning to the CD.
HUNTING HUMANS is a real plodding effort, almost as if they'd slowed the whole track down, leaving it struggling against a loose puddingy bass sound which sucks everything in. There's an instrumental classic here for the taking had Blackmore wanted. The singer manages to rhyme "mirrorball" with "inexcusable" - amazing.
ARIEL (after a Zeppelin style drum walloping opener) is GATES OF BABYLON 2. The band are trying to at feast sound a little more grown-up here. The vocals ride in and kill it dead, with lyrics so banal they defy description. To make matters worse, we get a spine-tingling pay-off. A gorgeous closing section where a female voice breathes the song title and Blackmore strolls over the top to knock you dead. There's enough here to inspire a rock symphony. Within 60 seconds it's gone.
BLACK MASQUERADE rolls out and this is getting beyond a joke. Been there, heard that, nicked it. Frighteningly ordinary, with an incongruous few bars of flamenco work thrown in plus speeded up harpsichord a la Rat Bat Blue. Ritchie tries to regain the balance with some smooth runs but by then the whole number has outstayed its welcome. He comes over with the goods on the final few seconds but this gets faded out..
SILENCE. If only. The high pitched wash of reedy synth and histrionic vocals bring the horrors of latter-day Rainbow back to life. Or maybe not, it's not even that honest. The guitar again gets lively at the end but by then the cumulative effect of the track's mundane meanderings render it HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING is reasonable fun for the most part, some nifty guitar breaks, bit of orchestra. Except that Dougie then starts singing about "Tales of mystic days of old" in a frankly risible manner, making his previous lyrical offerings seem almost REM-like in comparison, and rolling his r's like some ham actor. That aside there is at least a bit of fun and excitement here musically, which contrasts sharply with all that has gone before. The drummer has got to grips with matters, and the production has improved, but then we come to the speeded up ending which is pure music hall.

What is he trying to say? There's no shame in looking to other people to bring in a bit of creativity once in a while, and there can't be any shortage of people who could provide Blackmore with 1001 stonking ideas. I've followed this guy's work now for 25 years. It's the worst thing he's ever done. From the unbelievable heights he scaled with his playing in '93 to this in just two years. Frightening. There will never be a moment in my life when a voice says - dig out Stranger In Us All and have a listen to that one good track. It's an utterly depressing feeling.

The tape had an extra track, EMOTIONAL CRIME, "Can't get thru in the midnite hour" - more mould breaking lyrics and a tune to match. Blackmore threatens to get tough in the solo but it doesn't last long. It'll probably end up as a bonus for buyers of the Jap import . The LP was produced incidentally by Pat Regan who did the last couple of Purple albums. BMG supplied an "electronic press kit" for the CD, basically the usual biog with an 8 minute video taped interview with Blackmore. A single of Ariel is supposed to be out in Germany (incidentally Ritchie's lady Candice Night was wheeled on to do backing vocals for this on the tour) backed with a live Temple Of The King from the tour.

Ian spent some time in LA last year laying down a few more demos. He did about 12 songs in all, with Steve Morris helping out as usual. He's been stressing that this is just a solo recording, so it won't conflict with anything Purple are up to. Ian has sorted out a deal with a Japanese label already. The idea is to do a very varied album, and promote it simply as a studio project. There will be videos made etc. I'm told the influences are many and it's going to surprise a lot of people.

Plenty of activity from Glenn. He's on another DP Tribute CD doing "Stormbringer", with John Norum on guitar. Central TV's rock show "Noisy Mothers" featured Glenn on Oct 7th 94 - clips from the promos for "Pickin' Up The Pieces" and "Why Don't You Stay", a brief interview and a clip of "Burn" from a show in Bristol. Glenn did two shows in Germany on the weekend of June 24/25 '95.

The Japanese live album finally came out in Europe (July '95) via SPV, and so eventually did his new studio album FEEL, which came out in Japan way back in June. The Japanese CD included a new version of HOLY MAN as a bonus track. Glenn slotted in another UK tour during the second two weeks of November 1995, followed by a date in Paris. Reports suggest that the shows were perhaps not quite as good as the last tour, mainly due to the new band he was using. He only did two tracks from Feel too which was a surprise. On the plus side he was playing the bass for much more of the show.

Glenn has now signed a long-term deal with a Japanese label and you can expect the next album to be much heavier than the current one. I guess really he's in a very difficult situation. There ought to be a commercial opening for his quieter material - I've lost count of the singles I hear on the radio that sound like a pale imitation of his voice - but he seems unable to gather the necessary clout to break through.

Xero XRCN 1243 : JAPAN : July 1995 CD

Glenn's latest studio offering again came out in Japan far in advance of anywhere else. Eleven tracks plus a bonus re-re-cording of "Holy Man". I have to admit that with so many advance reports stressing the mediocre nature of the material, it was a long time before I summed up courage to play it through properly. It saddens me to admit that most of what people were saying to me was right.

The whole CD really lacks direction and drive. It has no real spirit or identity. Glenn seems to have had so little to fight against on here that he really goes through the motions. Yes it is wonderfully performed vocally but Glenn is so gifted in this department these days that one looks for a little more somehow. The rockier direction of his live shows has all but gone, yet the slower funkier material fails to catch fire - crying out for some really dirty bass and Bolinesque guitar, and also lacks basic melody much of the time. Elsewhere tracks like "Big Time", the opening song, do have a lot more promise - a modern backing which manages to deliver something a little stronger for once. I dunno, I really feel Glenn needs some very good firm production help to begin to push him forward, for albums like this just won't advance the cause one iota.

The monster returns. You're all far too young to remeber the grund breaking BBCTV Sci Fi thriller Quatermass And The Pit, drama done live and scaring viewers silly back in the fifties. Well Mick Underwood certainly remembered it when he launched a band called QUATERMASS back in the early '70s. They did one gorgeously Hipgnosis packaged album for Harvest, never saw a penny in royalties (it was a license deal) and split not long afterwards.Someone who did buy the album was Mick's old Outlaws sparring partner Ritchie Blackmore, and he fell in love with a tune called Black Sheep Of The Family. So much so that he cut a version of it on his first Rainbow album in 1975.

Anyways, to cut a long story short we gathered loads of people for our 1994 RPM Christmas bash, and while I was busy pinching myself that Sandie Shaw was singing specially for us, some of the others were deep in conversation. The upshot of it was that Nick Simper and Mick Underwood, who had known each other for years, decided to have a jam. They got a guy called Peter Taylor in to sing (you won't have heard of him, but he's done around 40 rock albums for various people - many US only) and at our suggestion gave Bernie Torme a call. Out of the blue he shipped me four demos he'd done earlier this year. I was amazed at the guitar work. Bernie has pushed on and really some of this was very forward looking indeed. Hence our idea of him for Quatermass.

They did some rehearsing but when it looked like there might be something on the cards, and some gigs, Bernie decided he didn't fancy getting back on the touring treadmill. Rather than leave it he felt it would be better to say something at an early stage, so the others cast around for a replacement. Nick suggested a mate called Gary Davis and they cut three demo tracks in November which are now being passd around to see if a suitable deal can be arranged. Natch RPM have an interest but whether we've got the clout needed to launch this properly is debatable but we'll certainly keep you all clued in. It was certainly good to hear Nick's bass once again. Musically I guess we're looking at '70s influenced English rock with a modem edge - thanks mainly to Gary's super speed guitar. I'm not 100% sure the vocal sound is yet right but it's early days.