slow start

Apologies for the slow start to DTB’s 2024…  Simon has been flat out supporting a book of bizarre album sleeves he’s curated; published late 2023 this generated so much publicity it was hard to keep up – you may have heard his dulcet tones on Radio 4, Radio 5 and Radio Market Harborough! (He’s even been doing illustrated talks too, the next one is in Huddersfield on April 26th at the literary festival.)  We will put a link at the end of this page if you want to see what it’s all about…

Anyway, to the t-shirt, which just came to my notice. A real piece of 80s nostalgia, sold at the 1983 Reading Festival when the Ian Gillan fronted Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy ruled the event, though they look more like characters from The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to us.  There is a growing market for retro rock shirts but not sure this one would drive bidders wild!

Moving quickly on, those of you in a post-turkey dinner daze watching The Great Pottery Throw Down can’t have failed to notice them using snippets of I’m So Glad and Hush; clearly someone in the production company is a fan reckons Steve Clare, though his bet that they will get on to the full MIJ Space Truckin’ by the final seems a bit of wishful thinking.  Meanwhile pirate comedy series ‘Our Flag Means Death’ has reappeared and series two finds Blackbeard quoting Whitesnake lyrics in the 4th episode. Treasurehunter? Don’t Break Me Hearties Again? The Deeparrrr the Love… 

On to Purple; lots of questions about the upcoming Machine Head 52nd (!) anniversary box set but hey, it’s not for us (nor apparently were Simon’s sleeve notes, scratched from the release!).  This is the fourth UK CD issue of the album, but beyond an audience recording of a live show (which will probably be dumped FOC on Spotify later) and a few tenuous guest remixes, there is Nothing New on it At All.  So unless you have a 5.1 audio system, £85 burning a hole in your pocket and can’t live without the atmos mix then I’m not sure what the point is.  When I feel the urge for a blast of the album, it is always Roger’s 25th anniversary remix, it really says it all. 

There are other archive items competing for your inflation raddled disposable income too.  First up is a reissue of David Coverdale‘s The Purple Album, which sort of begs the question how long does an album have to wait these days before it gets the multi track box treatment? The cover does NOT sport an “Eighth Anniversary” sticker!  Anyway, to lure DP collectors into HMV (if you can find the CD shelves hidden behind the Japanese soda cans and vinyl dolls in there any more), DC has added some home demos made during his time writing tracks for Stormbringer, plus the legendary Fabulosa Brothers 4 track demo which got him that first audition with DP. Tracks on that are Everybody’s Talkin’; Get Ready; Lonely Town, Lonely Street; and Dancing In The Street.  Not really sure this is the right place for material like that but there you go. If you were a fan of the 2015 album itself then you can look forward to the usual endless array of audio remixes, behind the scenes clips, promo videos and live tracks from the tour. There is a double album version on gold vinyl (the original peaked at 87 in the Billboard charts) and the bonus material comes on a multi disc set with a bluray.  Be sure to check as not all formats contain the extras.

Next up was an interesting Trapeze collection. The band have been poorly served by a mish-mash of live collections and studio reissues in recent years (topped by those needle drop Cherry Red horrors), but here comes a CD of tracks rescued by Tom Galley from Mel’s own archive which he asked him to curate. The press info surrounding it doesn’t exactly explain what’s what very well, but it does look to be out-takes from across their career, including finished tracks which were left in the can.  Some will feature Glenn and others date from after he departed to join Deep Purple.  It is marked up as Vol 1 which suggests more to follow.

Also worth a mention is a reworking of a song called Rose In Hell, originally released on the Moonstone Project album back in 2006. This new version features Ian Paice and Glenn Hughes, plus Adam Wakeman on hammond. Sounds like a potential supergroup in the making!  You can preview it here

The song will be on the third Turkish Delight album, on UK record label Escape. It will lead on to a reworking of Moonstone’s debut album, again with Ian Paice on board (using the very same cowbell he had in 1973 for the Burn sessions. That is the attention to detail you expect from Moonstone’s Matteo Filippini!).

Talking of Wakeman minor, he also stepped in on keys with Deep Purple when DP played a show in India on December 17th.  Don was taken poorly and had to pull out.  Still, be interesting to hear what he brought to the set.

Otherwise it’s now down to us all waiting for Purple’s next studio offering which apparently isn’t that far off.  Finally, those of you on the DTB emailing list will get book updates shortly!

Thanks to Michael Richards, Tim ‘the pirate’ Summers, Mark Maddock, Martin Ashberry and Matteo Filippini for help.

 The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve by Steve Goldman and Simon Robinson. If you’ve not seen what all the fuss is (banned by Instagram!) then zoom over to:

The Art Of The Bizarre Vinyl Sleeve

and of course there are two pages of Deep Purple related grot in there!

What an absolute shower

Ian Gillan gets wet

Deep Purple’s show in Stuttgart on July 18th (this is now the ‘DP Unleashed’ tour by the way) was streamed live via Arte in Germany. Past streamed shows have been archived by them so hopefully the DP one will be as well (www.arte.tv/de). People more up on this sort of thing than DTB towers (who have only just finally got iPlayer working properly!) say it was an open air gig and it chucked it down. The opening two songs were missed but Tim Summers particularly enjoyed the instro / jazz / lounge opening to Smoke On The Water (Deep Purple at Ronnie Scotts anyone?) and sent us this great screengrab, which he titles Bloke Under Water!

Documentary news

They All Come Out To Montreux is the title of a three part UK made documentary which has been showing on BBCFour, telling the story of Claude Nobs, and more specifically the remarkable archive of material built up over the years of the Jazz Festival. Two of Deep Purple appear towards the end of the first episode (which is only fair given IG provided the show’s title!) explaining their part in the story. Given the wonders of BBC iPlayer, if you missed it (not difficult, I didn’t see any trailers) you can watch it any time. But don’t leave it too long, they have a habit of deleting shows with no notice whatsoever. Thanks to everyone who flagged this up.

I guess we ought to ask Simon about that flipping book while we are on the subject… “except I cannot say much right now, given that ‘a few things are happening’ next year and it is planned to tie the biography in with all that.” He promised to tell all as soon as he was able, then started burbling on about Mexican cinema lobby cards, vintage blues photographs and awful record sleeves. Clearly appearing on Radio 5 the other weekend has addled his brain, so we made our excuses and put the phone down before he got on to raving about “effing brexit customs paperwork….” again!

Sounds like…

Neil Young has been talking about a likely archive release of an album he cut in 2001 but shelved (“[It] was so sad that I couldn’t put it out. I just skipped it and went on to do another album in its place”). In doing so he refers to one track as being “like a Deep Purple hit”. This inspired Mark Maddock to hunt around for us and a live version from the time turned up. Called ‘Standing in the Light’ it’s not hard to see what Neil means! Even in bootleg form it sounds pretty good, so I’ll post and you can see how many seconds it’s takes to spot the influence.

Thanks to Mark for the story.

Martin Birch. RIP.

Or should I say Martin Birchtree, Enginearole, as he was memorably credited on one Machine Head tape reel…

1970 was a cracking year to be let loose in the record shops, seeing how far my pocket money would go. I bought Deep Purple In Rock of course (Engineer on Hard Lovin’ Man? Martin Birch) but did explore other bands, and one of the first singles I picked up was Fleetwood Mac’s Green Manalishi. Engineer? Martin Birch.
A mate at school then brought Thank Christ For The Bomb along to play a track from one day (in form assembly of all places) by The Groundhogs (to be outdone by Split later that year, an astonishing audio experience). Engineer? Martin Birch. Another lad was raving about the track Phoenix by a new band called Wishbone Ash. Engineer? Martin Birch.
And that was just 1970.
What I’m trying to say is that Martin’s name has been on my radar most of my music buying life. And the same happened with the next generation of rock fans as his credit began to appear on a raft of post-Deep Purple projects like Whitesnake, Rainbow and PAL. The following wave of heavy metal again drew on Martin’s skills, in particular Iron Maiden (though by now he was credited as Producer, Engineer, Mixer, Tape Op and Technician!). After which he hung up the earphones in his early 40s and left the business.
Despite that early retirement, the extensive list of studio projects he got through is remarkable when you start to look carefully through it, albeit for many Deep Purple fans it is Machine Head which will be the one he is probably most remembered for. I and a few others have literally been going over every felt pen mark on the album’s tape boxes this last week or so to try and glean the tiniest bit of new information from them for the upcoming biography. Indeed it is with a heavy heart that I will close the file on my laptop where I had begun a list of niggling questions I was hoping to put to him shortly (Derek Lawrence called him up last year on my behalf – they’d kept in touch, explained what we wanted, and got an OK to call, on the proviso to “tell him I’m very unlikely to remember anything very much!”).
The sixth member of Deep Purple? It’s a soubriquet which he certainly deserved thanks to his handling the rest of Deep Purple’s classic era (and in a couple of cases even beyond).
It’s unusual for studio personnel to become as well known as the musicians they work for, but judging from the astonishing coverage Martin Birch’s passing (at just 71) has generated among the papers and news sites today, as well as rock fans, we’re not the only ones for whom his work has resonated so strongly.

Santa back in lapland

It seems Simon forgot to post the answer to the Santa Quiz, and some people are getting restless!  So now Santa is back home we can put everyone out of suspense; the hotel is question is where most of Deep Purple stayed while they rehearsed for their late 1972 British Tour nearby, where rehearsals for Machine Head also began.  We have asked if they have any booking diaries (before souvenir hunters descend) but the current owners say sadly not.  Still if that isn’t worth a blue plaque, we don’t know what is!  Mind you Simon was talking to Hanwell last year about doing the same for their building, so watch these spaces. And feel free to prompt.

Original post.  The Machine Head book publisher’s site.

 

 

 

Santa’s Quiz

Here’s a little puzzle for the Deep Purple historians out there.  This building, which is in Salisbury, played a role in the development of their Machine Head album in 1971.  It might actually be the longest running purpose built hotel in the country and parts dates back to the C13, although that’s not a clue. See if you can guess! We will post the answer shortly.  In the meantime the best wishes to everyone for a decent break over the holiday season, and Simon just wants to say thanks to everyone who has helped and contributed to the site (and our Facebook page) this past year and for people’s support and patience as well.

Hellboy, meet Ritchie Blackmore…

A big fan of the first two Hellboy films, once the creative team were dropped for the third film (shot in London and due here in April) and Ron Perlman turned it down, it’s hard to know if it can recapture the spirit. Still, the second trailer rocks with a clever update of Smoke On The Water featured throughout which is pretty nifty!  It’s been a while since Purple got to figure in a soundtrack, Children Of Men was the last I recall seeing (Hush), but whether Smoke is just for the trailer or will feature in the film we don’t know.  As its also starring Ian McShane and Milla Jovovich we’ll probably jog down to see it on a big screen…

Thanks to Kenny Brown for the heads up.

Eighty minutes max.

Deep Purple‘s current American tour set list seems to have settled down. It’s always hard to rely 100% on initial reports as not everyone is familiar with the newer titles Stateside (one had them playing three Infinite tracks!) but the following seems to be what they’re doing:

Highway Star / Pictures of Home / Bloodsucker / Strange Kind of Woman / Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming (not played on the first night but added thereafter) / Uncommon Man / Lazy / Knocking at Your Back Door / Perfect Strangers / Space Truckin’ / Smoke on the Water. Hush (encore)

So five tracks off Machine Head and nothing off the current album. But this is what happened on their last U.S. trip, as they could feel the atmosphere dropped when they tried new stuff, so we should not be too surprised. European fans can feel a bit smug but it’s a bit of a shame for dedicated fans who do know the new stuff, maybe they ought to do a couple of advertised solo shows for them with the new material? The Deep Purple set is around 80 minutes, with support Judas Priest doing around 75 mins. There is an opening band, Temperance Movement. Dates are on our gig diary. Thanks to Tim Summers and others. Do let us know if you spot any changes. SR.

Make room…

It is the silly season after all. Since 2000, Machine Head (which is on my mind as I am working hard to wrap up the new book!) has been reissued on vinyl by Rhino, EMI, Back to Black, Universal and Warners, in a choice of clear, black or purple vinyl. And those are just the ones I know about.  So please forgive me if I can’t get too excited by this and the accompanying set of similarly coloured vinyl reissues of that part of the Deep Purple catalogue which Universal now control. And I own 25 copies of Machine Head, so must be their target market! What saner heads must think I can only guess.

Anyhow, if you missed them before, here’s your chance again.  Of course they’re remastered, although one suspects this just means a new master has been cut rather than anything more substantial (and I’m not certain remastering technology has developed that much in the three years since the last one!). And sure this work will have been done at Abbey Road, but only because that’s where the tapes are stored and copied. And yes they’re in a nice shade of purple, but then again so was the Machine Head reissue six years ago.  It is also limited, not really a big surprise as most reissue vinyl is these days. The sales people calculate the likely market and profit, an appropriate number are pressed, and then the run is closed.  It does seem to me major labels are quickly killing off this market; does the world need a reissue on vinyl of the first Now That’s What I Call Music LP?  Because there is one. I spotted it in Sainsbury’s last week.

Of course the set looks nice in the pack shot (let’s hope the sleeve scanner has remembered to remove the Record & Tape Exchange price stickers this time too!), but sadly they would just get squeezed onto our shelf, spine out. Maybe my £126 would be better spent on some more shelving.  

Any variations here? Well they’ve added the Mk 4 label to Last Concert, which also seems to have been pressed in black and purple vinyl (check the inner bag below where someone has forgotten the Photoshop mask)!  But you can pick up a nice original import press for only a few dollars more.  Or there is a very spiffing original first press minty looking copy of In Rock down at my local second hand shop. At least there is some history behind that.