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Good Times at (probably) final Deep Purple Show
Deep Purple live at Jiffy Lube Live (Bristow, USA 2017-08-23)
I have been a fan of Purple since the 80’s. I graduated from high school the same year that Perfect Strangers came out. I had liked Purple before that (and really liked Rainbow) but the Mark 2 reunion opened up a love affair with a band that has lasted 30+ years. Deep Purple really is the soundtrack for my 51 year old life.
So when I told my 2 kids (27 and 22) and my wife I was likely going to have one last chance to see the band (this is my 5th live show…minus every DP video release that I have watched multiple times) they all wanted to come along for the ride. That made the show special for me, no matter what occurred on stage.
Bristow is about 4 hours from home (near Roanoke VA) After a pleasant trip up to Northern VA, we settled in for the show. I have read many of the reviews of this concert and was not optimistic. I found my experience was somewhat different than others that I have read.
Edgar Winters didn’t really excite me going into this, but we got there in time to see his set and I have to say it was fantastic. My wife thought he was the best act of the night. I am a bit biassed towards a certain band, but she could make a good argument for this position. His band was hot. He was in top form vocally and musically and he did a call and response bit with his guitarist that would have rivaled anything done by Ritchie and Ian in the day.
Alice Cooper. What can I say. It was all spectacle, noise and silliness. I was entertained, but the band was OK, the sound sucked (that’s what you get with 3 guitarists) and for the most part the crowd ate it up. Nina Strauss gets a lot of run for being a spectacular player. I found her to be a good but generic shredder with a boat load of MTV style guitar tricks and a penchant for throwing picks into the audience. Cooper’s band must go through 2000 picks per evening. Not my cup of tea, but it’s not everyday you get to see a singer decapitated on stage. 🙂
Now on to the show. Same set list. Big Ian was really struggling tonight. He barely got through HS and Fireball, He got it together for SKOW and was pretty good the rest of the evening. My son, who is a fan, was afraid Ian wasn’t going to make it through the show. The rest of the band seemed intent on carrying the load. I saw Steve Morse watching Edgar Winter’s prior to the show (i had pretty good seats) and his performance may have inspired the band to an extra energetic performance. The band was just spectacular extending the songs more than I had seen on the Now What tour and really getting into the music. Perfect Strangers and Space Trucking were particularly good.
I don’t like the fact that they didn’t do an encore. They just plowed through the encore bits without a pause. If they are going to do that…move Smoke to the last song.
That being said, Bedlam and The Surprising went over well and they ended with a great version of Hush including a great keyboard/guitar duel. Fantastic way to end probably my last Deep Purple gig.
Overall the show was fun,, the company was great and the bands were all good. I would say that it might be time for Ian to stop touring. I saw clips from Europe were he sounded pretty good, but this long of tour is doing him no favors. It really is a shame, as the rest of the band is absolutely on fire. As an instrumental group, they are as good as you will likely ever see live.
But Ian is a pro and he soldiered through. I would ask him to do something different with his story telling bit in SKOW. I had no idea what he was saying and while Steve seemed entertained everyone else looked puzzled.
Good times and thank you for decades of wonderful music. You are the best!
review by Chip
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
& all the creatures of the magical purple forest retired quietly to their beds… & dreamed happy magical purple dreams of rocks that rolled & rolled, off into the infinite…
August 31st, 2017 at 05:48@ Chip Big Ian have had a cold and throat problems. Sounded so bad in Atlanta, but quite fine again at Jones Beach.
August 31st, 2017 at 06:46Maybe it’s the short goodbye tour!!!
August 31st, 2017 at 18:26Ian Gillan is a fighter and not a quitter. He will go solo and tour on his own terms.
As for the rest of the band members they will be knocking on his door to play on his tours.
BTW Alice Cooper could fill in for Gillan if he decides to take a break on tour.
Keep the faith.
Don’t get your hopes up of another US tour. Ian’s voice is pretty much shot!!! I dearly love this band but enough is enough!!!
September 1st, 2017 at 00:35At the Greek I could make out what Ian was saying in the breakdown portion of SKOW – he was telling Steve Morse the story of Mitzi Dupree! I have no idea if this was a one-off i.e. if this was the only time this happened during the tour but my guess is yes as Steve could barely hold his sides together i.e. he looked as if he would at any second he would just put his guitar down and roll around on the stage floor laughing his arse off!
September 1st, 2017 at 22:04I’m around your age and have been a Purple freak since I was a teenager, although I did lose contact with them for a long time. There wasn’t anything in Perfect Strangers and beyond that suited me, although I have been revisiting the old stuff lately.
I thought about going to the same show you did, particularly as I have never seen Purple live, only the offshoots such as WhiteSnake, Gillan and Rainbow. I swore long ago that I would never go to what is now called Jiffy Lube Live ever again. I went there for a concert once and it was a horrible experience. Still, I contemplated it just because of the opportunity to see a form of Purple, but decided against it. I think sometimes you just need to let a band go and enjoy what they did when they were still good. Watching old geezers trying to emulate their youth doesn’t really interest me. Nobody has the chops they once did and it is always disappointing.
September 1st, 2017 at 22:36@Micke, that is good to hear. It sounded like the reviews from the last couple of shows, Ian sounded better. It was pretty tough to listen to but he soldiered through it and was pretty good past Fireball.
@Adel bite your tounge on Cooper fronting Purple. 🙂
@Jake I actually went through a period from 95 – 98 where i refused to listen to Morse era Purple. Being the dedicated Blackmore fan…who came to DP through Rainbow, the thought of Purple without Blackers was anathema. I also had steadfastly refused to listen to Come Taste the Band.
I was waivering in my Blackmore stance with the exceptionally mediocre Stranger in Us All…and the first Blackmore’s Night LP completely shattered my heart. That was awful crap.
After the release of Abandon I decided to give Purpendicular a spin and I was pleasantly surprised. Give them another go,….the Morse era stuff is really quite good.
September 9th, 2017 at 01:01And BTW I went back to CTTB and I like that pretty well too…
Although the live recordings with Bolin are atrocious.
September 9th, 2017 at 01:06I considered making the trip home to Los Angeles to see the show and glad I didn’t. Reviews said they only played 70 minutes.
September 11th, 2017 at 13:28My last Purple show was in 2004, and I’m ok with that.