![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan1.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/glover2.jpg)
Up top and down below
Westfälische Nachrichten reviews the October 26 Deep Purple gig in Lingen. It starts with mentioning the combined age of those on stage (354) and continues:
Superlatives that raise questions among the 4,500 visitors in the sold-out Emsland Arena. Can the old rockers still do it, or are they resting on their laurels for “Smoke on the Water” and their other top hits? Deep Purple quickly throw the impression of being old hat overboard.
They start with “Highway Star” and then race through their career, which has now lasted for over half a century. Unlike their esteemed colleagues from Jefferson Starship, who opened the evening, the Brits even have a brand new album with them, which has the telling title “=1” and has stormed the charts straight away.
Read the review in original German or try Google to translate it to other languages.
Meanwhile, National Turk reviews the Amsterdam gig on October 29 in English. Apparently, it was just a clickbait — a machine translation of a Dutch review from de Volkskrant. Here we offer you (what we think) a slightly better machine translation, or you can read it from the source if you know the language.
No high notes, but a scream that pierces the soul: Deep Purple rocks hard and moves
Fortunately, only the film projections of the hard rock inventors’ performance in Amsterdam are dated.
Robert van Gijssel
Pop music editor for the Volkskrant.
30 October 2024, 12:21Of all the touring classic rock acts, Deep Purple is the most classic. The rockers, carved from stone, kicked off the hard rock era with the album Deep Purple in Rock (1970). And Machine Head (1972) is seen as one of the driving forces behind heavy metal, alongside the work of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.
But Deep Purple is still playing. And the band doesn’t just rely on old hits. Deep Purple has released three new albums in the past four years. And this year’s vital hard rock album =1 even forms the main part of a fresh setlist in the Ziggo Dome.
The band composition is also special. In addition to the beautiful screamer Ian Gillan (79), bassist Roger Glover (78) and primeval drummer Ian Paice (76) will appear in Amsterdam, as well as keyboardist Don Airey (76), who replaced the late John Lord more than twenty years ago. The only newcomer is guitarist Simon McBride, who moves across the stage like a young god (45 years old), against a backdrop of unfortunately terribly dated and ugly film projections.
But from the poisonous opening moves of Highway Star, Deep Purple thankfully rocks like crazy. The hammering, “churchy” organ parts steam up next to those basic but grooving riffs that wrote music history. The sound is deliciously hard, as it should be, with Deep Purple. But the real goosebumps arise with Gillan’s vocals.
No, he doesn’t hit his screeching high notes anymore. But his voice is so moving in the wailing blues rock ballad When a Blind Man Cries. And in Into the Fire he miraculously finds a spot on his vocal cords where it doesn’t hurt yet, for a scream that should cut through the soul of every metal person.
★★★☆☆
29/10, Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam.
Thanks to Friedhelm Wenning for the Lingen link, and to Fedor for setting things straight regarding Amsterdam.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
I find DP’s newfound mass popularity unsettling. This is not what I bought in for, nein. 😑
October 31st, 2024 at 02:36Yo,
Credit where credit is due…Back when DP started out, if you roll-back 50-years, how many people were listening to music from 1918, yet alone celebrating it ?…
You can listen to the whole DP catalogue today, & it’s still all quite listenable, & very enjoyable.
It’s a good thing imo that people around the world can come together & show some respect for something that has endured, & remains vital & important. It could be an omen that it’s possible to showing more respect to ourselves, & so work harder towards a world with total peace upon it. There’s only a few elements to remove such as the IAEA & the MIC’s to reach that resolve.
A rolling stone gathers no moss !!! But it will end-up at the bottom of the hill someday, so enjoy the moment !
Adonai vasu !
October 31st, 2024 at 11:58Ah Uwe, don’t tell me that you don’t like the new pop all boy band called Deep Purple. This is what RB was trying to do with Rainbow. He wanted commercial success and could not convince the rest of DP to agree.
October 31st, 2024 at 15:27Now DP have done it without even trying and did not abandon their principles. A lot of young people are realizing that most of the so called music of today is crap. Now some are finding out what to listen to.
@ 1 😀 Me neither.. nej
October 31st, 2024 at 15:47“So from time to time we meet up, & have wonderful affairs!”
Mr Gillan is such a charmer, & so tactful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEqjWzYDONQ
October 31st, 2024 at 22:32There’s a reason for listening to Deep Purple!
October 31st, 2024 at 23:18I dread being part of any majority. 😑
November 1st, 2024 at 00:01National Turk’s review is a poor AI translation of an article that originally appeared in De Volkskrant on Oct 30.
November 1st, 2024 at 12:46Link: https://www.volkskrant.nl/muziek/deep-purple-rockt-hard-en-ontroert-geen-gilnoten-wel-ziel-snijdende-schreeuw~b6969929/
@7a- don’t have to worry about that in the states – People are amazed when told just saw Purple & they have a new album
November 1st, 2024 at 14:24They’re mystified!
Can’t we have a bad review now to liven things up a little?
November 1st, 2024 at 15:20@10
I’m ashamed to say that the Danish critique Thomas Treo gave Deep Purple, and especially Ian G, scathing criticism 😤
If you’re on Facebook you can find it there using his name.
November 1st, 2024 at 23:44Kidpurple: Yeah, we have those people too, the ones that incredulously go “Are they still alive?” or “I didn’t even know they still toured!”
A lot of those people even missed the reunion in 1984, to them DP is SOTW or perhaps Child In Time and some faint 70s memory like flared jeans.
For decades people with a non-rock music background would react to me naming Deep Purple and Judas Priest as the two bands I liked most by saying: “I still remember Deep Purple, but who is this other band?” Until one day I had a new young personal assistant/secretary who really liked Creed (the band) and she said: “I know Judas Priest, but who is Deep Purple?” (It turned out she knew SOTW, but did not identify it with a particular band.)
November 2nd, 2024 at 00:35Yo,
Herr Uwe asked…
qt.”Can’t we have a bad review now to liven things up a little”?…
***You know all-to-well to whom you need to direct that request to…I’m sure it’s not too far away either, even without the request…(You know how some self-proclaimed aficionados are lol )..:) !
Adonai vasu.
November 2nd, 2024 at 00:46@ 10 Uwe: My review of = 1 was certainly unpopular and I gave it 7/10.That was in September. Things got a little less lively after that !! LOL !
November 2nd, 2024 at 19:26I saw them a few days before in Essen Grugahalle.
November 2nd, 2024 at 22:09It was amazing!
I thing Jefferson Starship is a good band, but as an opener for these very good guys it was wrong!
In 2018 i saw Deep Purple in Mönchengladbach, where Navarone and Axel Rudi Pell made the support, it was the better idea, because they are hardrocker like Deep Purple.
At last, Ian Gillan`s voice was this year better than in 2018!
Thank you Deep Purple!
I don‘t want to be too tough on Jefferson Starship, but they are an oldies circuit traveling jukebox – with the bass parts coming from the keyboards, yuck. Though the current singers, Cathy Richardson and David Freiberg, have pipes, the connection of this present line-u to Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship and even Starship is from nonexistent to tenuous. Jefferson Starship today is a vehicle with legal licenses from retired Grace Slick and the Paul Kantner Estate to use the name.
In Mannheim, people appreciated the hit-follows-hit concept and the band didn‘t meet impatience from the audience, but I‘m with Thomas, they are not really a good fit for Purple.
Credit where credit is due: For an 86-year-old, Freiberg‘s high-pitched AOR voice is in spectacular good shape.
November 3rd, 2024 at 12:22@14 Mike
I remember reading your review. I think 7 / 10 is a fair score for the album. But the review was quite negative, I really expected a 3 / 10 when reading it! 😉
=1 is the Purple album I have listened the most to in the months following the release since Perfect Strangers. That is my only review of the =1 album. 🙂
November 3rd, 2024 at 12:45@ 1…… I agree, wait ! i disagree, uhrm no i agree, i don’t agree, what…..i guess i agree, no i dont, never mind?
November 4th, 2024 at 12:57@18
November 4th, 2024 at 17:04That sounds like me on a daily basis 😄
Timmi, get a grip! 🤣
“Timmy’s always running around
Trying to find certainty
Mary says he changes his mind
More than a woman …”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_SAMrDnXOE
November 4th, 2024 at 21:35@ 20………LOL! Too funny 🤣
November 5th, 2024 at 13:00