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R.I.P., George.
One of the best footballers the world has seen passed away last Friday. Belfast-born George Best, born the year after Messrs Gillan, Glover, and Blackmore, was one of the most unique football players the world had seen. But his career only lasted for about six years, and he’s ever since been famous mostly for his personal problems. For a quick overview, look here.
But why do I donate my first posting in the THS Blog to him?
“Doing their Thing”.
Recorded by British Granada TV on August 21st, 1970, Deep Purple was captured in full stride in glorious colour television, well, basically doing their thing. A heavily edited (ca. 20 mins) version has been availble on video since the 80s, thus making it a wellknown artefact among Purple enthusiasts. Nowadays the prime source for a DVD version seems to be mainly the rather shoddy compilation “Masters from the Vault“.
Amongst the heavily edited versions of “Speed King”, “Wring that Neck”, “Mandrake Root” and the thankfully full version of “Child in Time”, you sometimes see a member of the audience focused. He actually looks quite sober. He’s George Best. I don’t know if he was another guest on the show the same night, or if he was there for some other reason, but even for a young lad (ha-ha) like myself who was too young to follow Best in his glorious years, the legend was big enough to make me jump in the chair the first time I saw the video.
In the early days of the Usenet newsgroup alt.music.deep-purple, I ran into a fan working at Granada TV, and naturally had him check the archives. Sadly, the full Deep Purple show seems to be eternally lost, only the edited version exists. Hopefully, some concious people working with Purple archive releases (you know who you are!) will be able to release “Doing their Thing” in a worthy context sometime in a not too distant future.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
May I add that George Best is the guy in the pink shirt, who´s freuqently seen.
November 27th, 2005 at 12:18The reason he was there might well have been that he was a massive Purple fan and has been a close friend to Ian Gillan all over the years, he´s mentioned in Gillan´s Autobiography and was this year interviewed for Gillan´s 40th (Stage) Anniversary Documentary due for release early next year.
Nice gesture to pay tribute to George Best, one of the all time greats. R.I.P George.
November 28th, 2005 at 05:15http://ciudad.latinol.com//sedeort/famosoespectador.jpg
George Best at Granada TV studios, Manchester UK (14.07.70)
May 18th, 2006 at 04:20