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Where they are now: Michael Bradford
Producer of the Bananas and Rapture of the Deep Michael Bradford seemingly disappered from the Purple horizons, but not from the music scene in general. After his collaboration with the band, he produced and played bass with Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics fame) and then became musical director and bass player for Ringo Starr’s touring band. He also shared bass duties on Ringo’s 2010 solo album with Paul McCartney.
An interview recorded in 2016 for the NAMM Oral History Library
Fine example of his very dry sense of humour (which may explain how he got along so well with an essentially British hard rock band despite vastly different musical backgrounds).
In 2014 he released a solo album The Long Night. A track from the album — No One But Myself To Blame featuring singer Liz Primo:
Michael can be reached via his production company Chunky Style Music.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
He did an Amazing job with ROTD, I play it very often even after 12 years
April 25th, 2017 at 21:03Referred to by Mr Gillan as Mr Ritchie Moreblack on one of the Montreux DVDs if I remember correctly.
April 25th, 2017 at 21:27I think it was Bradford who originally referred to *himself* as Ritchie Moreblack when he was playing guitar with the band somewhere.
April 25th, 2017 at 22:20Saw him in Glasgow as part of Richie Samaboras band as bassist/musical dirextor when they supported Bad Company last year
April 25th, 2017 at 23:49Was one of those i know that guy moments
Brought a lot good music into Purple’s world.
April 26th, 2017 at 00:07I wish someone can explain to me why such a great album with incredible amount of great material in terms of music and lyrics was produced and mixed so badly. I am referring to bananas the album course. It’s had great 5 live songs. House of pain, haunted, Silver Tongue, I got your number and Bananas. I have seen all the above songs played live during their 2003 2004 tours. Who do u blame. The producer who was rushed or the band for not spotting the bad production.
April 26th, 2017 at 10:51And contact lost which is one of the back bone songs of their live shows for at least 10 years.
April 26th, 2017 at 10:55Well, he should definitely be credited for saving the band from creative oblivion in 2003.
April 26th, 2017 at 12:04those albums fell short in terms of production ..I may be wrong but not the best producer for the band.ROFTD especially is awful in the mixing,in terms of sound and all.But this is only my opinion of course.
April 26th, 2017 at 16:04I thought it was cool he did a show or two with them filling in for Roger.
April 26th, 2017 at 22:01Was it a german tv promo or something like that wasn,t it?
al@9
April 27th, 2017 at 13:07I agree with you. I blame the producer and the band for letting each other down. Roger should have stepped in to save the production and the mixing. It will be interesting to now how much the band paid Bradford for his services. There a lovely soft track on Bananas called ‘Never Agian’ I think the guys were referring to hiring the same producer!!!!
He did a good job on Bananas, despite lacking a bit in the mixing department. Rapture, on the other hand, sounds terrible in regards to that, which hurts the album that much more since it does not have particularly good songs (in my opinion, of course).
But good to see he’s doing fine.
April 28th, 2017 at 00:48I dont understand.
The production of Bananas was good in my ears.
It had several great tracks and one they did not even play live : Sun goes down.
The cover was terrible and a very silly and stupid thing to do.
It does not attract you, it appals you.
ROTD although having some tracks with great potential sounded very lame .
Like many of us said before, good and or promising tracks should be evolved further on stage.
Something they never really did with the Morse line ups..
The old classic line ups did have that extra bit of lifting a tame sounding studio recording to a much higher level of exitement due to a fat sound and some excellent improvisation.
I m not the person who wants to hear Morse destroying the ffect of otherwise great live renditions of MK 2 material.
He gave us a great fat sound during the riffs Ritchie wrote but the solo’s are annoying.
So hearing him do that even longer, extending it, doies make me cringe,
But I still feel that they should done such an approach giving us a mainly Morse material dominated setlist.
At least in between the day job they employed playing mostlky MK 2 material.
Cant they really not afford such fantasies?
April 28th, 2017 at 11:56Uriah Heep is one of those bands that did that.
No problemmo there.
Are DP ticketbuyers less flexible, only happy when SOTS is delivered and depressed if not?
For all its flawed production, Bananas still sounds fresh today, I only listened to it again recently. Good songwriting, inspired performances. Bradford must have been inspiring back then. ROTD, on the othe rhand, sounds dreary to me in places.
That said, the Bradford productions and the Ezrin ones are lightyears apart in terms of quality. Ezrin has worked the sonic miracle of making the band sound both closer in detail, more refined AND warmer, no mean feat. Compared to his work, some of the Bradford stuff sounds like good demos. Without wishing to belittle Martin Birch’s or Roger Glover’s work, I also wonder what Ezrin could have done with, say, Burn or The House of Blue Light if they had let him.
April 28th, 2017 at 17:35Bradford took DP out of their comfort zone. “Bananas” was great, and “Rapture…” without a doubt one of the tastiest albums they ever did. There was inspiration, energy and daring moments. “Rapture…” is in my top 5, beautiful album it is.
May 21st, 2017 at 19:38On the contrary, Ezrin put back the band in their comfort zone, like two old farts (no disrespect) comforting each other about their past. Ezrin tries hard to be Ezrin (“Vincent Price” is a pathetic parody of his own work). Too hard…
It would have been great to have Ezrin producing DP in the 70’s or even 80’s. But now it’s a bit too late, and even if “Infinite” is a truly great album (10x much better than “Now What”), I still miss someone like Michael Bradford to kick their ass and chalenge them.
Bananas and ROTD are very good albums. I personally like ROTD a lot. The problem with ROTD is the mixing of the drums. What Bradford did well was bring up the instruments in the mix in general. Ezrin is ruining the sound of DP. He did a good job with What Now and Infinite but his muted sound of Whoosh and dropping Morse in the mix (which Morse butted heads with him) is very unfortunate because there are very good songs on the album. He has turned DP into a 3-4 minute song band on =1 which is not DP. Bradford had a more relaxed approach to the songs and encouraged longer instrumental pasages
July 24th, 2024 at 15:59To me, Bradford‘s production of DP sounded a little harsh/sharp to the point of abrasive – but some people like that “rough mix charm” I guess. But he is part of their history and most of the songs on Bananas and some of them on ROTD were good. I personally prefer more sophisticated productions, it’s a matter of taste.
July 24th, 2024 at 20:09