![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/glover4.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/glover2.jpg)
An injection of fresh blood
Louder Sound has a feature on Stormbringer written by Geoff Barton. It actually may or may not be a reprint of something that previously appeared on one of the Classic Rock magazines — it sounds vaguely familiar, but we are not sure.
Inspired and fired up by the injection of fresh blood and the success of Burn, Deep Purple undertook a short tour of Europe in December 1973, kicking off in Copenhagen, playing a set that featured virtually the whole of the album, four months prior to its release.
It was risky enough to unveil a new band – David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes had replaced Ian Gillan and Roger Glover – but to play almost all new material seemed suicidal. Fortunately the gamble paid off and over the next year Purple achieved new heights of success. The work of the previous two line-ups was beginning to pay off.
“With Burn we cleaned up,” said Coverdale. “You could hear a collective sigh from the management, because they were concerned about the changes, which is understandable.”
Elated by Purple’s newfound success, the management put the band to work and the inevitable arduous tours followed.
Continue reading in Louder Sound.
Thanks to Gary Poronovich for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
wow Glenn scores a perfect ten for name dropping but loses a point for not calling them his “brothers”.
June 22nd, 2022 at 07:10Performing new material that early before an albums release was what many bands did back then. Obviously there was little or no risk of it being leaked so to speak. Sure there were a few bootleggers out there, but not the entire population of planet earth as is the case these days. Also the confidence or dare I say arrogance of not relating to the past so much, indeed a bold move but kudos to Blackmore & company. Although as history tells the story, it didn’t last long. Cheers.
June 22nd, 2022 at 07:12Steve Morse and Don Airey done the same for Purple after the departure of Ritchie and Jon Lord but no one seems to give them enough praise.
June 22nd, 2022 at 08:59Peace ✌️
j@2: Yeah, it’s rare that bands perform unreleased material these days. I was pleasantly suprised when I saw Rival Sons a week or so ago and they finished the set with a new song off their upcoming album. I don’t really see the peoblem with people then putting the song on YouTube or whatever because if you are a fan, you will hopefully get excited about the new song and get even more pumped to get the album once it’s out. If the song is crap though… 🙂
June 22nd, 2022 at 10:19All the Louder Sound articles are indeed warmed over revamps of material written for Classic Rock magazine here in the UK.
June 22nd, 2022 at 10:29One of the reasons I stopped by subscription several years ago.
Lots of footage in the vids to that article I for one haven’t seen before. How innocent Mk III back then still were! It’s really cute how a young Glenn good-naturedly teases David for keeping his hand under the chin when speaking during the interview, pushing it away several times (and how David – his self-importance already on the rise – thinks it’s only so-so funny and gets slightly irritated). Also noteworthy how Jon was even then still being regarded as the spokesman of the band. And they all do look quite pale – seems like they didn’t catch too much California sun on those tours!
I thought it was great the way the respective Purple line-ups would always open a new chapter, nearly discarding everything from the previous line-up’s set list. If truth be told though, Mk III did not care to be especially adept in performing Mk II material, they often sounded slipshod doing it, with SOTW (of all songs, you actually can’t get more Mk II than that) being the one exception. Neither Highway Star nor Space Trucking nor Lazy nor Fools were ever credibly performed. Lore has it that on one of the earliest Mk III gigs, DC sang a few snippets from Child in Time mid-song of another track, but I’ve never heard any audio confirmation of that.
June 22nd, 2022 at 11:15@ 6
“Lore has it that on one of the earliest Mk III gigs, DC sang a few snippets from Child in Time mid-song of another track, but I’ve never heard any audio confirmation of that.”
It might be possible to hear that on a boot somewhere. But my memory fails me here, again.
I never heard DP MK 2 do FOOLS but wth do I know
June 22nd, 2022 at 16:59My bad Rock Voorne, I meant The Mule, not Fools – for some reason I always get confused between the two. It’s all In Ro…, no … Fireball to me!!! All that psychedelic stuff they did on that album.
June 22nd, 2022 at 21:50@ 2- indeed one live song to tease the fans is always a good thing, even if it & other official releases may be posted online. Not too many though. @ 5- As soon as Classic Rock announced a ‘new’ format & name a few years ago I was out of that subscription like the proverbial rat up a drain pipe. Predictable what was coming & now tabloid journalism at it’s best or worst. I do frequent the site though as occasionally they have something worthwhile, not often though. I notice they are repeating the ‘Ian Gillan throwing his copies of Born Again out the window’ story, again. Sad for ‘Louder’ & that is also an appalling name to boot.
June 23rd, 2022 at 00:47@ 6 – I have yet to hear & hopefully never will hear Coverdale, Hughes & JLT attempting to sing Gillan MK2 material. Except initially hearing the two California Jam songs & I skip those always. I have an issue with other vocalists filling in for an established quality singer from a successful band. It just does NOT work at all. I can’t even bear to think what Coverdale or Hughes or JLT or anyone else for that matter would do to Highway Star. Cue to a sound of someone dragging their finger nails down a chalk board. Cheers.
I agree with Roy. This sort of information on the band has been floating around for the last 20 years, they just reprint it from time to time. Nothing new to me at all.
June 23rd, 2022 at 04:18Stormbringer still ranks as one of DP’s worst albums. I listened to “Can’t do it right” and still don’t how the song made it on the album. Ritchie was right in leaving and starting Rainbow.
June 23rd, 2022 at 04:40@ 6 Find the boot from Copenhagen 1975 (Brøndbyhallen), Space Truckin’ about 10:10 in. Here’s a snippet of CiT.
June 23rd, 2022 at 07:58I used to hate Love Don’t Mean A Thing and You Can’t Do It Right – these days I like them both and appreciate the funk ingredient. Stormbringer was a totally mixed bag, but exactly that appeals to me. It was the product of an established, even saturated band spreading their wings and saying: We can do anything. Slightly decadent, but then so was Zep’s Physical Graffiti and that is my favorite Zep album (IF there is such a thing, but I did witness Greta van Fleet live only recently and it was a great gig with the – very mixed – audience eating from their hands, my son had dragged me along, he’s the renegade Zeppelinist in the family).
And speaking of DC doing Child in Time, I stand corrected:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vww9G5u0kxg
There is nothing you cannot find on the internet these days, nothing.
Herr MacGregor, this is SFLEFFA (safe for listening even for fearful Aussies), a still very fresh Coverdale just gives one verse a bloozy Paul Rodgers treatment, but he does so with gusto, feeling and not emulating Gillan at all.
June 23rd, 2022 at 10:55@11 I like Stormbringer, not every song of course but still a very good LP. Hold On was always a favorite of mine, I’m sure it wasn’t Ritchie’s LOL.
June 23rd, 2022 at 11:04I still remember walking into the record store to buy Stormbringer when it was first released. The Clerk told me not to buy it because it sucks. I got a little mad and told him I would make up my own mind. I bought it, took it home and, sure enough, it sucked! Easily my least listened to Deep Purple Album. Thankfully, CTTB was a superb album IMHO!
June 23rd, 2022 at 11:39It is rare for a band to play a bunch of new stuff from an unreleased album but there is a circumstance when it isn’t rare. We’re talking about the 2nd album after a lineup change with new singers. Coverdale & Hughs had a choice to either sing their unreleased songs or sing more Evans songs and more Gillan songs. I saw Ozzy on the Blizzard of Oz tour. Touring on one album’s worth of material they did a few Black Sabbath songs and a few songs from the unreleased Diary of a Madman. I saw King Crimson when they reformed with a new lineup did their Discipline tour. They performed that whole album plus songs from the unreleased Beat, but not a single song from their early catalog.
June 23rd, 2022 at 20:07“Stormbringer “? first association is B5
June 25th, 2022 at 18:01Led Zeppelin needed duration for STH (7.55) … DP twice as short SOF (3.13)
Songs of generations
@ 15
In an interview with, I think……having scrambled eggs as a brain these days(….), Dutch magazine Oor around 1976 Blackmore suggested not to buy Made in Europe.
Nowadays every ” fan” oughta know often he and ither Purps talked nonsense in interviews.
Better to make up ones own mind,and who cares about peoples guilty pleasures?
June 27th, 2022 at 17:35Mangled in Europe is a historic artifact, but from the first time I heard it, I found it shattering in its coldness. No one plays or sings bad on the album, but it lacks any sense of communion, they are all going professionally through the motions. You’re not hearing a unit like you do on Made in Japan where the band is in a collective frenzy. That said, the last Mk II live recordings from 1973 were that disturbingly aloof as well if you listen to the bootlegs.
Weirdly, I find Last Concert in Japan with all the sonic limits of a handicapped Tommy Bolin the much warmer record – you can hear that the band, against all odds, attempted to give their best that night, perhaps knowing that the cameras were running and still believing they could make Mk IV work somehow. I have dozens of live recordings of Wild Dogs on Tommy Bolin Archives releases, but none has the emotional impact of that Budokan performance with DP. DC’s announcement: “And for the first time in Japan, Tommy Bolin is gonna sing for you …” gives me shivers to this day.
June 27th, 2022 at 22:09