February
8th, 2004. Orpheum, Vancouver. 1st
Show
Of The Tour
|
 Deep
Purple Set List
Deep Purple began their latest North American jaunt in
Vancouver on Sunday, Feb.8th. The set list for the first
half was: Silver Tongue / Woman From Tokyo / I Got Your
Number / Strange Kind Of Woman / Bananas / Knocking At
Your Back Door / Contact Lost / Well Dressed Guitar /
House Of Pain / Perfect Strangers. The second half (introduced
by vintage band photos projected on a screen) consisted
of all seven tracks from the Machine Head album (performed
minus in-between song intros) plus When A Blind Man Cries.
Encores: Hush / Black Night. Joy Pettit
|
 "Jon
Lord's a monument in our lives, a founding member of Deep
Purple and just a really darling guy. I spoke to him just
a few days ago; we send emails regularly and he phones us
up in the dressing room, quite frequently, before going
onstage. 'What's the set list tonight?' Ian Gillan. full
Chartattack interview, Feb.6th 2004 |
| "Opening
act Thin Lizzy -- which comes off as little more than a
tribute band without the late Phil Lynott -- serves up a
less-than-memorable 45-minute set. Then it's time for Deep
Purple. The clean-cut Gillan emerges completely out of context;
with his bare feet and baggy white shirt and pants, he seems
ready for an afternoon at some tropical cabana. By the time
the band is working its way through Woman From Tokyo,
the die is cast: The fans are on their feet screaming, air
guitars roaming like saw-off shotguns, disembodied heads
bobbing back and forth with the intensity of human woodpeckers.
And you know what? If you close your eyes the band sounds
pretty damn good. During 'Smoke On The Water' some
fans raised not cigarette lighters but cell phones so their
loves ones at home could listen." Larry Pynn |
 "Glover
first heard Morse's boggling fretwork while Purple was
touring Germany in the early '80s. "We were driving to
a hotel and this classical piece of music came on," he
recalls, "and I thought it was Bach. Then all of a sudden
it took a left turn, and I realized it wasn't Bach at
all - it was actually quite modern. I thought 'Who the
hell is this?' It was a piece called 'Go for Baroque',
on the [Dixie Dregs] Unsung Heroes album. So I immediately
checked it out and I became a huge Steve Morse fan." www.straight.com |
|
 "I'm
used to being under pressure, the reason I got the gig
was that I could stand on my own and contribute. I loved
what Ritchie did but, at the same time, I'd been around
and had my own ideas. We walk a tightrope between familiarity
and innovation. Fortunately, we have an escape route.
By playing the songs from Machine Head, we've been given
carte blanche to play new stuff."
Steve
Morse, interviewed by The Province, Feb.6th 2004
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February
11th, 2004. Warfield, San Francisco. Jammin'
With Joe
|
 A
sell-out crowd witnessed Ian Gillan inviting "all
former members of Purple in the house" up on stage
for the encore. Joe Satriani joined them for 'Black Night'....see
our Photo
Gallery for pictures of the event!
Photos by Scott DuBose
"Proving
once again that there is definitely an audience in America
for this type of classic rock music, Purple played a confident
and tight set that mixed new songs, some hits and the
entire Machine Head record into a two-hour set."
read the full review of the show at www.classicrockrevisited.com
|
 "Unlike
U.K. contemporaries such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath,
Deep Purple brought a polished musicianship to rock 'n'
roll that defied the easy digestibility of ready-made guitar
rock. "Deep Purple was always a very musical band," Glover
says. "We drew from a huge classical and jazz influence,
and that requires a certain dexterity on your instrument.
Not to take anything away from Jimmy Page or Tony Iommi,
because their ideas were great, but what Deep Purple was
doing was musically way beyond that. And I think to a certain
extent, that's why we're held in less esteem than the other
two, because we're not quite as simple or as easy to copy."
Roger Glover interviewed by the Las
Vegas Mercury, Feb 12th 2004 |
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February
14th, 2004. The Wiltern, Los Angeles.
|
"The LA show was one of the special DP shows. I've
seen the band 1 or 2 times on all of the last tours since
96 and the LA show was one of those nights where the band
was in overdrive and it took the audience along for the
ride. Gillan's voice sounded about 20 yrs. younger and
it was an amazing show. Simply stunning!" Frank
Beltran
|
 It's
not like the band is making a series of comebacks, the band
for the last 20 years has played constantly with no more
than a couple of months off,'' guitarist Steve Morse said.
"A real difference is you can go to five shows in a row
and hear different stuff each time.'' read the full Steve
Morse interview at the sb
sun |
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February
15th, 2004. House Of Blues, Las Vegas.
 "The
show is, in simple terms, amazing. No gimmicks there --
no high-tech gadgets, black leather, gothic images, dancing
girls or star-shaped guitars. Even singer Ian Gillan's extra-long
mane is gone -- but certainly not his glass-shattering voice.
Pure musicianship, enormous energy and virtuosity, fabulous
Ian Paice's drumming, brilliant on-the-go improvisation
and radiant smiles revealing the satisfaction over a job
well done. Must be really hard, playing in a new city every
night for months in a row? After all, they are not quite
young anymore. "I am not getting tired doing what I love,"
Glover said. "That's like Duke Ellington once said, 'I play
for free, just getting paid for travel.' But I personally
have no plans to keep playing beyond 2049, no matter what
they say."
read the full artcile at The
Salt Lake Tribune |
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February
17th, 2004. Kiva Auditorium, Albuquerque.
 Glover
looks down on the 'Are you ready to rock!' syndrome, where
singers scream at audiences to get them fired up and, well,
ready to rock. With praise and admiration he explains how
Purple lead singer Ian Gillan "doesn't ever shout at an
audience." "People don't want to be shouted at. It's like
a television program about a made-up band. That's the kind
of thing you would have them (do). Its such a cliché. Are
they ready to rock?! They paid their money to get in, of
course they're ready." read the full Roger Glover interview
at Albuquerque
Tribune Online. |
|
"As an aspiring young rock guitarist, Morse says
he remembers trying to emulate Blackmore's guitar solos
on Burn. Deep Purple songs became part of his repertoire
as he developed his skills as a future guitar god."
see the full article at www.news-bulletin.com
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February
20th, 2004. Majestic Theater, San Antonio.
Glover is quick to point out that Deep Purple doesn't consider
itself an oldies band. "Our audience depends upon what country
we're in," he said. "In America it's an older audience because
the media pigeonholes us as classic rock. But, in Europe
and Asia we're a band along with all the other bands. In
Poland and in the Czech Republic our audience is 18-25.
We rarely see older people in the crowd." read the full
interview from the San
Antonio Express News. |
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February
24th, 2004. Chicago Theater.
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"Ducking
out for a quick trip to the men's room felt like a brief
visit to the Twilight Zone as there were two guys at the
urinals having a real-life version of the old Blackmore
vs. Morse flamewar, something I didn't expect outside
the internet. The Morse defender then asked me if that
was Tony Carey at the keyboards. When I told him it was
Don Airey he said "Wow, he's changed." Well yeah..."
full
review + photos by John Hopkins
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"We are restructuring [the U.S. tour]. It's basically
just a gimmick; what we're doing is saying that we're
playing the Machine Head album from beginning to end in
the show, which we are in fact doing. But it's really
just a question of presentation because we do all those
songs anyway, all but one or two. We're just kind of lumping
them together - actually just to get publicity, to be
honest," Ian Gillan, see the full interview at Chicago
Innerview |
|
"We
looked around and found a wonderful chap by the name of
Michael Bradford. He is very, very bright -- a great musician,
very intelligent, locks into what you are trying to do
straightaway -- and it was just very confidence-building.
Everybody in the band suddenly thought it would be really
nice to get into the studio, instead of, "Oh, god, here
we go in the studio." And that was the major change when
it came to the creation of "Bananas" -- to try to expand
the horizons a little."
Ian
Paice , see the full interview at the Chicago
Sun Times
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February
26th, 2004. Massey Hall, Toronto. updated
2.03.04
| "Side
B of the album was played in reverse order to ensure that
"Smoke On The Water" was the final song of the night.
That meant that "Space Truckin'" was first and was
followed by "Lazy", the band's most cohesive
song of the night. The four instrumentalists were as tight
as could be on this mid-paced boogie, with Morse finally
showing some restraint to his playing, something he couldn't
do on "Smoke On The Water." Instead of playing it cool,
Morse went to town with the guitar histrionics and wanked
out on one of the most simple, effective riffs in rock history.
I may be in the minority, but his soloing was a bone of
contention for me all night and this finale was too much.
Morse's complete lack of restraint ruined the song for me.
Regardless, both bands put on great shows."
full
Chartattack review, Mar.1st 2004 |
|
"With
three of the five core members present in singer Ian Gillan,
drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover, the group
kicked things off with Silver Tongue from the band's
latest album Bananas. But for most of the evening, it
was guitarist Steve Morse and keyboardist Don Airey that
owned the show. The middle portion, containing three instrumentals,
seemed to bring the show down somewhat. Contact Lost,
dedicated to the astronauts who perished in the 2003 Columbia
shuttle disaster, was quite pretty. Don Airey's lengthy
keyboard solo, which contained a snippet of O Canada,
was far from it.
Having
completed Perfect Strangers, a video screen dropped
and turned back the clock. Images of Muhammad Ali, Janis
Joplin and other '60s icons were shown as the band tore
into Highway Star, creating a horde of air guitarists
all around." read the full review by Jason Macneil
at the Toronto
Sun
|
|
 'Deep
Purple sucked me into their blistering recreation of the
1972 prog/metal classic Machine Head at Massey Hall last
night - that was until they switched the sequence so that
"Smoke On The Water," the album's most familiar tune,
was moved to the end. Up
until that point, singer Ian Gillan and fellow originals
Ian Paice on drums and Roger Glover on bass, superbly
supported by guitarist Steve Morse and keyboardist Don
Airey, had been making a reasonably strong case that Machine
Head had a lot more going for it than just the one song.
Then, it seemed, they decided that the one song was really
what it was all about, after all.
It
was one thing to slip "When A Blind Man Cries," a track
from the same session that didn't make it on to the album,
between sides. By reversing the order on the back end,
beginning with closer "Space Truckin'" followed by "Lazy"
and then "Smoke On The Water," they bought a big climax
but weakened the argument.'.
Read the full review at the Toronto
Star
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February
28th, 2004. Trump Marina, Atlantic City.
updated 1.03.04
| "I
thought Don Airey was brilliant, and couldn't imagine anyone
else replacing Jon Lord. He added a nice touch including
a snippet of "Born in the USA" into his first solo in honor
of being in Springsteen's New Jersey. In this day and age
when bands just go through the motions and you're not sure
how much of the playing is actually live, this little gesture
meant a lot..." full
review by Eric Eisenstein |
|
 "You
think that someone who's crucial to the band can't leave.
When Ritchie Blackmore was in the band it was generally
perceived by the public that he was the guiding light
of the band, and I think in the early days he was. His
riffs more than anyone else's really set the tone of the
band. ... So he was a towering figure of the band and
I'm sure that many people thought that without him Deep
Purple would not exist. ... And then when Steve (Morse)
joined as a permanent player and we started writing new
stuff, the band just took on a whole new persona. And
of course there are endless debates about, 'Oh, these
songs aren't Deep Purple,' and then other people going,
'Yes, but it is Deep Purple and they're fresh.' So there's
endless things for fans to talk about, and they do. But
we in the band, all we care about is the fact that we're
making music. We don't see ourselves as part of a history.
We see ourselves as working, living, breathing musicians
living in the present. "
Roger Glover, Feb.20th 2004. read the full interview at
thedailyjournal.com
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February
29th, 2004. Beacon Theater, New York.
new 2.03.04
|
 "Hank
just went to see Deep Purple: "A great show. Three originals:
Ian Paice (drummer), Roger Glover, and Ian Gillan (yes,
the "Smoke on the Water" and "Highway Star" singer) were
on hand. Highlights included "Smoke on the Water," of
course, "Highway Star," "Woman from Tokyo," and "Space
Truckin.'" (Some of the new stuff sounded pretty good
too.) Ian Paice on drums was at the top of his game, though,
and the highlight of the show. The guy's still a monster
on the Pearls. Guitarist Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs) had
the chops. Don't miss Blackmore. Miss Jon Lord on the
keys, though. Two sellouts at the Beacon; house full of
old guys like me except for the occasional kid. But as
my son's friend Pete observed, a lot of the fans spent
the evening fetching beers and heading to the rest room."
Andy Serwer at Fortune
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March
1st, 2004. Beacon Theater, New York.
new 5.03.04
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"Having
listened to the remixed version of Machine Head over the
last few weeks prior to the show, I was amazed at how
well these songs sounded live. It was especially great
to hear the "other" tracks Maybe I’m a Leo, Pictures
of Home, Never Before and my favorite When
a Blind Man Cries."
full review by Gerard Mazzella....
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