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Review

Edinburgh Playhouse, 11th March 1991

Despite any misgivings about the line-up, there was never any doubt that I would go and see the band live given the chance. The day the tickets went on sale, I got up about 6.00 am and went down to queue. I was only slightly surprised to find that at least two people had spent all night there, and that there were already several others in front of me. The result was I only got to be in the second row. That said, the Playhouse is a 'proper' theatre, so the front row was right up against the stage. Row 2 meant I was still able to shake Ritchie by the hand!

Anyway... 

The lights went down and the intro tape started, accompanying the laser animation based on the album's cover art, and it was straight into Burn. The song was always my favourite rock number from Mk III, helped in part by Jon's solo. Musically, the song was great - full of power. Pity the same couldn't be said about the singer. Interviews in Kerrang! and Metal Hammer had suggested this wonderful blues/rock voice JLT would be using rather than his old Rainbow voice. Bollocks.

Joe was certainly able to hit the right notes, but he didn't seem to be getting any real power behind them. The result was more a strained whine than what David or Glenn produced.

The set continued pretty much along the lines of the one I mentioned in the background section. A friend of mine still likes to point out how I had a death grip on the back of the chair in front of me when Joe started to sing Child In Time. Actually, the verse wasn't that bad - but the screams... err, whines... err, moans... let's just say I still cringe just by thinking about it.

However, once they started on some of the S&M material, Joe sounded a lot more comfortable, and to be fair to him, he does have a very good live voice. 

The other four were having a ball as well, with quite a lot of between song messing around - something else that made Joe stick out a bit. Despite several attempts, the audience didn't really seem to warm to him. Telling them to "Fuck off" at one point probably didn't help matters, either.

The downside of this was that Blackmore seemed to loose interest during the show. He'd done some blistering soloing early on in the show, and a great bit of heavy riffing at the start of Difficult to Cure. I remember that Jon's solo was also very good. 

The relaxed atmosphere early on did give rise to a few improvisations from the band, and we were treated to Yesterday, Stand By Me and Hey Joe. 

By Lazy, Blackmore seemed to have had enough. I don't know if it was the crowd's reaction to Joe or not, but after Lazy, he missed out Highway Star and went straight into Smoke... or rather not straight into it. With a few oohs and aahs from  Joe, they started the ballad version. The usual introduction came after the first verse, after which the mic packed in and the crowd sang the second verse themselves. Then, after a quick drum solo and a burst of Woman from Tokyo (where Ritchie and Roger had swapped guitars), it was over. No proper encore, just the band running off stage.

Overall, it was musically a very good concert. Not the best DP show I've been to, but it would be unfair to call it the worst. Joe did his best, but despite what he said in the press, his voice was just not up to the back catalogue, whilst the new material that suited him, did not necessarily suit the style of the rest of the band. If a little more care or adventure had been used in selecting the older songs for him to perform, things could have been so much better.