![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse5.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride6.jpg)
At the controls of a spacecraft
On this slow(ish) news day, we will leave you with a couple of items that the mailman delivered to our trainspotting department.
Sir Elton Hercules John writes about the keyboard geniuses who blew his mind for The Guardian. Jon Lord gets a mention:
And as the decade progressed, keyboard players progressed too, away from their soul-jazz roots. We think of heavy rock as a guitarist’s art, but in Deep Purple, Jon Lord was experimenting with distortion to give the organ a sound as hard-driving as the guitars. So did Rod Argent when the Zombies broke up and he started Argent. Gary Brooker left the Paramounts, abandoned his electric piano, formed Procol Harum and made A Whiter Shade of Pale, a record that sounded like nothing anyone had heard before. In the Small Faces, Ian McLagan changed and adapted a rhythm and blues style of playing until it perfectly fitted the psychedelic era: it’s him that’s really driving Itchycoo Park or the title track of Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. Keith Emerson was bringing his training as a classical musician to bear on the sound of the Nice: it was the start of progressive rock. And Rick Wakeman seemed to come out of nowhere: he’d only just left the Royal College of Music when he played that amazing Mellotron part on David Bowie’s Space Oddity.
Meanwhile, in Budapest… A set of Russian nesting dolls vaguely resembling members of Mk2 was spotted in the wild:
Thanks to Uwe Hornung for reading The Guardian, and to sterling gunn and his sharp-eyed better half for the pic.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
😆 Of course I read The Guardian … and a conservative German daily (Frankfurter Allgemeine), I like to be well-balanced!
Sir Elton is underrated as a pianist – I’ve witnessed a solo gig of his (the inimitable Ray Cooper helped out on percussion on some songs), those stubby little fingers of his really hit the keys hard, it’s a physical experience. I know that his oeuvre is not without howlers, but for every saccharin-sweet Nikita there is more than a couple of absolute gems in his back catalog.
Jon would have likely returned Reg’s compliment, during a promo interview for the PAL album he was asked by a German music journalist how he would envisage their music progressing in the future and Jon mused: “Something halfway between Little Feat and Elton John sounds about right.”
Those matryoshka dolls of Mk II are certainly not any worse than the Burn candles! Which, last I heard, are supposed to now come out after all, with only a few irrelevant decades’ delay, would you believe?
https://darkerthanblue.wordpress.com/another-service-from-darker-than-blue-magazine/candles-in-the-wind/
From Elton John to Candles in the Wind via Hungary – Aaanyaaa … – wasn’t too much of a distance, dontcha think?
October 20th, 2024 at 06:40I actually saw Elton’s hero, the late Zoot Money, a few years ago with an unknown Welsh bassist …
https://youtu.be/asXMHCN7m9A
He came from some lame nondescript British metal band “Cheap Turtle” or something and they even did one of their god-awful songs …
https://youtu.be/lzNg5Pf3_7A
Or two …
https://youtu.be/O9zmrmKTx5c
Zoot was a hoot (rhymes!) live:
https://youtu.be/j9HgVso09LI
And of course they also played his 60s hit ‘Big Time Operator’ which he also sang:
https://youtu.be/z4eCk_eiz8g (song starts at o1:50)
https://youtu.be/SxgVlcKgkCU
It was a very enjoyable evening even though I had to drive out to the boondocks to see them in some forlorn rock club in the middle of nowhere and far away from any sensible Autobahn connection.
Zoot only left us last month, rest in keys!
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/sep/13/zoot-money-obituary
October 20th, 2024 at 07:15A good article indeed & thanks for posting it. Ironically I only looked up Sir Reggie last week in regards to his early foray into playing anything else but the piano. I knew of the Rick Wakeman appearance after the first couple of albums. Jon Lord & Keith Emerson would always get a mention, as well as many others. Then those thoughts prompted me to travel down the ‘you have to have keyboards’ in a rock band road, it is really that essential. While I enjoy a very good three piece rock/blues band at times (Hendrix, Cream & Robin Trower), after a while that ‘symphonic’ & ‘honky tonk’ craving does kick in. So pivotal with so many artists painting that broader picture with so many different colours. Cheers.
October 20th, 2024 at 09:50How could I forget to mention the MKII image with Blackmore larger than life & leading the way. Oh dear, some things will never change eh? What is it with Gillan trying to look so formally dressed? A paradox or what! Sorry for mentioning ‘fashion’. Hang on to your hats everybody, here we go again. Cheers.
October 20th, 2024 at 09:57Yo,
I love the Russian dolls, but they need to be completely reversed , eg, IP down to RB… ( Some may say lose RB & place Steve in there somewhere )…
It makes one wonder how many dolls you would actually need to cover all the line-ups, including Satch of course ?…
Adonai vasu !
October 20th, 2024 at 11:40Well obviously, they couldn’t have made Little Ian any larger or that would have been confusing. 😆
October 20th, 2024 at 22:16I am offended in so many ways 🫣
October 20th, 2024 at 23:011) Deep Purple as babushkas🫠
2) RB as the biggest of the dolls (oh ok, that’s kind of fun 😄)
Nice observation about Jon Sir Elton. Elton is a great piano player. His album and one of the favorites in my collection “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, the prog.song Funeral For A Friend / Love Lies Bleeding … they like that song Metallica and Dream Theater but they are not as good Sir Elton and his band… Davey Johnstone on guitar Dee Murray bass guitar,
October 21st, 2024 at 02:47Nigel Olsson drums WOW
I wonder why Brian Auger and Mike Ratledge are rarely mentioned. They are as good as anyone else mentioned here. When Mike plugged his organ into the fuzz box that was the beginning of the 70s heavy sound. Vince Crane was not in the same league but he was very good, too.
October 21st, 2024 at 08:13Dee Murray was friggin’ brilliant as a bassist. Lightning-fast melodic runs, not dissimilar to what John Deacon did with Queen.
October 21st, 2024 at 11:20I’m more concerned with accuracy than with size, an aspect that seems so troublesome to Karin thereby reinforcing worst male fears: Shouldn’t the matryoshka doll depicting “Big” Ian be stark naked or at least wear a woman’s dress? I guess these are prototypes and the artist hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.
October 21st, 2024 at 11:30LOL ! Hand puppets !
October 21st, 2024 at 12:01I’m with you, Herr MacGregor (as I usually am, your inexplicable penchant for juvenile escapist lyrical hogwash aside of course 😘), once you’ve played with a real keyboarder in a band and not just some guy pressing a few synth layer chords, you never wanna go back. I was for instance distraught when Rory Gallagher fired his keyboarder Lou Martin (many years later to return) to return to the trio format, it took so much color out of the music (all because Rory had seen the Sex Pistols in San Francisco and wanted to go raw again) and I think both Be-Bop Deluxe and Grand Funk Railroad (now that’s a combination!) benefited hugely when they augmented their original line-ups with real keyboarders. As did Sweet btw.
Whenever I seek a new band to play with, I look for ones with a good keyboarder (which are excruciatingly rare on an amateur level), they really spoil you, those ivory-tinklers.
October 21st, 2024 at 13:56A more complete and funny set of Russian dolls would be one set for each slot in the band.
October 21st, 2024 at 14:09Only Ian Paice would be a “single doll”, or one inside of the other to each line-up 😀
Is my counting right?
vocal 5
guitar 4 (not counting Joe)
keys 2
bass 3
drums 1
Jon mentioned that once in an interview that playing the organ is nothing like playing the piano and that he consciously had to unlearn his piano education when he started out on organ, finding the transition very difficult at first. He even said: “If you play organ like a piano, it sounds horrible.”
Sir Elton sticks to what he does best, no shame in that at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C75w8AS572s
October 21st, 2024 at 16:08@ 2
Attended their circus too, Uwe and a very nice evening was had by all. The family came along. May I add it was the only chance I ever got to listen to a song of Roger’s much loved (at Max towers at least) Snapshot album played on stage. It was his turn to shine …
SOTW … well…. sigh … I can really hear what Albie Donnelly had to say about this in his dressing room. Appart from that it was a very nice evening. And all kinds of stuff my boys and me got signed – and all kinds of jokes were made on stage and afterwards. “Good taste!” was what Zoot Money wrote across my copy of his last cd. Fun fact: Always eager to find out what local media has to say when our boys had hit the city I read in the papers that it had been a rather nice concert instead of a lengthy drum solo … may god forbid. I mean a drum solo … in a show billed Pete York’s Rock & Blues Circus. Now who could have seen that coming?
October 21st, 2024 at 16:14Paulo, I would expect some artistic attention to detail on the SM matryoshka though re his well-known sartorial preferences …
https://townsquare.media/site/366/files/2022/07/attachment-deep_purple_ian_gillan_steve_morse_2018.jpg?w=980&q=75
Small things like that really do count for me.
This set here still needs some development, but you can see the effort behind it …
https://www.flickr.com/photos/61995467@N02/6911315142
“LEGO, you just stay in bed, you don’t want no money, you don’t want no bread …”
October 21st, 2024 at 16:28@11
October 21st, 2024 at 17:15I’m ok with their clothing as it is presented at the dolls 🫣
I was fine with them doing SOTW, Max, it’s a rock classic after all. WABMC I actually liked, before playing it Miller Anderson quipped: “I will now ridicule myself by doing the job of Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan in one person!” – Roger cracked up on stage when he heard that.
I like Pete York, that Supper Drumming TV Series in the 80ies was nice,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_-ZwN1FyPI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJfWOxP_eVY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTfbt0_Xzso (Jon Lord fans might want to fast forward to 11:30 and 22:16!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G664WZIUpfc (more Jon …),
he of course plays with Helge Schneider and his love for Germany is heartfelt, inexplicable as that may be, he’s been living here for decades.
October 21st, 2024 at 18:11Ha ha! Jon(?) looks like Leslie Mandoki in that Lego set!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Leslie_Mandoki_Berlinale_2008.jpg
October 21st, 2024 at 18:13@17 Uwe thanks for the Purple Lego LOL I didn’t know about it.
October 21st, 2024 at 18:39I think there is a market for those Russian dolls. I would buy it.
There is definitely a market out there for DP memorabilia and kitsch in poor taste, Paulo! We should all aspire to be like Steve and feel no shame at all.
October 21st, 2024 at 20:44@ 13 -I hear you regarding Rory Gallagher doing away with the keyboards. But I can also understand why he did it for a short stint. The two albums I rate as some of his best, Top Priority & Photo Finish are grand. However live in concert it was a drop off in sound that was very noticeable. You are lucky having a chance to play with some decent keyboard players, something I have never had the pleasure of doing. A few ‘ivory’ tinklers messing about on the DX9 keyboard back in the day wasn’t an ideal situation, even in a jam session. Woe is me. Cheers.
October 21st, 2024 at 21:09#14 Paulo Glover
I think there are 4 lead singers…who did you count as the fifth? 🙂
October 21st, 2024 at 22:37Fla76, bare your bottoms, take the strokes I will apply and then write a hundred times: “Never again will I forget that His Shrieking Majesty Glenn H was a lead singer for DP too.“ Sit in the corner while doing so.
Paulo: You are a good kid and I can see you going far. It must be those Glover genes.
October 22nd, 2024 at 15:27#25 Uwe
Ahahahah In my head I have never been able to consider Glenn in MK III as a pure lead singer, and I never will!
October 22nd, 2024 at 17:26I only give this status to Mr. Ready an’ Willing
Glenn sang on every track of Burn featuring vocals (= all except A 200) half the verses, bridges and chorus parts except for Burn, where he only sang the bridge and the chorus, and Mistreated, where he only joined the coda. His voice is all over that album.
On Stormbringer he sang Holy Man by himself and co-lead on the verses, bridges and chorus parts of Love Don’t Mean A Thing, Hold On, You Can’t Do It Right, Highball Shooter and Gypsy plus the bridges and chorus parts of Stormbringer (the song) and Lady Double Dealer. Only Soldier of Fortune did not feature him.
It was only on Come Taste The Band where he took a real backseat, he only sang co-lead on the verses, bridges and chorus of You Keep On Moving as well as Getting Tighter and This Time Around all by himself. Other than that you only hear him on a couple of chorus parts. He was initially also slotted to sing Dealer, but during his forced absence detoxing in the UK, DC recorded a new vocal take for that song.
October 22nd, 2024 at 23:50I always saw MIII with two singers. Yes, DC was *the* lead singer,
October 23rd, 2024 at 18:32but Glenn Hughes had a major place in vocals too, like a co-lead singer.
Well, I know people that don’t consider Joe Lynn Turner as Deep Purple singer 😀
They say that it was some sort of Rainbow/DP mix, which is not entirely wrong.
No matter what you think of him stylistically or as a person, you cannot fault JLT’s vocal abilities. He was explicitly hired by Ritchie both times to turn both Rainbow and DP into AOR bands, he did as was expected of him. Blame Ritchie, not him.
October 23rd, 2024 at 19:40#28 Paulo
Jolene had a beautiful voice and excellent vocal technique.
with his technique he was able to sing (with his own style obviously) both Dio’s songs and Gillan’s songs.
for Rainbow his voice was much more suitable than Bonnet’s voice.
October 23rd, 2024 at 22:49Yo,
@29…Very well said, +1 here.
Adonai !
October 24th, 2024 at 11:44Joe gets a lot of stick here and nearly everywhere else, but, yes, the man has pipes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44_1P43JT04
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzvCHbsUxC8
DP (and Rainbow) have had more charismatic frontmen and he should have ditched the wigs decades earlier, but I’ve never had issues with his pure singing. He’s a vocalist in the Paul Rodgers/Lou Gramm mold and what’s supposed to be wrong with that?
October 24th, 2024 at 16:01“For Rainbow his voice was much more suitable than Bonnet’s voice.”
You’re probably right on that, Fla76, though I’m extremely partial to Bonnet’s manly roar, nobody sings like him.
But Joe Lynn Turner had actually sung in a Deep Purple covers band (Ezra) in New Jersey before he formed Fandango with his school buddies.
I’ve only learned now that JLT even sang on a few gigs with the Alan Parsons Project on their late summer US tour in 2003. Unfortunately, there seems to be no existing footage. So this wasn’t the first time he sang the song in 2021 …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNDs2_Bwcos
Martin Barre plays the guitar on this. I really like the new (quite intricate) arrangement, courtesy of Billy Sherwood.
And Joe sings it all soulful, you can hear his black influences. New Jersey had/has sizable Black Communities for a Northeast State (15%) and Hackensack, where Joe is from, even 20%.
October 24th, 2024 at 21:02@30 Fla76 agreed. Graham Bonnet did a good job, but I prefer JLT too.
October 24th, 2024 at 21:16JLT over sings on that Alan Parsons Project song Eye In the Sky, less is more Joe. A shame as it started well, but then fell away big time. Interesting to hear Martin ‘Sir Lancelot’ Barre on guitar. A fine song it is, as are many others from that APP band from the 1970’s. Cheers.
October 25th, 2024 at 20:56moreover, as soon as Joe was fired from Purple he released the album Nothing’s Changed which I think is his best solo album,
October 26th, 2024 at 23:25and easily competes with the albums of great soloists like Richard Marx, Rick Springfield, Peter Cetera, Eric Martin, John White, and the solo albums of that period by Glenn….from the point of view of solo AoR the period 1990-1995 was very fertile even if there was grunge
Yo,
@33…
Thanks for the link to the JLT clip singing ALP “Eye in the sky”, much appreciated ! And very-well sung JLT, what an incredible voice you have !
I bet ALP wishes they could have employed JLT’s services after hearing that version yo !
Adonai vasu !
October 27th, 2024 at 01:12I do follow all of Joe’s sessions, just like I follow Glenn’s extracurricular activities. A lot of what they do with other people is dispensable, but there is always the odd gem lurking.
When they joined forces for the Hughes Turner Project, I thought the outcomes pleasant, if predictably AOR. Their voices really gelled. I actually saw them live on an underpromoted tour they did in Germany, it was an enjoyable evening with two great singers not trying to steal the limelight from each other.
Ritchie once mused that Joe and Glenn are very similar as people, maybe that is the reason why they tend to rub many people here the wrong way.
October 27th, 2024 at 15:24#38 Uwe
I also saw a concert of the HTProject tour, it was a great concert, and if possible I preferred Joe’s vocal performance to Glenn’s, in any case two absolute professionals, there was history on that stage!
October 27th, 2024 at 18:26Glenn is more elegant/a natural in his rock star shtick. When Joe pulls out the rock star mannerisms, the New Jersey bar band is never far away.
October 27th, 2024 at 20:51Yo,
Herr Uwe quoted RB in musing…
qt.”Ritchie once mused that Joe and Glenn are very similar as people, maybe that is the reason why they tend to rub many people here the wrong way”…
LOL !
I would suggest that what’s been revealed through available recordings etc etc, the JLT was the far-more professional of the two at least on-stage…
For myself, the only thing that rubs-me-the-wrong-way a little, is when people promote something that isn’t what it is, & has a documented & recorded history to prove so. It’s called false advertising, or trying to make a silk-purse out of a sows ear per-se…
Adonai vasu !
October 27th, 2024 at 22:26I’ve seen Glenn countless times since the early 90s, not once did he give a bad performance, Gregster. I’ve seen him before minuscule audiences giving a gung-ho performance as if it was California Jam all over again and I’ve seen him with a bad cold soldiering through a gig. He’s been sober now for 30 years, I think we can put to rest what he did as a coked-up young adult 50 years ago.
I’ve only seen Joe four times: Twice with Rainbow, once with DP at the Hammersmith Odeon in London (that was a good gig btw) and one time with the Hughes Turner Project. I would have seen him more often, but he tours Germany rarely though he often performs in Eastern and Central Europe where he has a real reputation as a very good singer. In any case, not once did he not sing well at those gigs – his stage raps are not to my taste, but when he opens his mouth to sing I’m contented.
When Ritchie compared Glenn and Joe he was drawing less musical parallels as remarking on their similar demeanor and social interaction. Glenn and Joe can both take their mouths a little full, but not really in a way that harms other people. And Ritchie is obviously not so much offended as amused by how they are – I think he bestows entertainment value on them and in turn has his fun pulling the rug from underneath them. I’m not aware that his relationship to them ever deteriorated as much as it did to Ian Gillan or David Coverdale.
October 28th, 2024 at 01:44Yo,
@42…
I’m actually surprised that not much discussion is had between the drama’s between DC & RB in here. All we hear is continuos drivell-at-times regarding GH….
One tends to think that it’s a result of jealousy on RB’s behalf with DC having so-much-more success with Whitesnake when compared with Rainbow. It’s easy to forget how massively successful Whitesnake remain.
Adonai vasu !
October 28th, 2024 at 22:01RB and DC is a “big & little brother” relationship gone awry over time as David outgrew Ritchie:
– In the beginning DC adored Ritchie and Ritchie was chuffed having discovered someone like him, much closer to his favorite lead vocalist Paul Rodgers than Ian Gillan ever was.
– Then DC emancipated himself quickly and while he deeply regretted Ritchie leaving Mk III, he refused the latter’s offer to become a singer of Rainbow. Rather, he thought that his and Glenn’s shoulders would be strong enough to carry DP with a new guitarist. CTTB saw David, the songwriter, in full bloom, creating a fruitful writing partnership with Tommy Bolin.
– Once Whitesnake was up and running (to Ritchie’s chagrin with Jon Lord on board who had previously refused offers to join Rainbow; I don’t know whether Little Ian had an offer from Ritchie at one point too, wouldn’t rule it out), the competitive scenario was clear. And while Rainbow had a head start, they sort of stalled commercially after a while. At the same time Whitesnake slithered from strength to strength though America was difficult at first (as it remained for Rainbow).
– The Munich incident where practical joke-Ritchie had occult messages scrawled on a hotel room door of DC which scared the wits out of David’s then wife Julia (not Blackmore’s intention), which led to DC and Ritchie having a physical altercation on the floor (which DC likely would have won), sealed their belligerent relationship for a while.
– Ritchie is driven, DC is industrious with a high work ethic. He eventually cracked the US in a way Rainbow never even remotely would – I’m sure that did not go down well at all with Ritchie. He would have killed for a hit like Here I Go Again.
– Like many people from the Greater London Area, Ritchie had a patronizing/dismissive attitude towards people from a place like Saltburn-by-the-Sea/Redcar in very Northern England. I believe he is amused by DC’s acquired Roger Moore-accent and grandeur as he once said about him: “His voice and accent now … I mean look at him, he’s from Redcar and we all know how they talk up there.” Ritchie regards DC as a bit of a phony (Ritchie has been living in the US longer than DC yet never became as Americanized much less assumed US citizenship like David did). DC on the other hand did have a time where he regarded his humble beginnings and even his tenure with Purple as promotionally inconvenient – when WS cracked the US market both elements of his vita (and DC’s then age, he was in his mid-thirties by then, heading for 40) were hushed over.
To be fair: Today’s DC has rediscovered his roots and history and even flaunts them, but it wasn’t always this way.
November 1st, 2024 at 16:27Yo,
Thanks for your informed reply Herr Uwe, much appreciated ! Here’s what I’ve deduced from it…
* You’ve stated that DC, JL, & likely IP were asked to join Rainbow, this clearly indicates GH as the culprit for RB leaving DP in the first place. Thank-you very much 🙂 !
* DC imo made the correct decision, as Mk-IV were / remain a sensation. RIP Tommy Bolin.
* RB is an ass-hole. I can’t get over how horrible he’s treated people over the years.
I’m glad that DP are No.1 all over the world at the moment, & that RB will be selling BN cd’s along side Bing Crosby CD’s over Christmas lol !
Adonai vasu.
November 2nd, 2024 at 01:01