Deep Purple rock the house down for two hours, the sound was clear and excellent, and the setlist the best for all the times – especially Living Wreck was good to hear as fresh as a new song with its howling keyboards followed by the funny Mary Long.

Ian “Bare foot” Gillan was in good mood with an astonishingly good voice that day. One of the highlights was Before Time Began played very well as all the new tunes from RAPTURE; much solo stuff from Steve, the crowd went furious when Well Dressed Guitar stormed the audience and when Don starts keyboard solos Ian Gillan trains the audience to shake their fingers in the air – and Don did in his very J.M.Jarre oriented solo the ultimate Stuttgart Hymn “Auf der schwäbsche Eisebahna…” which is an old funny Railroad Song, that was very welcome!

On the screen you can look over Ian Paice’s shoulders how he did the very fast one-handed drum roll and his snare beats very strong and hard during Smoke on the Water; Roger Glover did a gloomy solo before Black Night and uses his old RICKENBACKER bass during Smoke… which put some die hard fans tears in their eyes.

The encore with Speed King and Black Night lasted nearly a half hour long full of jamming of all band members; Gillan did some funny vocal duels with Steves guitar and sing some old songs such as I got a woman and Hello Mary Lou during Speed King and a nice english children song!

Ian thanks the audience often like “you are superb” “I thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank youu” and told us to be the 6th member of the band.

The songs that blow me away most was the absolute crackers Space Truckin’ and the furious opener Pictures of home… on my way home I felt like a Highway Star with my small japanese car with no fat tyres and everything…

P.S. ALICE COOPER was very good with his strong hard band and the furious drummer ERIC SINGER – Horror show – Domina – Frankenstein – Guillotine – Paris Hilton – all that stuff…

Harald Miller

Top form, keeping the momentum. Two-hour-long show again!

Pictures Of Home / Things I Never Said / Wrong Man / Ted the Mechanic / Living Wreck / Rapture of the Deep / Before Time Began / Mary Long / Contact Lost / Well Dressed Guitar / Lazy / Perfect Strangers / Junkyard Blues / Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye / Space Truckin’ / Highway Star / Smoke On The Water / Hush / Black Night.

The band in an excellent condition, seems to be happy with being on tour again and with their first show in Germany this year.

The first part of the show until Mary Long was a real joy as these are new tracks, especially if you remember the ‘best of…’ package played and over-used sometimes in the last few years.

Fast and powerful opening (Pictures of Home) with clear sound and it’s gonna last till the end of the show.

Things I Never Said played live sounds much, much better than downloaded from the web. Wrong Man also very strong. (a good pair for an American single ? – they’ll probably like it on that market).

Absolutely wonderful Living Wreck, Rapture and Before Time Began. There was no problem with lyrics, however it was time to use the textbook during Mary Long (IG missed only the second verse).

Contact Lost should be dropped out immediately and be exchanged for another new song or at least obscure oldie. We all are fed up with this, I guess. Well Dressed Guitar would be replaced as well.

Next ones (Lazy, Perfect Strangers with short solo and without Star Wars – thanks Don!, Junkyard Blues), played well. After Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, Gillan said: “We’re gonna leave this rock’n’roll highway” and go to Space Truckin’. But the real speed they reach in Highway Star which has a longer than before intro and reminds us of the seventies and time they played tracks with long improvisations…

Then the killing riff of Smoke… (black and white bass!), typical encore of Hush and Black Night and again we feel there would be more new songs in the setlist, etc., but generally: we’re glad to see the band on the new tour, with the new album and feel this Rapture of the Deep (whatever it means to anyone).

Dominik Bednarski

First of all – great to see a band not playing their old songs to satisfy the fans.

The real fans want to hear the new songs and the goodies, but look at the back
catalogue – what do they wanna hear. Well I don’t know – it is difficult for a band but I think it is the right way to start into a new era playing songs of Rapture of the Deep to promote the tour, a bit of some very old and new classics.

The CD sold very well in Germany and the audience always loved the band – no matter with or without Blackmore / Lord – the fans loved the music and the tradition of a good live band.

Stuttgart I think has always been a good place for Deep Purple, Gillan, Blackmore, Lord, Glenn Hughes and Coverdale. I have been at many shows of all of them and loved the way they showed their way making music and of course everyone has done his best.

Stuttgart show started with Pictures Of Home – sad point to me – the right video screen was out of order – no way to repair it during the show. Music and musicians at its best.

No Junkyard Blues in the set – Speed King as first encore. Good to hear Living wreck for the first time. It brought to me the same feeling as I first heard I’m Alone the last summer tour in Germany. That’s the way to satisfy the old fans with some unknown classics.

I’m sorry – I should explain I’m 38 years – am I an old fan? Yes and no!

Rest of the show – the same as the current tour – hope to see them on an summer gig.

Love and Peace

Cheers – as Mr. Gillan says

Gasserroger

We’ve posted weird Deep Purple covers before and here’s another one. Highway Star, indigenous Siberian style:

http://music.lib.ru/b/bugotak/alb3.shtml#highway_star

Pretty massive vocals, if you ask me!

In a more traditional vein, here is Mr. Big trying their way around an instrumental version of “Burn”:

The show was great! When I came into the arena I was overwhelmed by the Purple Fans of Hungary.

Suddenly we could see a box titled “The Band” on the screens. Then Deep Purple came out from the box and Ian Paice started drumming, so they started with Pictures of home.

Next song was Things I never said from the new Rapture of the deep Japanese edition. After that:

3. Wrong Man
4. Ted the Mechanic
5. Living Wreck
6.Rapture of the Deep
7. Before Time Began
8. Mary Long
9. Contact Lost
10. Well Dressed Guitar
11. Lazy
12. Perfect Strangers
13. Junkyard Blues
15. Space Truckin’
16. Highway Star
17. Smoke On The Water
18. Hush
19. Black Night

When the show finished it started to snow and we were very happy!

Tóth Bálint László

Deep Purple can been seen live tomorrow on German TV. First at Früstücksfernsehen (Sat 1) sometime between 06.00 – 09.00 and later at Leute Heute
(ZDF) between 17.45 – 18.00.
Thanks to Sat 1 and ZDF for the information.

The special tour edition of “Rapture Of The Deep” which we reported about before, will now be a limited double CD. You can order the CD in our shop.
CD1
1. Money Talks
2. Girls Like That
3. Wrong Man
4. Rapture Of The Deep
5. Clearly Quite Absurd
6. Don’t Let Go
7. Back To Back
8. Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
9. MTV
10. Junkyard Blues
11. Before Time Began
+ Enhanced Part: Exclusive Studio Footage and E.P.K.

CD2
1. Clearly Quite Absurd (new version)
2. Things I Never Said (Japan bonus track)
3. The Well Dressed Guitar (unreleased)
4. Rapture Of The Deep (live)
5. Wrong Man (live)
6. Highway Star (live)
7. Smoke On The Water (live)
8. Perfect Strangers (live)
The live tracks are from London October 10, 2005
Thanks to The Aviator and DPAS for the information.

A new Deep Purple live CD and DVD is on the way. It’s Deep Purple concert from Montreux festival July 9, 1996. Track list for both the DVD and CD is:
Fireball
Ted The Mechanic
Pictures Of Home
Black Night
Cascades
Woman From Tokyo
No One Came
When A Blind Man Cries
Hey Cisco
Speed King
Smoke On The Water
This is the full gig, which was shorter than usual. The DVD and CD also includes two bonus tracks from the concert at Montreux festival July 22, 2000. "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming" and "Fools". The CD and DVD will be released May 1.
Thanks to DPAS and Scottfor the information.

A new interview with Roger Glover is done by The Highway Star’s own editor Rasmus Heide. You can check out the interview here (in Danish).

There will be a new version of the Didi Zill’s Deep Purple book. Didi says that the Deep Purple book was the first, some mistakes were made (but not in the following 10 books he did with Schwarzkopf by now). The new version will have the texts in German and English. Currently they are thinking about adding the current line-up (if they agree to do a session).
Thanks to The Aviator for the information.