Micro Machines

It’s been a long time since this little collectable was featured in Darker Than Blue magazine! Steve Grover found it when he was on holiday in Australia in 1992 and brought it back as a souvenir (and teased me with it as soon as he got back). He has recently been trimming down his collection and decided this could go. He and I were both flabbergasted when it sold on ebay for over £900!
It turns out that MicroWheels are now becoming quite collectable as a brand; enough time has passed from their launch in 1987 for kids at the time to have reached that age when they enjoy collecting toys they had as a kid.
But what Steve didn’t realise is that this was very much a limited run, a series called Rockin’ Wheels, which was test marketed only in Australia. There were six bands featured, including Deep Purple and Whitesnake. As well as these six groups, a few more exist only as prototypes (Billy Idol being one, who thought that was a good idea?). Needless to say Steve rather wished he’d grabbed a few more, but it’s easy to be wise after the event, and the money will certainly pay for his next road trip (if we’re ever allowed such things again).
The Deep Purple set was licensed during the Joe Lynn Turner era from Bruce Payne, and so features graphics from the Slaves & Masters era. As the price Steve got shows, they are impossibly rare today. Even beat up played with examples fetch money and every collector’s site I visited out there has these in their ‘most wanted’ section.
Me, I shall stick to my early Matchbox toys. Though even there some of the prices are now out of my reach.

Bananas £50 a….

Record Collector get the 2021 Deep Purple media run off to a nice start with a ten page feature in their latest issue, on the news-stands on New Year’s Eve (if we’re allowed to go out). It mainly centres round new interviews with IG and RG, the former saying “We’ll carry on until we physically cannot make it onto the stage any more”! Being RC they also throw in a valuations section of the main editions (a few of which may surprise people – £50 for the vinyl edition of Bananas?) and a few nice pics, some images supplied by Simon. “Disappointingly they decided NOT to give the band the entire front cover in the end, feeling they’d been on too many magazines recently! I did moan about this but to no avail,” he tells us. No money changed hands, but he did get a plug for the In Rock biography!

As this is our last posting of 2020 can we says thanks to everyone who has contributed to the site in any way whatsoever over the year and helped keep things going. It’s been an awful year for so many people, but like everyone we’re hoping things will pick up during 2021. Simon adds “Can I add a special thanks to DP fan Gary Critcher who decided to emigrate this year and sent us lots of envelopes with old DP related bits and bobs he turned up while preparing for the move. Most touching perhaps was his original teenage scrapbook full of cuttings and adverts he’d clipped out over several years, and reminded me of similar efforts I made during the 1970s. I’m going to see if the music collection at the British Library could find room for this, it’s too good to break up!”

Sunday lunch

So many people have sent me a link to this clip that I figure there won’t be many Deep Purple folk out there who haven’t already downloaded it to their secret hard drives. But just in case, seeing as Gareth Toms tricked me into watching it the other day by embedding it into an email, l I don’t see why others shouldn’t suffer / enjoy / hide behind the sofa as well!  Toyah and hubby Robert Fripp have been doing little lockdown cover versions for several weeks and decided it was time to do Smoke On The Water, in front of their own lake, dressed as a cheer leader. Toyah not Bob.  I wonder if she realises it was this song which indirectly financed her first big record deal with Safari?!  I’m going to have to go and play Happy Family to get this out of my brain.  Will Ritchie and Candice reciprocate with a cover of Epitaph?

Danke

And here is the equivalent advert from the Germany music press (see post below for the British version). Third time in a row they have had the #1 Album in Germany (Now What?! – inFinite – Whoosh!). Thanks to Lutz Reinert for the image.

A little bit of history repeating

Some old gimmers out there might remember Deep Purple printing a nice full page Merry Xmas advert in the British music papers back in 1971. Here they are repeating a similar idea in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine this Xmas! Thanks to Tom Dixon for alerting us to it, and John Tucker for the snap.

Speaking of magazines, the next issue of Record Collector magazine (they are finishing up the layout as I type* so probably early Jan street date) will feature a big Deep Purple special centered around two new interviews with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. (*We only know as Simon has been helping them with photo research).

In Concerto 50

BBC Radio celebrated fifty years of the In Concert programme during November by repeating many shows from across the years as well as showing later shows which have been filmed. However only two shows from the 70s were included and Deep Purple’s excellent performances were not amongst them (Bill Withers anyone?). Meanwhile purists might argue that The Moody Blues and guests Trapeze actually began In Concert with their pioneering broadcast (produced by Jeff Griffin) in December 1969!

And is it really forty flipping years since someone not a million miles away from here sweated over a hot photocopier putting the visuals together for that first EMI double album release of this material? Apparently so.

Malcolm Arnold

In case (like me) you’d not seen it in the news, there is currently a worry that many of composer Malcolm Arnold’s papers will be destroyed following a court ruling. I had not realised that Arnold’s mental and health problems meant that he was made a ward of court as early as 1979, only ten years after working with Jon Lord on the fabulous Deep Purple Concerto. I know he was in a fragile state when EMI invited him to attend the preview of the remastered SACD Concerto at Abbey Road, though he appeared to appreciate all the fuss being made of him. It is the material from 1979 on which are now as risk and so could be lost to future biographers.
A petition has been set up to try and find a way to save the material. There are not too far short of the 5,000 signatures needed to help put pressure on the people responsible.
This great pic of Arnold at the BBC above dates from not long before the Concerto. Thanks to Peter Judd for alerting me to the story.

UPDATE : thanks to this petition the material will now be lodged at the National Archives, but not available to biographers until the legal situation is sorted out.

https://www.change.org/p/lord-chancellor-and-secretary-of-state-for-justice-the-rt-hon-robert-buckland-qc-save-the-court-papers-of-sir-malcolm-arnold?recruited_by_id=c28d4db0-23e7-11eb-99ec-e3b407c3585a

Very ‘Eavy

Given the number of musicians, actors and comedians I admire who have passed away these last few months it does add another layer to the overall struggles we’re all going through. But I don’t feel the death of Uriah Heep’s Ken Hensley should pass without a mention here, as many Purple fans held a torch for Heep as well. I was lucky to see so many great bands in the Seventies, but for some reason (probably lack of cash!) Uriah Heep always escaped me. But I do remember vividly being sat on the carpet at home in our ‘best’ room with a borrowed copy of Uriah Heep Live blasting out on my Dad’s stereo. Packaging and concept wise it did of course come across as a bookend to Made In Japan (recorded only a few months earlier, and also with Fin Costello live pics), and contained Easy Livin’ – the studio version of which remains one of my favourite rock tracks of all time, written by Ken, as were many of their classic tracks.
And of course Ken was one of the many players of the time who proudly sat behind a Hammond organ on stage, something which is becoming a lot less common these days. Heep and Purple crossed several paths back then, indeed as Spice they used a rehearsal room in Hanwell and would listen in to embryonic rehearsals of In Rock material. They did appear on a few one-nighters together as well in 1970 (completely showing Deep Purple up at a gig in Sheffield University according to one music paper letter writer!). They also turned up bottom of a triple bill when Deep Purple began their mammoth touring stint of America in January 1972 with Buddy Miles (and would have appeared on the same bill this year until festivals were cancelled, though Ken had long since left).
Others have noted more connections, with Glenn playing on a couple of Ken’s solo tracks and Ian Paice appearing on the Free Spirit solo album before that. There were even a couple of job opportunities which mixed up the personnel of the two bands. David Coverdale was on a wish list to join Heep not long before he formed Whitesnake, while Ken joined Blackfoot in the 1980s but only after Jon Lord had declined the offer.
I had one great story from Pericle in Italy who was able to sit in on a recording session where Ken Hensley was guesting on Hammond. This and two rare Leslie speakers were not easy to source and Ken insisted on cranking everything up at full volume while he played. He managed to blow up both speakers during a long afternoon, leaving the studio organiser wondering where on earth he was going to be able to get the gear repaired before handing it back!

Christmas shopping

Well, I think we did suggest they would probably milk the Whoosh collectors more if they could and here we go, firstly with a special edition which “celebrates the chart success of the album”, aimed at anyone who hasn’t yet bought it. Titled the Hat-trick Edition it’s a CD set with all the usual bits on from before plus three patches and a fridge magnet! And a CD featuring the sound of a barrel being scraped? The snap here shows it in all its glory.

Meantime in Japan they have rounded up all the live extras off the limited editions which they are putting out on a new edition of Whoosh there, released on Christmas Day! This has a bonus disc of Live in Rio 2017 – but critically, this only contains the tracks from Rio already released on the 10″ vinyls from the Whoosh box set NOT the extras included on the HMV etc ‘exclusive’. My thanks to Tokyo Tim for the explainer. Needless to say we’d expect them to let us catch our breath and then push out a full Rio 2017 before very much longer.

The Thrill Is Gone

William Shatner- The Blues

For those who recall the very strange hit album (Seeking Major Tom from 2011), with William Shatner dressed as an astronaut on the cover (was he an influence on Whoosh?) the great man has gone and made another one, this time talking the blues. As before the carrot is a decent list of guest musicians to offset the vocals and again as before Ritchie Blackmore has joined them to play on B B King’s The Thrill Is Gone. So far it seems to be a US release only but is being touted as an import too, due October. Curiously he does look a bit like IG is some publicity pics as well! Thanks to Trekkie Tim Summers for the info.