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Purple for a day
About a month ago The Guardian interviewed musical duo Chas & Dave (the Chas part is none other but Chas Hodges of The Outlaws fame). He recalls an episode that happened in 1971 while supporting Deep Purple on tour:
And then lightning strikes Chas. “I forgot all about it, but we did a tour with them.” By “we”, he means Heads Hands and Feet, his pre-Chas & Dave band. “And I sat in with them when their bass player was ill. It was up in Scotland and I did a gig with them. I played with Deep Purple.” And it’s true: for one night only, on 8 March 1971, at Aberdeen Music Hall, Chas Hodges was Deep Purple’s bassist.
Thanks to The Guardian and Andrey Gusenkov for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Every musician whom is a Purple Fan dreams of that to happen for them. Not that would I would want something to go wrong for Mr. Paice or Mr. Gillan while I was at a gig, but if so, I would love to step up and represent…..
!Ch-BeerZ?
October 30th, 2013 at 18:37That counts.
October 30th, 2013 at 19:52And what a bassist he was! Listen to Green Bullfrog.
October 30th, 2013 at 21:30Lucky Chas… I wanna hear more details! How much rehearsal time did he have with the band? Is there a recording of the show? Which songs did they perform?
I have a bootleg entitled “Purple For A Day”, recorded in Civic Arena, Long Beach California on 30th July 1971. The tracks are Speed King, Wring That Neck and Mandrake Root. Fabulous extended improvisations. Clearly not the show with Chas, but I wonder why it’s called Purple For A Day. Any ideas?
October 31st, 2013 at 01:49Not a gig, just an encore. And it was mentioned thirty years ago in the Illustrated Biography.
October 31st, 2013 at 06:57Very interesting as I didn’t know this.
October 31st, 2013 at 12:46Makes me curious exactly how many ‘stand-in’ musicians DP had over the years?
There’s mention of Randy California, who was about to stand in for Ritchie Blackmore who fell ill during a North American tour in the early 70’s, but it still is uncertain wether he actually played the gig or not.
There is the infamous one-off show that Roger Glover actually took over lead-vocals as Gillan was unable to perform.
Recently Nick Fyffe replaced Roger Glover on some occasions.
Further there was Don Airey who was hired to stand in for Jon Lord when he had to undergo surgery, before he went to retire from Deep Purple and Don would join on a permanent basis.
Joe Satriani replaced Blackmore, who left the band in late 1993 for the remaining shows of The Battle Rages On Tour in the far east. He stayed for a European reprise of the tour in the spring of 1994 but eventually had to leave while he could not commit to Deep Purple as for contractual obligations with his own label.
Are there more (one-off) stand in musicians in the history of Deep Purple that we (yet) don’t know of?
@6 would make a nice book about DP. The stories of the musicians who stepped up to the plate and filled a void when needed. “The Show Must Go On!”
November 1st, 2013 at 11:21Mike Bradford pretended to play guitar for them miming on some TV show when Steve couldn’t be there. I think.
November 1st, 2013 at 16:27So what happen to Roger that night that he couldn’t play????
November 1st, 2013 at 22:16In the 70′ Dave Mason took the guitar for one night ,Ritchie being ill
November 5th, 2013 at 18:07Got to see Dave Mason open for Purple during the ‘Perihellion DVD’ show.His performance was put out on DVD too….. He was a perfect opener. Played some good tunes and jammed quite well.
!Ch-BeerZ?
November 6th, 2013 at 15:42Chris Cross.
November 8th, 2013 at 19:08The Randy California stepping in for Ritchie thing actually happened at the Colisee de Quebec, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada on April 6th 1972. There is an – admittedly pretty poor – bootleg recording of the show that’s available.
August 16th, 2024 at 09:26