Tour 2024

We have finally got all the tour dates for the year logged on the page below, thanks to Lutz Reinert. Let us know of any changes or additions. NEW • North American and Canada dates now confirmed, with Yes as support. Thanks to Vince Chong ($180 poorer!)

Deep Purple & Co. Dates 2024

Equals sign

Clear some more space on your shelf (you must have a box set that promised way more than it delivered somewhere that can move?). The new studio album from Deep Purple lands July 14th. See pack shot above for the wealthier out there (it’s 100euros plus) Titled Equals One (or =1), the regular vinyl / CD versions are 13 trackers, while the three 10″ vinyl extras have what look to be live versions of an extra 13 tracks from recent tours (which you assume will be reissued as a stand alone anon, this is Edel Records after all). There is also a clear vinyl 2LP but from a Germany mail order outlet only, who I think we have mentioned here before as an ethical alternative to you know who – https://www.jpc.de/

1. Show Me
2. A Bit On The Side
3. Sharp Shooter
4. Portable door
5. Old Fangled Thing
6. If I Were You
7. Pictures Of You
8. I’m Saying Nothin’
9. Lazy Sod
10. Now You’re Talkin’
11. No money to burn
12. I’ll Catch You
13. Bleeding Obvious

Thanks to Martin, Pericle and others for the info.

As chosen by…

DP grab a large chunk of Classic Rock issue 326 on the newsagent shelves now  (“ah, you like the loud music yes?” laughed the lady at the shop where I got my copy before breaking out into some air guitar!).  And rather than yet another Machine Head in depth special, they’ve tackled it a different way, approaching rock musicians from across the spectrum (and over 12 pages) to offer us their favourite DP track and why, interspersed with quotes from the three remaining Mk 2 members – and Glenn Hughes.  It does make for an interesting read for once, and great to see Al Jourgensen refusing to single out any one number from Machine Head and just cite the whole album!

There is an intro feature (“a triumph snatched from the flames of disaster”) and also a cursory review of the most recent box set, which is much kinder than most of the comments people have been sending DTB towers (as if it’s my fault!).  No new images whatsoever beyond the mug shots. All in all though, it’s a good start to the summer promotional campaign which is leading up to the new studio album now due in July.

Deep Purple equals

And here’s the flyer to go with the dates which also confirms the venues.

The design reminds me of my last visit to the cardio department!

Once more, with feeling

The Purple’s sashay around the UK in November promoting their new one. Dates are

Birmingham Nov 4th; London 5th; Leeds 7th; Manchester 9th; Glasgow 10th

Tickets on sale this Friday. Not dared to look up the prices. Assume usual venues and likely the new stadia at Manchester. If you cannot wait that long, they’re doing some French shows in June (or Australia in April if you have deeper pockets). Thanks to Tim Summers who has his eye on things.

All our yesterdays

50 years ago! Sounds printed their 1974 Albums of The Year chart (compiled from chart positions I think) in very early 1975, and as you can see from this cutting, Deep Purple sneaked into the top 50 at Number 46 with Burn. Now I rather like seeing stuff like this as it does put the band’s music into context, even though a peek at the rest of the chart doesn’t make for great reading. Still, at least they came out ahead of Peters And Lee! In the same magazine I also spotted this display advert.

These days if you want to learn music you nip on to YouTube and there are invariably any number of tutorials to follow. Back in the Seventies people did it old school with sheet music! Often transcribed by people at the music publishers from the record rather than be provided by the musicians, they weren’t always 100% correct (and the lyrics were sometimes suspect), but were often a good starting point. Some may recall Ritchie being given sheet music to sign, and him going through correcting them with a pen!
This display advert shows (alongside the typesetting skills of the Sounds ad department) the popular music books of 1974 (the advert again actually appeared in very early 1975), with Deep Purple’s Burn available for the princely sum of £2.75. So they weren’t cheap, mainly as royalties had to be paid on sales in the same way as records. And 10p extra for postage if you couldn’t get to the shop in London. Still at least no effing Bay City Rollers.

Spooling

Nice items for collectors of vintage formats, snapped for us by format junkie Pericle Formenti; original UK release quarter inch reel to reels of The Book Of Taliesyn and Concerto For Group and Orchestra.  We at DTB towers enjoy the archaic formats and have a few American reels, but have never seen these early UK ones ourselves, they are impossibly rare.  It’s a format which enjoyed some popularity here during the mid-1960s when a lot of album were released on reel to reel (cartridge didn’t really take off in Britain), but once the cassette came along with much cheaper hardware (and cheaper tapes) that rather saw it off.  So anything issued as late as 1969 was obviously not going to sell many copies.  The EMI issues here on Harvest came in a rigid plastic case similar to that of the cassette (earlier UK reels were issued in lidded boxes), but appears only to have reproduced the front and back album art on the inlay.  

Any use today? Well the format will still play in any appropriate tape deck and generally is regarded as good sound but would take advice.  Plus here you could experience Concerto in true mono of all things.  Don’t tell Universal, they’ll have that out as a box set before you can say 52nd anniversary.

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!

Janine Morse

Steve Morse’s wife Janine has passed away, after battling cancer for some time. 

Fans will recall that Steve, the band’s longest serving guitarist, stepped back from Deep Purple in April 2022, originally with the intention of returning to the then ongoing tour. Three months later he left the band permanently, in order to be with Janine full time as her cancer was becoming more aggressive. At the time of his departure from the band in July 2022, he was quoted on loudersound.com:  “Last autumn, I suddenly left the Purple writing session in Germany because my wife was having a real medical crisis. Almost a year later, we are learning to accept stage four aggressive cancer and chemo treatment for the rest of her life.”

Sadly, she lost that battle on 4 February. Our condolences go out to Steve and family.

No 81 to the Budokan

I struggled to find a snap of Udo with DP for our story but DTB readers have better recall and this shot appeared on the IGB Live album inner gatefold. That’s Mr Udo stood next to Colin Towns in this nice souvenir snap. Thanks to Tim Summers and Pericle Formenti for reminding me.