Whitesnake’s big package (tour)

David Coverdale and whoever is in Whitesnake right now (I’m a bit out of touch) are coming over on a stadium visit to Britain May / June 2020.  They will be in the company of fellow rock and roll titans (© Manchester Evenings News!) Foreigner and (openers) Europe to form a triple bill likely to strike a spot with fans of 1980s hits and MTV.  There are six dates in all. They then fly over to Australia for a tour there with The Scorpions, including a show in New Zealand, then a date in Singapore on the way across to Japan for half a dozen headlining shows.

Tickets are fully on sale this Friday but there are pre-sale offers on meet and greet packages if you look online (they START at £129.00!). Details : London’s O2 Arena (May 31), Cardiff’s Motorpoint Arena (June 1), Arena Birmingham (June 3), Glasgow SSE Hydro (June 4) and Newcastle Utilita Arena (June 6), Manchester Arena on June 8.

The question we ask ourselves (apart from where I would hide for the other two acts!) is will they be a patch on the shows in 1979 and 1980 and the answer sadly is not, so I’ll put the money towards a trip to London to see the Bridget Riley exhibition instead.

Glenn tour spoiler

Don’t read if you don’t want to know!  Thanks to people who have nodded me over the Glenn Hughes tour list (we’ve not been able to make this tour ourselves). Quite a good selection, although I might have expected one or two more Come Taste songs. As a tour it is what it is, I kind of prefer his regular solo shows when we get more of a mix and the Purple songs come as part of that, but maybe this makes more sense commercially. 1400 attended the show in Bristol according to our man on the gate with the clicker.

Stormbringer / Might Just Take Your Life / Sail Away / Gettin’ Tighter / You Keep on Moving / You Fool No One / High Ball Shooter (someone tells me this was just interpolated!) / You Fool No One (reprise) / Mistreated / Smoke on the Water / Georgia on My Mind. Encore: Highway Star / Burn

By my ready reckoner that’s five from Burn, two (or one and a few bars) from Stormbringer, two from Come Taste and two from Machine Head!

Pic of the decorated Orange amps and speakers by Jeff Breis. Glenn has just announced a second batch of shows for May next year, so they must have gone well:

Holmfirth Picturedrome – May 14th
Edinburgh Queens Hall – 15th
Birmingham O2 Institute – 17th
Norwich UEA – 18th
St Albans Arena – 20th
Salisbury City Hall – 21st
Liverpool O2 Academy – 23rd
Nottingham Rock City – 24th

Brisk

Graham Bonnet is touring the UK in February 2016.  To save my fingers, I’ll attach the official flyer.  It’s wrap-up warm time, especially if you opt for the Skegness homecoming show.  I’ve been there in the winter and it’s biting!  I missed his last UK tour as I was stuck in frozen Cheshire on the afternoon of the Sheffield gig.
Graham is also doing eight shows in Australia in April which might be warmer, I might as well add that flyer as well. This is with his new band, and a studio album is in the works for Frontier Records, which will have a bonus disc of reworked oldies apparently.

  
His biography is nearly wrapped up and will be out early 2016.  There may now be a limited edition in a hardback cover designed by Graham himself.  You can read more about this and see some spreads at the publisher’s site.

3 is a magic number

The extent (sic) of Ritchie’s 2016 rock tour is now confirmed and comprises the two German dates already posted here and one UK date.  Ritchie is saying that this will be it for 2016, although he has not ruled out more dates in 2017.
The good news is that having passed on Download, the promoters are now saying the UK show will be indoors at the Birmingham NEC Arena on June 25th.  Tickets go on sale on the morning of November 6th.  The band line up will be announced a couple of days before, but from the names being passed around on the web, comprise nobody we’ve ever heard of anyway!  The NEC site link for the show is not yet live.
The German promoters have put up a Faceache page with some basic info and a bio.
Thanks to everyone for helping us with the news.  Names withheld to protect the innocent!

http://www.monsters-of-rock-germany.de/english/

NEC Arena Horse of The Year Show

Power trio is back

Glenn Hughes has sprung a decent looking live tour on the UK, back to a power-trio as well with Doug Aldrich and Pontus Engborg.  Just writing that and I can feel the bass slamming into me.
Glenn is promising to cover all of his career paths (which could mean a long night these days), indeed the man himself suggests, this is going to be epic. Sorry, E P I C.
Were fancying the Holmfirth gig so we can get an early tea at the Wrinkled Stocking cafe first, from the money we saved not bothering to go to the Slash support shows late last year.  Thanks to Tom, Tim and Classic Rock Revisited dot com for the news.

OCTOBER
Mon 19 Norwich – Waterfront
Tue 20 Newcastle- Tyne Theatre
Thu 22 Belfast – Limelight
Fri 23 Glasgow – The Garage
Sun 25 Holmfirth – Picturedrome
Mon 26 Bilston – Robin 2
Wed 28 York – Fibbers
Thu 29 Manchester – Club Academy

NOVEMBER
Sun 01 London – Electric Ballroom

1974 in focus

These days the anniversaries seem to be coming thick and fast; I just had a journalist enquiring about photographs I took at the Butterfly Ball show as he was planning a 40th anniversary feature on the album…  could it really be that long ago?

But interesting as that album was, perhaps for many the event we should be looking back on was the UK debut 40 years ago of Deep Purple Mk 3, on a massive and what proved to be very exciting UK tour.  I was reminded of this thanks to this great photograph taken from up in the gods looking down on the group rocking out in front of a clearly appreciative crowd.  It was taken by photographer Barry Plummer and I’ve been helping him sort through his images for a series of books.  He worked for The Melody Maker and as such was often sent out to cover the band, the first time being in 1971, photographing both live shows and the musicians off-stage during interviews.  The paper would use one or two photos, and Barry just filed the rest of his negatives away.  Anyhow, one of the books is devoted just to Deep Purple and we’ll have more on the book (which is due in early 2015) soon but I got permission from the publishers to reproduce this shot.  For anyone who caught this tour (I was lucky enough to see two shows) it will really bring the gigs into focus.  It’s also fascinating just to look at the little bits of detail – the roll of gaffer tape on one of the amps, the support band’s drum kit shoved behind the back-line, Jon’s effects unit taped to the top of his Hammond, Ritchie’s Revox, Ron Quinton holding on to the Marshall stack, the left-handed Strat, and so on. I’m back there blissed out on the blues solo once more!

The book is one of a series from Barry’s archives coming out on ST33 books (the others feature more big names from the era), you can read a bit more on their site.  We’ll be getting more details soon and discounts for Darker Than Blue readers are on the cards.

Deep Purple UK Tour 2015

December 3rd 2015. O2 Arena, London.  Tickets now on sale. £59.15 inc booking fees.

We also now have the October / November / December 2015 European tour list on the site at the 2015 gig list page.  Thanks to Lutz Reinert for the extra information (and detective work!).

Special guests

Glenn Hughes‘ new band CALIFORNIA BREED will be doing a handful of shows in the UK later this year, but supporting Slash! I’m struggling to think of Glenn supporting anyone in the UK on a tour since he left Deep Purple, so this marks a change of plan – and the new band will undoubtedly reach a much larger audience doing this than they otherwise would, as these are all large arena shows. Thanks to Mark Maddock for the news.

Nov 28 – Manchester Arena, Nov 29 – Leeds Arena, Dec 01 – Birmingham Arena, Dec 02 – Wembley Arena – London, Dec 04 – Glasgow Arena

The band will be promoting their debut CD issued last month, which is still available in the Ltd Ed digipak at DTB Online store.

More reviews

I’ve added another wedge of UK tour reviews over the weekend, and Bill Bass has added a gallery of pics as well.  Classic Rock magazine have weighed in with some great photographs and a short review at their website, which you can see at http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/features/review-deep-purple-the-roundhouse-london-171013/

UK Tour Reviews

We’ve got a UK tour page started, post your reviews in the comments section there or email direct.  The set list is on a separate page so you won’t have the surprises spoilt. Photo : the tour backdrop (Stephen Clare)