Reported by Rasmus Heide, the mad Danish truck driver.
...Another great show. A little rusty in places ("we've had a week or two off" said Gillan. More like six or seven, wasn't it?). Pictures of Home was introduced as being about the contents of Roger's pocket and Bloodsucker was introduced in French!... Ian Paice started off the beat for Woman From Tokyo, but was stopped by Gillan. "No, no, no", he said, then they had a little conference after which Paice started it off once more. I guess someone had forgotten which songs they'd decided to skip! The sound was pretty good out front, although Gillan's voice seemed to have been mixed down a little. I can't see why, cos he certainly was singing very well with good screams every now and then. During Highway Star he made sure everyone got the message as the last verse after the guitar solo consisted only of one line "nobody gonna take my car, I'm gonna break the speed of sound". Mind you, he repeated this 4 times and made it fit the original melody line all the way through! Of course this caused some smiles from the stage, not least from the man himself! Speed King was a little longer than usual, as Steve stopped his solo to let Paicey have a go,though I felt it should have amounted to a little bit more. Sad really, that he doesn't do proper solos anymore. I'd much prefer one of his solos to the kind of incoherent dallying about Jon Lord calls a solo! In fact, this show was another in the line of great Ian Paice shows, he's all over the place and solidly behind the band. Amazing! When the show was over after one hour and fifty minutes-they'd still run twenty over their alotted time and I was stood there wishing they'd do another 2 hours-please!! I could watch these guys play all night, they just seem to have this special something about them when they play-wow! Not quite sure what he meant by this, but just before starting his harmonica intro to Purpendicular Waltz Gillan said "I just swallowed me head!". Great title for a bootleg...
Andy Scott's Sweet were playing at the same festival, on another stage at the same time as Purple. After the show Andy Scott came to Purple's hotel for a chat, and it was strange to watch Gillan, Roger and him seated around a small table, engaged in discussion about old times (maybe) and try to imagine the same three people in and around the old Hanwell Community Centre where they had rehearsal rooms next to each other in 1969.... To have been a fly on the wall...Well!
Later with some fans, Roger was talking about the 25th anniversary edition of Fireball for which he's been remixing Freedom. There's gonna be a lot of other material on there as well, along with a track never heard before. He said it was complete with vocals and everything and he'd just been playing it to Gillan to hear what he thought of it. It had no title, but the tape box said Slow Train or Slow Motion. He seemed quite pleased about having found this little gem after so many years. Strange that Simon Robinson didn't find it when he went over the same tapes when he went over the same tapes for the Blackmore Profile album. Asked about the Japanese CD with outtakes and demos from the sessions for S&M and TBRO Roger said he'd heard of this CD, but hadn't seen it. He would be interested ro know from where they'd gotten the material, though.
Speed King : "This is an Italian ballad. There's nothing as bad as an Italian ballad. Apart from this!" - Ian Gillan in Esbjerg.
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