Posted by Nick on Friday, September 20th, 2024,
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I was at a Danish museum today, called ‘Den Gamle By’ in Aarhus, and we spend a lot of time at the exhibition from the mid-70’es.
Of course there was Deep Purple albums on display, among those my favourite In Rock actually. Some older guys were around to tell stories from the good old days! The guy I talked with did not know Deep Purple! I was in shock 😳
He rambled on about Led Zeppelin (😅) I asked him if he ever have heard Smoke on the Water!
He had not 😳😳
Then I became quite serious, and almost commanded him to watch on YT concert from Copenhagen ‘72, and he almost said ‘yes m’am’ 😁😄
We ended out little talk on good terms, but I’m still rather surprised that a man of his age didn’t know DP!
@ 4 – ha ha ha Karin, that is an amusing tale indeed. Uwe most probably will comment also regarding that Led Zeppelin aficionado not knowing DP. It is quite hilarious actually & thank you for brightening up my morning. Cheers.
I tend to not mingle with people liking this other band. You’ll never know to what intellectual depths they will plunge, but I believe this guy was simply trying to appeal to Karin’s maternal instincts to flirt with her. Most Led Zep fans lack meaningful social contacts, that explains a lot, it’s a music that breeds desperation.
Denmark is a developed country with sophisticated inhabitants who keep our Jylland WW II bunkers in great shape, I rule out that there was ever a time there where LZ meant more than DP. Folly the thought!
Hi everyone!
For those who feel that Steve wasn’t the right guitarist for Deep Purple, just try remember how exciting & wild it all was when he first joined the band, in much the same way that it is now with Simon.
To illustrate this point, I’m linking the following concert from 2 March, 1996 in Scotland. See how the setlist changed from Ritchie’s same old hardline, to a more varied, exciting & satisfying set of songs.
There’s only 6 songs from Ritchie’s regular playlist left in this 1996 concert. Then there are 6 other Ritchie era songs that shake things up.
The real kicker is the 7 new Steve era songs that show what the “All New” Deep Purple were capable of, & the fresh, exciting direction in which they were heading!. The banjo player took a hike, & what’s that song I used to like? Yes, indeed!
Ritchie gave us S&M the album. Gillan & the boys gave us SM the guitarist (extraordinaire). Now they’ve doubled down & given us SM the guitarist Mk2! Ritchie must see the irony! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHQiwegQloc
@7
Uwe I assure you there was no flirting taking place 😄
If that indeed was his plan he went all wrong about it!
I do have a question: Do any of you sense tango-notes in Strangeways?
I somehow feel the urge to put a rose between my teeth, click my heels and look a little bit dangerous whenever I hear this lovely tune ☺️
K
I remember that first tour well, John, I saw them in Hanau and it was one of the best DP gigs I’ve ever witnessed, but “wild” is not an attribute I would choose. It was musicianly, joyous and collaboratively inspired. I don’t think that Steve ever had a “wild” moment in his life. 😉
And to be fair, Purple revamping the set list after a major line up change was nothing new to them: Even early Mk II played only a few songs of Mk I such as Hush, Kentucky Woman, Mandrake Root, Wring That Neck and Fault Line. Mk III retained basically only HS, SOTW and SpTr + a bit of Fools from Mk II and Mk IV threw everything from MK III into the bin except Burn, Stormbringer and very occasionally Soldier of Fortune (they did resurrect Lazy from Mk II though).
@ 9 – you did very well Karin in standing up for Deep Purple against the tyranny of a Led Zeppelin fan, well done. I am most disappointed in Uwe not recognising that you potentially put your life on the line for Deep Purple. It sounds like that guy was retreating big time. That is the sort of dedication & passion required to thwart the Led Zeppelin leviathan. Not Uwe & being a wimp & simply stating that he wouldn’t even bother to communicate with the man, what a cop out. Congratulations Karin. As for Uwe, I will sort him out. I have a cunning plan. Cheers.
To hear this from Herr MacGregor of all people, that unabashed Led Zep floozy who probably languishes in a folding chair with a sink in hand all day long waiting for the Tasmanian forest to echo with laughter!
@ 12 – ha ha ha, yes that was a bad cover version that one. You will never guess what happened to me today whilst gardening at lady’s residence. She is originally from the state of Wisconsin & moved out here about 50 years ago. Anyway me being me I couldn’t help but to ask, did you see any rock bands back then when you were a younger hippie rock ‘n roller. No she said, but my favourite band was Led Zeppelin. Ha ha ha, oh I did grin widely indeed. And why do I think of Uwe when these things happen? I do think it is about time Uwe invokes that famous Henry II saying from the dim & distant past. ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome band? Cheers.
But they did play songs from THOBL on the tour back then: Bad Attitude, The Unwritten Law, Hard Loving Woman, Dead Or Alive, they even gave Call Of The Wild a try a few times. I was there.
They just never played anything – to my knowledge – from THOBL again on subsequent tours. Not with Joe Lynn Turner, not with a returned Ian Gillan, not with Joe Satriani or Steve Morse.
I think Simon could do a killer version of Bad Attitude, that is right up his alley.
I am going off my memory here but DP didn’t really support THOBL that much on the following tour, did they? Anyway that is the very reason I did not buy the ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ live album. How many of THOBL songs are on there? Three I think & one of them (Hard Lovin Woman) is one of the worst DP songs ever. I couldn’t put that album back in the rack at the record store quick enough. They may have performed a few more songs at some concerts, I don’t know. I would at least hope so. Cheers.
I attended 2 shows of the HOBL tour. They did play Bad Attitude, The Unwritten Law, Hard Loving Woman and Dead or Alive at those shows. At some shows they tried Call of the Wild, I’ve got a bootleg with that one on it. As far as I know they did give Mad Dog an airing as well.
Dare I say I quite enjoyed Nobody’s Perfect though I would have liked a few more new tracks too. But it’s good fun -especiallly Hard Loving Woman. Just your nice little Purple-rock’n’roll-song, think Lady Double Dealer or Lay Down Stay Down.
Karin! No double entendres here, please. This is something we are not used too.
What Max says: My most magical Mk II gig was from the THOBL tour and Nobody’s Perfect is unjustly derided. I does suffer from nearly everything being played too darn fast – that takes some of the might and grandeur out of the Purple sound – , but that is first and foremost Ritchie’s fault as he rushes the band – as he did all Rainbow line-ups (until of course he couldn’t anymore, with RAIunioNBOW he was often too slow in bpm, all those decades with BN plus age had him lose his Rock’n’Roll swiftness). DP only settled for their more groovy speeds again once Joe Satriani and then Steve Morse played for them. Ritchie’s renditions especially of older material were sometimes so rushed they sounded loveless – as if he wanted to get it over with quickly.
I remember playing Nobody’s Perfect in the car with an accomplished guitarist sitting beside me – neither a DP nor a Blackmore fan per se (more the Allman Brothers type), but someone with open ears. And he made a comment on Ritchie’s playing that really startled me back then, not a nasty one, it sounded more concerned: “Listening to this you can hardly believe that this is the same guy playing as on Made In Japan. What happened to his natural fluidity? He used to play the guitar like a violin and now it is all stops and starts and rushed runs that are not that precisely executed, disappointing.”
Yes indeed the 1980’s & it could be possibly what was mentioned not long ago in regards to 80’s Rainbow. The Peruvian mountains snow could have been drifting around the place. I do find Blackmore’s playing in the 90’s much more realistic, in the sense of it not sounding as rushed at all like during the 80’s. Cheers.
@ 23 – “but that is first and foremost Ritchie’s fault as he rushes the band – as he did all Rainbow line-ups (until of course he couldn’t anymore,” Hang on Uwe, poor ole Cozy was blamed for that a while ago according to what you often stated. I returned a comment suggesting that on the Munich dvd concert it was Blackmore starting many of the songs too fast. So does Cozy now get let off at all, most probably not as he will still get the ‘ham fisted’ approach blamed on him & the ‘barbarian at the gates’ bludgeoning to everything. Oh dear, I suppose someone has to go into bat for him. No harm in trying, again. Cheers.
Uwe, sorry I can’t find the post, but somewhere you said that Andy Scott worshipped at Blackmore’s altar, or something like that ☺️
Now I have been listening carefully to both gentlemen, and I must say, and please remember I know nothing about anything regarding the understanding of music 😝, Blackmore is a poet, even when he is playing rough.
Whereas Andy Scott is no poet what so ever! He plays wonderfully but he is much more rough and not gentle at all!
Well this is just one ordninary woman’s opinion 😊
K
Now I’ve received two autobiographies by Ian Gillan and his GW!
Well I thought it was volume 1 and 2, but it seems to be the same.
There are differences though, but that’s not what I’m writing about 😊
I’ve a completely new view on RB, not because IG is talking him down, because he isn’t, actually IG is a wonderful man about all that, and I’m really impressed with his phenomenal way to own up to the situation!
If I didn’t already was impressed with IG because of his wonderful voice and singing, I certainly would be because of his kind way of being a real human being.
If Blackmore had not enjoyed Cozy’s natural rushing of the beat, the latter wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in Rainbow. They were kindred spirits in so far.
The Munich gig was legendary if you were there. Ritchie was extremely on edge and high-strung from his incarceration in Austria. He hit the stage like an animal unleashed.
yea, unfortunately Ritchie’s fast and terribly dirty playing, combined with the awful sounds of the 80’s have been immortalised to perfection in “nobody’s perfect” which is truly incomparable to the levels of the 70’s.
a couple of weeks ago I listened to the 85 live at knebworth again and I didn’t remember it being so bad.
That said I always regret being too young to go see Purple on the Perfect Strangers tour
Princess Karin, I didn’t say that Andy was as good as Ritchie, he just tried to be! He’s Ritchie several notches dumbed down and without the mystique. But if you want to hear both of them together in one song, voilà!
Yeah, there was a passing resemblance, but I think the whole thing was overstated by Sweet fans with an inferiority complex, wishing to latch onto DP’s credibility as musicians. Sweet had their first hit not penned by Chin Chapman only in 1975 with Fox On The Run (itself a rip-off from Free’s Alright Now), by then their career was beginning to come to an end.
And Sweet weren’t the only ones who in the early to mid 70s experimented with a riff-laden Purple sound:
@ 33- I don’t hear anything Uwe in those Uriah Heep songs that resembles ‘riff laden DP’. Each to their own & Status Quo?????????? Regarding Heep & Salisbury is a really poor album, not in my cd collection. The worst of the Byron era Heep. Ken Hensley hadn’t found his mojo yet. I have always thought that the female journalist who said ‘if this band makes it, I will commit suicide’ could have easily been talking about the Salisbury album. It deserves a comment like that, in a joking sort of way of course. She is still alive, just like we all are. Cheers.
@33
😄😄 no you didn’t, and I didn’t say that either, but I just thought of what you did say: that AS worshipped at RB’s altar 😄
And I just can’t hear AS at all sound anything like RB 😊
I do really like AS’s way of playing, but it’s so very different to RB. Whereas RB is poetic most of the times, even when he went crazy playing Gipsy’s Kiss 😊, AS is much more rock’n’roll.
Thanks so much for the links.
About bass players, was Kelly Groucutt anything near what the fans of ELO put him up to be? Or was there a very good reason for Jeff Lynne to sack him and most of the band, and play all the instruments himself?
And regarding to Jeff Lynne I read that Francis Rossi said that he didn’t admire Deep Purple but he does admire Jeff Lynne, as the only one to admire (sorry can’t find it)!
Very amusing I think, because when I was in my teens and really loved ELO, EVERYBODY said ‘oh ELO is just a plagiarism of Beatles, and Jeff Lynne is a mediocre musician’.
But then he started out to produce some old forgotten Beatles tunes, he joined Travelling Wilburys, and today it’s just as hard to get tickets to his concerts as it is to Deep Purple!
Suddenly everybody simply adore Jeff Lynne! Funny how things change!
K
#Karin
Ritchie changed his style and sound a bit from the 70s to the 80s, of course Scott doesn’t sound like Blackmore from the 80s, but if you listen to the whole Sweet discography you realise that The Man in Black influenced him a lot.
Uwe&MacGregor
on the other hand in the early 70s there were often points of contact between hard rock bands, the sound was practically the same and in general terms also the style of the songs
Uwe& MacGregor:
I world say that Deep Purple were as evident an influence on Uriah Heep as they were on Sweet, but there are some points of contact.
of course for me Uriah Heep are a fundamental and always underrated band that has written indelible pages in the history of hard rock, I don’t put them in the Olympus of the fabulous 5 (Jimi and Crem together with the triumvirate), but in the second tier with Blue Öyster Cult, ELP, Lynyrd, UFO, Grand Funk Railroad… I’m surely forgetting someone in the second tier.
Weird, Herr Mac Gregor, Salisbury was one of the most popular Heep albums in Germany. For me, Heep always sounded like Purple-by-numbers, with more catchy chorus parts and those overdone background vocals.
But there is also a DP song that sounds like Uriah Heep to me:
Andy Scott vs Ritchie … I can understand where the comparisons came from, Scott is more rock’n’roll, less classical than Ritchie, but Ritchie has a rock’n’roll component too and that is where I find Scott and him closer together than Ritchie and, say, Jimmy Page, OR Andy and Jimmy Page. On a track like Space Trucking, I believe Scott would have come up with something similar to Ritchie, Ritchie does play a little glam-rock’ish on that one
Kelly Groucutt? Good singer and bass player, nothing amazing, but his voice was part of the classic ELO sound. Jeff Lynne? Always dug him, but the ELO sound is a bit of a one-trick-pony, similar to Marc Bolan and the T. Rex sound. They both invented signature sounds, but then stuck with it forever. When Lynne produces something, he so much puts his own stamp on it that it borders on the hilarious: There is this one Bryan Adams number Jeff Lynne produced and you wonder when you hear it, why bother, Jeff, you should have sung it yourself, it sounds like Bryan doing an ELO tribute.
Francis Rossi doesn’t like heavy metal or even heavy rock. He likes pop and C&W. For much of the early 70s there was strife within the Quo camp between Rossi’s direction and Lancaster/Parfitt who wanted Quo to be predominantly a heavy band. The two started going to DP gigs and wrote an album together – ‘Quo’ from 1974, the heaviest in SQ’s oeuvre, with most songs sung by Alan Lancaster and Rick Parfitt and one disliked by Rossi because of that fact (it’s my favorite one and most old time Quo fans agree). They sidelined Francis for much of the writing process and he saw that as an attempted coup: “But we’re NOT fucking Deep Purple!” That same Francis Rossi, however, said in an interview in the 80ies that he didn’t like heavy metal with ONE exception: Rainbow. And he meant the poppy Graham Bonnet/Joe Lynn Turner Rainbow by that.
Rossi is caustic and has a wry sense of humor. Rock’n’Roll machismo amuses him and he can’t take it serious, hence his distance to any rock music too chest-beatingly male and stern (which to him was represented by Alan Lancaster).
So no, most of DP’s music would have been too muscular and dark for Francis. Graham Bonnet otoh was right up his alley, Graham’s first two solo albums were produced by Pip Williams who produced much of Quo’s later work once Rossi had “won the (tug of) war” against Lancaster. Bonnet sang songs written by Rossi and Rossi + Parfitt guested on his albums pre-Rainbow:
If you’re a Quo fan like me, you need to accept both their sides, the heavy rock one and Rossi’s love for C&W and pop.
For Herr MacGregor: Cozy P delivering ample evidence that a smooth shuffle was not his forte – not like Ian Paice or John Coghlan at least, even the Tasmanian will have to agree for once …
Ok guys, thanks so much for your inputs and links 😊
But let me ask you this one question:
Do you in all honesty think that Andy Scott (whom I really like as a guitarist, he is very rock’n’roll, the good way) would have been able to play the intro to Anya as Ritchie Blackmore did in the dvd-concert of Come hell or high water?
For me RB there was completely poetic, gentle, warm and really wonderful! (I’m NOT thinking of his personality, because I don’t know the man)
Steve Morse and Simon McBride would not be able to do it the exact same way either! They are both terrific, no wonderful, in their own ways, my point is just that RB was/is(?) completely different.
I don’t doubt that RB changed and played different, but that Anya intro, and also Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was magnificent.
K
@37
One-trick-pony you say 😂
Ok maybe I don’t fully understand the concept of that, but I guess you mean Jeff Lynne found a sound and stayed faithful to it, still does actually!
Yeah you’re completely right! It’s always so easy to hear the gentleman’s influence when he is producing anything!
Yes ‘Don’t let go’ from ‘Armchair Theatre’ has a very identical start to Bryan Adam’s ‘You belong to me’.
Actually when ELO split up, Bev Bevan, Kelly Croucutt, Mik Kaminski and maybe also Hugh McDowell and some singer made ELO part II, and I must admit when the song ‘Honest men’ was released there was so much Jeff Lynne’s print all over it!
The singer was not in any way near Jeff’s voice, but the arrangement (was Louis Clark part of it? I seem to remember he was) made me think if Jeff had regretted splitting up the band and send out another single.
But of course he hadn’t.
I somehow imagined that ‘Honest men’ was a tune that Jeff had started, forgotten all about it, left it on the disk when he ran out of the door, and the other guys said to each other: ‘well it’s a start’!
I loved Jeff Lynne’s music once, now I find it too melancholy 😞
Let me give an example:
ELO’s ‘Telephone line’, has depression written all over it!
Deep Purple made a similar song ‘Call of the wild’ (yeah I know the difficulties about that album HOBL) but that song was also about a guy who had met this fascinating woman and needed the operator to help him, just like ‘Telephone line’, but man what a difference!
‘Telephone line’ is beautiful for sure, but woah ‘blue days, black nights’ 😰 compared to ‘And I’ve got to see her again that gypsy child, Operator this is a call of the wild’! The latter has joy, happiness and lust for life written all over it, Jeff’s ‘Telephone line’: ‘I look into the sky (the love you need ain’t gonna see you throug)’, I imagine Mr Lynne must have been very depressed writing this.
And of course there is always room for sentiments like that, but please!
There are different ways to tackle the hard times life’s throwing at you, me, I prefer to ‘fight’ me out of it while humming a happy tune 🥰
I mean: you don’t have to make it much worse than it already is!
K
“For me RB there was completely poetic, gentle, warm and really wonderful!”
Karin, you told is like it is for m too. That is what made me love his music so much. In fact I don’t like all of the songs, I found the antics amusing the older I got, some of the album covers made me cringe, as did some of the lyrics (Rock Fever anybody?) to the songs (he didn’t write them but he didn’t do anything about it obviously) and the whole BN thing is a bit ridiculous anyway, Schlager, as Uwe said.
But as soon as he starts playing … it’s like a language only he had command of and some people seem to u nderstand it. Nothing ever moved me like this. Well in music, that is.
Liebe Frau Verndal, let’s go through your numerous items one by one, btw I do appreciate how you give us all homework from time to time, say did you consider becoming a teacher at one point?
1. Andy could have played the intro to Anya no sweat, he was very adept at emulating various styles, Sweet were always a lot more versatile than people thought from their singles and ran a gamut of different styles in their chequered career. The thing is, however: He couldn’t/wouldn’t have come up with it. He never shared Blackers’ penchant for Eastern scales and melodies which Ritchie already had in the late 60s, early 70s. Regarding that aspect of Ritchie’s playing someone like, say, Uli Jon Roth is much closer to Ritchie than Andy Scott. But then again both Blackmore and Uli watched closely what Hendrix did and the latter was never averse to playing something Eastern-tinged on his Strat.
2. I haven’t checked, but one-trick-pony is probably derived from circus people lingo describing an animal or artist who can do one spectacular stunt, but nothing else.
There is a fine line between “being immediately recognizable”, something many bands strive for, and becoming a one-trick-pony. THE BEATLES and QUEEN are probably arch-examples of bands that were immediately recognizable, but never became one-trick-ponies.
3. Jeff Lynne is a great songwriter and forged a sound, but he very much stuck with it. Once he had wrested control from Roy Wood in early ELO the one-trick-pony loomed on the horizon and he never climbed from its saddle. ELO have seen deserved re-appreciation in recent years, but I distinctly remember a time in the late 70ies and early 80ies when their trademark sound was regularly ridiculed – much like disco era Bee Gees.
Telephone Line’s subject matter – feeling homesick and calling a loved one over the Atlantic in an age when those connections were fraught with breaking down – is wonderful, but Lynne overdid with the backings and turned it into a schmaltz aria. That doesn’t mean I dislike the song, hey, I can dig schmaltz as Herr MacGregor never fails to point out mercilessly, it is my favorite ELO track along with the giddy dance floor stomper Living Thing.
Among my one-trick-pony guilty pleasures are these guys …
But it gets worse. I will now ruin my credibility here with a single post … I also appreciated these guys here (watch all German HS members turn their heads away in cringing shame 😁):
4. I really dug Call Of The Wild, the vid, the song, the lyrics, the looseness of the performance and how Roger changes from the root note to the third for a short while in the coda. And it was ELOish, true.
Agree regarding Ritchie being so damn melodic with his guitar solo’s. He is in that elite realm along with David Gilmour. There are not many lead guitarists who deliver so constantly & effortlessly than those two. Not to my ears at least. Cheers.
@40
Yeah Max, if only that great guitarist could have controlled his temper, maybe his envy or jealousy towards Ian G, many things regarding Deep Purple would’ve been different 😊
K
@41
Uwe, I do sometimes wear my hair in a bun an I do possess some harsh looking glasses but I’m pretty sure the world of teaching and I are in much better places kept far away from each other!
Ad 1: oh I would simply love to hear Andy Scott play the intro to Anya like RB did it!
Ad 3: Unfortunately I’ve never met the FABULOUS Roy Wood neither the AMAZING Jeff Lynne, so I don’t have this info firsthand but I’m of this impression that Roy wanted to part with Jeff on good terms.
They went in different directions, on the other hand I do not think ELO would ever had existed without Mr Woods impact in the beginning!
Roy just wanted to go more in the experimental direction whereas Jeff, as you so neatly pointed out, later on took a turn into the disco world! And yes in one song copied BeeGees (what was the tune?? Midnight Blue perhaps?)
Btw I do adore Sailor – it’s very uplifting when I’m vacuuming or washing the floors 😄
I do have way too much respect for you to think badly of you liking Modern Talking! And I guess I don’t need to mention my own sentiments in that matter!
Ad 4: No had never heard Velvet Revolver with ‘Can’t get it out of my head’ before and hearing it now I do prefer the original with Jeff’s soothing voice.
And Ace F with ‘Do ya’ I can easily live without! Again Jeff does it better I guess.
May I add no 5?
Ok Ad 5: I would so much love to hear Ian G singing ‘Can’t get it out of my head’, and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Silver Spring’! That would sound beyond brilliant I’m sure.
If anyone in this forum have some connection with the amazing Ian G, couldn’t you suggest this to him?
Ad 6: now I really need some lovely coffee! Take care and have a lovely weekend 🤗
@42
Hi Mac 👋🏼
I’ve listened to ‘Wish you were here’ several times now!
Yeah Gilmour is an amazing guitarist and singer!
Can you perhaps introduce me to some tunes with a little more ‘r’n’r’ in?
Without the dreadful impact ‘the wall’ made on me 😱
Thanks
K
That is a difficult request in certain aspects Karin, as Pink Floyd don’t really do rock ‘n roll per se. There are shorter individual songs are on those two earlier movie soundtrack albums I mentioned previously, some songs rock out a little, some are acoustic folk style & a few instrumentals. Animals is their most rock driven & guitar to the fore album. Still only three lengthy songs, although the album is bookended with two very short acoustic songs. Cheers.
Karin @ 44 – “I do have way too much respect for you to think badly of you liking Modern Talking! And I guess I don’t need to mention my own sentiments in that matter”! Karin NEVER back off in dealing with Uwe, as we all have been working away at him for eons. We do feel we have him just where we want him at present after much tireless work chipping away at his armour. So give him heaps as we all do at times, he gives as good as he gets. NO compassion or empathy & definitely NO FEAR!
Uwe pictured below in a rather compromising position. Cheers.
This is a rather apt image as there is one individual from that group standing on Uwe’s chest, verbally going off big time by the look of it. I do wonder which one of us here that could be, anyone’s guess I suppose. And the lady on the horse, that easily could be Karin working out which attacking move she will use next. Cheers.
@46
Yeah ok Mac, that’s what my sweetheart told me after I’ve been writing to you.
It’s too bad really, but because David Gilmour’s voice is gentle and soft I do have a hard time imagine him letting out a primal scream like Ian does 😄
I have been listening to PF now, and it’s a bit too – oh what’s the word? Spooky? No, not spooky, but very different than DP! But very emotional and tear-soaked 😞
Btw: does anyone know how come Ian doesn’t wanna sing songs in concert from the time where he wasn’t in the band? There are some really nice songs he didn’t write and recorded.
@50: He has said that those versions of DP feels like seeing his wife in bed with another man. Personally, I have always thought it natural that IG dont wing those songs. Just as Ozzy didn’t sing any Dio tunes in Sabbath.
@47
Thanks so much Uwe, I had completely forgotten the concert from ‘99 with Paul McC and Ian P behind the drums 😃 it’s lovely to see them together!
I did not know Ian P also worked together with Tom Petty and George Harrison in Leathal Weapon II’s super hit Cheer Down. Actually I think I can hear Jeff Lynne singing backing vocals to that tune?
In the autobiographies by Ian G (they should be identical I guess, but there are differences ☺️) Ian doesn’t mention Beatles very much!
Is there any info if they did collaborate in some way?
They are around the same age I guess.
The link to SOTW with David Gilmour among many others, is rather fun! I do think the singer is butchering the song 🤦🏼♀️ but it’s nice to see DG go a little further than what I have heard him do before.
Fraternisation? 😄😄 I immensely enjoy talking to you all in here!
Thanks
K
@51
Oh ok, Svante, that makes sense that Ian doesn’t wanna sing those songs then 😂
I just think that maybe people at the concerts would love to hear the other songs, but feeling like that I understand completely he skips them.
Thanks,
K
“He has said that those versions of DP feels like seeing his wife in bed with another man.”
Yes, but isn’t that an entertaining thought to quite a few people?!
My guess is that Big Ian found it insulting that in 1973 no one from the remaining band and management tried to talk him back into staying with DP whose voice he had been. He never really took DC and GH seriously as his successors and, of course, their lyrics were likely above his intellectual pain threshold. Likewise, I don’t think that either DC or GH ever saw much in Ian’s vocal and lyrical style, it explains why they really weren’t all that good in interpreting the Mk II material. They were both singers heavily influenced by black vocalists (coming from the North and the Midlands of England they were very much more immersed in that kind of music than IG as a Londoner was, ’Northern Soul’ was after all a movement and a genre in English pop music in the 60s and 70s) and DC especially had a preference for much more conventional (but catchy) vocal melodies than Big Ian who employed a curious mix of the unexpected and the very much expected (his penchant for singing Blackmore’s riffs in synchronicity, generally more of a garage band thing to do, yet very much a trademark of the early MK II sound) when constructing his vocal melodies.
@55
But what a triumphant way to show of how much better a singer he was and is, by singing their material how it really should have been sung in the first place 🥳
But maybe I don’t completely get the male competition 😉
K
There’s nothing in it for Gillan to sing Mk 3 and 4 material. He doesn’t identify with the lyrics and (maybe) holds a grudge against the music of that time, so he’d never give his all. And then, even if he did give them an honest go, he’d be lambasted because his voice and delivery sounds nothing like DC’s or GH’s.
So instead of hearing “oh, why don’t they play Burn? Gillan should quit being such a wuss and do it”, in an alternate reality it’d be “Gillan sucks at singing Burn. He should stick to his own material”.
The vocal & musical comparisons are what separates covers from originals. Creating your own is far more enlightening than replicating someone else’s. I can understand both sides of the coin, some vocalists had to cover others because of the situation at the time, Dio, Coverdale & Hughes etc. Others can afford to say ‘I don’t think so’. Ian Gillan, Jon Anderson, probably Rob Halford & Bruce Dickinson too. Is it being a tad disrespectful or snobbish or whatever word fits the bill. No I don’t think so, personal preferences. However there are some vocalists who do enjoy other singers & simply dig certain melodies & lyrics. It goes both ways. Iconic lead vocalists singing replacement singers & different melodies & lyrics. I do agree with them not going there, they don’t have to, why should they? Cheers.
Gillan, Coverdale, Hughes and Turner were all fine singers in their prime, I wouldn’t say one is better than the others. I prefer Gillan’s lyrics and tone, DC had perhaps the most commercially engaging, yet still individual voice, Glenn had the most impeccable technique and astounding range and Joe Lynn Turner was the most versatile one, but they were all excellent vocalists. You don’t get to sing with Ritchie if you’re not up to the job.
That is not to say Rod was bad, but I don’t consider him in the same league as the other four. There is also less material over a shorter period to judge him on, the guy can only be heard on five studio albums, three from DP and two from Captain Beyond (where I liked his voice actually better than with DP).
I know you’ve said that you like Living For The City by Gillan – that was a case where I thought that Big Ian couldn’t do a song justice at all (to his defense: it wasn’t his choice to cover it).
That is a number that both Glenn (obviously, being the Stevie Wonder fan he is) and DC could have done much better, even Joe Lynn Turner. Ian’s singing style just isn’t Black American enough for something like that. Instead, that Gillan version sounded like some NWOBHM outfit had gotten its hands on the poor song. I’m no great fan of Ian doing No More Cane On The Brazos either, it’s a stretch to see him toiling in the heat on a molasses farm in the not so Grand Old South (if you were black).
Gillan singing Burn would be as convincing as him singing Heaven & Hell with Sabbath, that left much to be desired and lacked Dio’s passion for the (non-sensical) lyrics too.
…and why should IG sing Mark III stuff if they’re having troubles fitting their own classics plus a couple of new songs into their setlist? What was said here about lyrics and style being totally different is certainly true. Plus: Mark III didn’t even have real “hits” that need to be played like SOTW or Black Night (Hush he DOES sing) or PS. Burn or Mistreated spring to mind as possible additions – but can anyone imagine IG doing them justice? I can’t hear him sing Mistreated … and feel it. The lyrics et al. (Though he did a fab job on If You Believe Me – but being blues as well it still has a gillanesque lyrical edge to it.) I’d rather have DC covering When a Blindman Cries …
Ok – I really don’t get the masculine competition 🤓
I know what you mean Uwe, Stevie Wonder is an amazing singer, no doubt about that.
Ian is, in my tiny universe, so much more fantastic. He possesses the inner primal scream but in connection with finesse and intellect (I’m not saying any other singer you all can mention isn’t intelligent I just dig Ian’s way of telling the story)
David Gilmour, Jeff Lynne, Stevie Wonder, even Paul McC, are great singers, but (oh sorry for this I’m about to say 😝) Ian Gillan seems to be much more a lion compared to them!
Please before any of you suggest I’m affected of Ian’s noble looks ore anything like that (I’m a VERY happily married woman) I just really love his voice as it has been and has evolved over the many years he has been in that world of music.
I remember Luciano Pavarotti praised Ian G, and I guess LP really knew his way around singers ☺️
Have a lovely day 😊
K
I liked Gillan’s version of Living For The City back in the 1980’s. It is a different heavy version & why not. I haven’t ever watched this video for it though, amusing to say the least & it is good to hear the song again. Cheers.
Uwe @ 61- the lyrics to the song Heaven & Hell are about certain aspects to life itself in this world. I would have thought that in itself would have ticked a few boxes. Oh well not to worry, each to their own, again. However I do agree with Gillan more than likely not getting that song right vocally & also the Ozzy era as well. Not that I want to listen to it. The same with the song Burn or any other Coverdale & Hughes DP songs. A quality singer will sing the song(s) they helped create so much more realistically. I call other versions with different vocalists covers, because to my ears that is what they sound like. A bit like Dio singing Ozzy era Sabbath & Mistreated. Or Queen + or non Jon Anderson ‘Yes’. Remember Judas Priest & Iron Maiden in the 90’s era. Or better off not! Cheers.
Ian not being able to sing Burn or Heaven & Hell technically is not the issue, of course he can. But does he sound convincing doing it?
Paul Rodgers sang all the Freddie Mercury stuff fine when with Queen + he was Freddie’s favorite singer, but did he sound convincing? You can’t sing something like I Want To Break Free and mean it without being flamboyantly gay. Rodger’s always had his issues with gay people as his distraught relationship with Andy Fraser showed.
@67
He would be able to make those songs his own! I’m pretty sure he can sing anything!
Heard him sing ‘Nessum dorma’, with Luiciano Pavarotti (yes I know, you all have seen this many times before ☺️) and obviously Ian had no hand on that lyrics but it was beautiful 🤩
from my point of view you are absolutely right,
The other singers have always been in their own backyard, in their own area, except the great Freddy with the variety of styles of Queen and except Robert Plant with the ethnic trip, I can’t think of any great experimentations by singers…
only Ian has gone through 70’s hard rock, NWOBHM, rock-jazz, AoR, classical, cartoon soundtracks, Elvis-style r’n’r, and all the rock that I consider experimental and innovative from the Morse era (the first period more vivid, the second more boring but still of high quality)
Ian has a diverse discography that is unmatched in the music world.
is he the best singer ever to walk the face of the planet?
for what he has done and for the longevity of his career I firmly believe so.
as for his voice I’d like to say yes, but I think that’s a yes for the 70s, and then he ruined his voice in the 80s (damn him!!) and it was never the same again.
otherwise he would truly be the number one rock singer in the world from the 70s to today!
@70
Yes he did do damage to his voice, didn’t he? I seem to remember he had some surgery in the throat and went of with Black Sabbath, screaming his way through the year with them, and I’m afraid that wasn’t the most healthy thing for him to do.
But we see eye to eye on Ian G’s phenomenal voice. I truly admire and appreciate his singing now, on =1 I mean, and I do so much hope they’re making some more music for us 😃
K
Actually, I heard damage in Ian Gillan’s voice as early as on Made in Japan. I believe that his last album with his voice at 100% was Machine Head. It then decayed gradually, but all things do.
Mind you, I still like his voice today as long as he doesn’t overstretch himself.
@72
Ok, let me tell you a little tell tell sign I can see as a trained homeopath:
Even as early as 1973 he twisted his mouth as it hurted when he strained himself singing.
It’s really obvious to see, and I have always thought it looked like he was hurting a bit.
Besides that I have noticed he often have coughed while singing.
It looks like he have had some kind of bronchitis, not pneumonia.
But his voice has always been phenomenal, I’m just sorry for him if it has been hurting 🥺
@ 72 – Even earlier than Made In Japan Uwe. Those live clips from the Fireball era, Gillan is shot there vocally. He looks pretty out of it also. Rock ‘n roll eh. Cheers.
I don’t agree that Gillan was ruining his voice already after Machine Head, more likely the grueling tours, colds, bronchitis and hepatitis weakened him….moreover he was still young and his larynx was still young.
when I say he ruined his voice, I mean in the incorrect way that he began to assume in the last years of his solo career and then continued with Sabbath and then in the reunion of Perfect Strangers, that is, singing dirtier, rougher, this was noticeable also in the studio albums but especially in the live performances.
It’s clear to me that it was his deliberate choice to change his way of singing, which wasn’t his natural way and this then created more problems for him than before.
making a parallel also Davide Coverdale when he started in the second period of Whitesnake to not sing in a natural way anymore after which he obviously ruined his voice
Karin, he actually did suffer a severe bout of bronchitis in 1972 – it is the reason why he liked neither his performance on MIJ nor on WDWTWA because he could still hear it in his voice.
Big Ian always sounded ‘gravelly’ and slightly distorted on the MIJ recordings to me, but a lot of people seemed to like just that. To me it sounded as if something wasn’t quite right. It’s one of the reasons why I prefer the Machine Head tracks in their studio versions – unlike most people.
@76
I’m not surprised he kept on singing actually because he did give everything he had in him, still does 😊☺️
It’s easily cured, but you need a homeopath to get to the root of the problem. If you don’t get to the root it’s just like putting a bandaid on a broken leg, can look almost ok but underneath it’s not.
Well I guess Ian G figured something out because his voice now seem really good and balanced 😊
I noticed in the official video for Perfect Strangers, when he is singing in a room where you also can see Roger G and Ian P, he is twisting his mouth and lips, really looks like he was in pain there 🥺
Amazing he has kept on singing all this time ⭐️👍🏼
Have a lovely day everybody 👋🏼👋🏼
Don’t be fooled by the music videos, they are playback and then synced with the recordings.
in the studio Ian, like all singers, doesn’t run the risks he runs live, it’s all in the safe zone, it’s not like singing on tour for 2 hours every night.
you can understand this comfort zone in the studio listening to the masterpiece Fighting Man, but you can also understand the bad habits listening to the incredible Vengeance!
more than a homeopath, a singing teacher would have been needed to make him stop the bad habits he had acquired, the problem was not the grimaces he made with his mouth, but rather the use of his vocal cords, above all probably the fact that the prolonged use for years of the false vocal cords to “distort” his timbre had become dominant compared to the arytenoids (which are used for the transition to head voice/belting) with the result that Big Ian when he reached the high range would go too far beyond the chest area putting an unnatural strain on his larynx.
but this has nothing to do with facial grimaces, grimaces are necessary to take high notes with head voice/belting to make the sound turn and keep the larynx low….since each person has a different skeleton from another, everyone makes different grimaces, it’s normal.
Ian Gillan in the 70s had a fantastic natural technique, he hit the high notes of Child in Time with a ton of high harmonics (you can hear them even in made in Japan), his strings were pulled perfectly and this is demonstrated by the perfect intonation (which he didn’t have in the 80s) and he didn’t have the sharp break between the two voices like Robert Plant or Glenn Hughes, but he had a natural passage.
for him, and for all singers there are Deep Purple songs more technically difficult than Child in Time if a singer has a correctly set head voice.
Woman from Tokyo and Space Truckin for example are very bastard songs for a singer because they play a lot on the register transition notes, which are the notes that if you don’t do them well (making the chest voice go beyond the limits, maybe even with the false chords that dirty everything) in the long run the voice goes away, goodbye!!
If I were Ian, I would have removed these two songs from the set list back in the 80s!
but the greatest suicide singer was David Coverdale who in the 80s not only changed his way of singing drastically, but also wrote almost all the songs of 1987 which have so many difficult notes in the register transition area, and he didn’t sing them well and when he unleashed the Whitesnake his high voice was gone!
I say this because I studied singing for a few years when I was young and I sang in some cover bands (even a Deep Purple tribute that never made it out of the rehearsal room because we never found a decent keyboard player)
@78
I know what you mean, but I just mention that video because there it’s very obvious how he was twisting his mouth, just as he has been doing many times in live performances 😊 otherwise you’re completely right of course.
I’ve seen the same movement of the mouth in children who have severe throat problems.
Ha ha 😂 he did actually need a skilled and trained homeopath, allow me to explain:
Our bodies are brilliant ingenious machines so to speak. When everything is running smoothly the body is completely capable to perform what ever you want of it, BUT – when something is going wrong, if you sprain an ankle f.i you will overcompensate to spare your sprained ankle. If you don’t get the sprained ankle fixed it will manifest throughout your whole body very soon and give a lot of other very difficult problems.
When something goes wrong anywhere you will overcompensate, often without being aware of it at all, when you then feel pain in other parts it’s not easy to see through the reason, a lot of people just think that ‘oh great now I have a new problem/situation, well thank you very much 😖’ 😃 but actually the new bad situation in the body is often directly connected to the original problem.
So if you have sprained an ankle the solution is easy, lift your leg, get a bandage on and get some homeopathic remedies that actually speed up the healing process extraordinarily.
When it comes to the delicate area in the throat, vocal cords, fine ligaments etc, you’re often not aware of the problem!
It maybe start feeling a bit peculiar and without realising you start to overcompensate, which in fact will end up ruining other parts in the throat.
I’m sure a singing coach could be helpful but not for long if it was f.i nodules on the vocal cords (there can be dozens of other problems going on there 😊)
Or in the case of our favourite singer, he seemed to suffer from bronchitis, why he did that is not for me to say, but that coughing he did could be enough to irritate and give inflammation, which again will start a process from being bad to becoming worse.
What I mean is, bad habits as you mention, do come for a reason.
I saw him perform with Episode Six, on YT, and there he seems much more at ease.
Maybe it was because he was smoking, I don’t know. I just know bad habits aren’t coming from nothing 😊 there will always be a reason.
Actually also personal problems caused by troublesome people, can also manifest itself in serious illnesses, so it’s not always easy to explain or figure out why someone is hurting.
Oh you’ve studied singing, so you are very much aware how delicate an area we’re talking about here 😊
You have some great observations, Fla76, very instructive!
Yes, you’re right, Gillan had a great passaggio voice between his tenor and his falsetto register, not like Glenn Hughes, Robert Plant or Rob Halford who basically just “switch” between the two. Graham Bonnet has that passaggio too though his voice is otherwise quite unlike Big Ian’s.
“But the greatest suicide singer was David Coverdale who in the 80s not only changed his way of singing drastically, but also wrote almost all the songs of 1987 which have so many difficult notes in the register transition area, and he didn’t sing them well and when he unleashed the Whitesnake his high voice was gone!”
Wiser words have never been spoken. I don’t (and neither did Jon Lord who shook his head about it years later) know what possessed him. DC tends to be aware of what goes around him and then knee jerk-assimilates that into his own personal style in a rather unreflected way sometimes: I believe in the early 80ies he looked at the US charts he couldn’t crack and saw them populated by Foreigner, Journey, Toto, REO Speedwagon and Styx – each one of them a band featuring a lead vocalist with a naturally considerably higher range than his. He then devised this great master plan to emulate them (with a pretty boy guitarero like John Sykes in tow for image reasons), when in truth he was closer to Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp as a singer.
And that is how we ended up with DC “singing”/screaming his balls off to something like Still Of The Night. When I heard that song for the first time, I was so disappointed and thought: “What is the point of this, you’re not Rob Halford, you lose all expression and sexy machismo singing/screaming that high?!”
Mind you, I don’t mind falsetto singing at all, one of my favorite Priest songs has Auntie Roberta hit the stratosphere in the middle eight at 03:32
trust me that bronchitis does not make you lose your head voice (due to the synchronized movement of the arytenoids and the soft palate) … Big Ian in the late 70s began to deliberately change his singing style and timbre and this without a vocal education and a style different from his own caused the loss of his head voice.
Stylistically Ian does not have a light voice like for example Steve Perry, John Waite, Lou Gramm or in metal Geoff Tate, James Labrie, Michael Kiske or Timo Kotipelto….
Singers with light voices are naturally more advantaged in maintaining it, although as they age they too lose the high notes.
Geoff Tate is a special case, an extraordinary voice and technique from low to high notes, a monstrous control of the larynx.
Ian can be generically placed in the vocal color category of Ronnie Dio and Bruce Dickinson, with the difference that they had a more “lyrical” setting that allowed them to keep their voice in shape (net of the physiological aging of the individual or illnesses).
Dickinson owes the fortune of his unmistakable vocal setting to the far-sighted Martin Birch who, when he began producing Maiden, forced him to change his way of singing!
I repeat, leaving aside the grimaces in the studio playback videos which are just cinematic acting, grimaces and efforts in live performances are not an indication of bad vocals.
professional singing is effort and fatigue not only for the voice, but for the whole body, it’s like running 20km with continuous accelerations and slowdowns, you sweat like a camel and they have to try to always stay rested and in shape for the audience, there are two fundamental things, physical shape and the right vocal setting, but if the second is missing you can be 100% fit but you will lose your voice.
Do you want to hear a singer with an extraordinary natural vocal technique?
the great Steve Lee of Gotthard, if I remember correctly he didn’t study singing, but he studied his voice and understood by himself how to sing correctly from when he was a boy until he found his death on the American route 66….high voice performed mechanically to perfection and above all mixed voice performed mechanically to perfection!
Do you want to hear a singer who makes faces live because he can’t hit the notes correctly?
the good and honest Nic Maeder who replaced Steve in Gotthard. He has a nice scratchy timbre, but it is precisely his timbre that has made him acquire a wrong vocal setting that does not allow him to reach the high notes that his type of voice could surely reach without difficulty.
All vocalists are up against it big time, especially if over doing it. Too many performances, too much touring etc etc etc. However the old adage of being their own worst enemy could very well apply to some. Obviously not entirely their fault as grinding touring schedules are booked by managers,agents etc who sit in an office or in a Rolls Royce. It can happen to any singer at any time. Rock ‘n roll of course isn’t the best scene to be involved in as the younger generational bad habits & adrenalin constantly kick in. Gillan is lucky that he can still sing at all to my ears. He sort of gets away with it still, depending on the night. Really dedicated vocalists retire once they cannot attain a certain level of delivery. However as we still witness every day, Ian Gillan & the word ‘retirement’ do not exist in the same world. Not as yet anyway. It’s rock n roll & the bar isn’t set as high as with other genres. Cheers.
@81
Ok then 😊
If only we had a portable door that could bring us back in time, I would’ve loved to check him and to see what the right remedies could’ve done.
@82
You’re completely right MacGregor 😊
The decay of time hits us all.
What I just find so very interesting in Ian G’s voice is the fact that he really early on seemed to be having troubles, and now years later sing very much at ease again. I know he cannot perform as he could in his 20s, but still there seem to be an improvement 😊
I truly hope he’ll keep singing ☺️
![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/gillan9.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/mcbride5.jpg)
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The coolest is RG!
September 20th, 2024 at 23:56He is the winner! 😅👍
Way to go, Simon has brought that 70ies all denim look back to the Deeps! 🤣
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGpR2mgqvNo
September 21st, 2024 at 00:17Great pix! I was at the Montreal show….nice to see those close-up photos of the Purples in action at the Bell Centre.
September 21st, 2024 at 01:06C’est vraiment joie de vivre 😍😍😍
I was at a Danish museum today, called ‘Den Gamle By’ in Aarhus, and we spend a lot of time at the exhibition from the mid-70’es.
Of course there was Deep Purple albums on display, among those my favourite In Rock actually. Some older guys were around to tell stories from the good old days! The guy I talked with did not know Deep Purple! I was in shock 😳
He rambled on about Led Zeppelin (😅) I asked him if he ever have heard Smoke on the Water!
He had not 😳😳
Then I became quite serious, and almost commanded him to watch on YT concert from Copenhagen ‘72, and he almost said ‘yes m’am’ 😁😄
We ended out little talk on good terms, but I’m still rather surprised that a man of his age didn’t know DP!
Luckily this forum exists 💜💜💜
September 21st, 2024 at 16:39K
@ 4 – ha ha ha Karin, that is an amusing tale indeed. Uwe most probably will comment also regarding that Led Zeppelin aficionado not knowing DP. It is quite hilarious actually & thank you for brightening up my morning. Cheers.
September 21st, 2024 at 22:56Uwe contemplating what that guy at the Danish museum really meant. Cheers.
https://stockcake.com/i/ancient-scroll-contemplation_423575_615637
September 21st, 2024 at 23:09I tend to not mingle with people liking this other band. You’ll never know to what intellectual depths they will plunge, but I believe this guy was simply trying to appeal to Karin’s maternal instincts to flirt with her. Most Led Zep fans lack meaningful social contacts, that explains a lot, it’s a music that breeds desperation.
Denmark is a developed country with sophisticated inhabitants who keep our Jylland WW II bunkers in great shape, I rule out that there was ever a time there where LZ meant more than DP. Folly the thought!
September 21st, 2024 at 23:51Hi everyone!
September 22nd, 2024 at 03:58For those who feel that Steve wasn’t the right guitarist for Deep Purple, just try remember how exciting & wild it all was when he first joined the band, in much the same way that it is now with Simon.
To illustrate this point, I’m linking the following concert from 2 March, 1996 in Scotland. See how the setlist changed from Ritchie’s same old hardline, to a more varied, exciting & satisfying set of songs.
There’s only 6 songs from Ritchie’s regular playlist left in this 1996 concert. Then there are 6 other Ritchie era songs that shake things up.
The real kicker is the 7 new Steve era songs that show what the “All New” Deep Purple were capable of, & the fresh, exciting direction in which they were heading!. The banjo player took a hike, & what’s that song I used to like? Yes, indeed!
Ritchie gave us S&M the album. Gillan & the boys gave us SM the guitarist (extraordinaire). Now they’ve doubled down & given us SM the guitarist Mk2! Ritchie must see the irony!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHQiwegQloc
@7
Uwe I assure you there was no flirting taking place 😄
If that indeed was his plan he went all wrong about it!
I do have a question: Do any of you sense tango-notes in Strangeways?
September 22nd, 2024 at 12:14I somehow feel the urge to put a rose between my teeth, click my heels and look a little bit dangerous whenever I hear this lovely tune ☺️
K
I remember that first tour well, John, I saw them in Hanau and it was one of the best DP gigs I’ve ever witnessed, but “wild” is not an attribute I would choose. It was musicianly, joyous and collaboratively inspired. I don’t think that Steve ever had a “wild” moment in his life. 😉
And to be fair, Purple revamping the set list after a major line up change was nothing new to them: Even early Mk II played only a few songs of Mk I such as Hush, Kentucky Woman, Mandrake Root, Wring That Neck and Fault Line. Mk III retained basically only HS, SOTW and SpTr + a bit of Fools from Mk II and Mk IV threw everything from MK III into the bin except Burn, Stormbringer and very occasionally Soldier of Fortune (they did resurrect Lazy from Mk II though).
September 22nd, 2024 at 14:05@ 9 – you did very well Karin in standing up for Deep Purple against the tyranny of a Led Zeppelin fan, well done. I am most disappointed in Uwe not recognising that you potentially put your life on the line for Deep Purple. It sounds like that guy was retreating big time. That is the sort of dedication & passion required to thwart the Led Zeppelin leviathan. Not Uwe & being a wimp & simply stating that he wouldn’t even bother to communicate with the man, what a cop out. Congratulations Karin. As for Uwe, I will sort him out. I have a cunning plan. Cheers.
September 22nd, 2024 at 18:08To hear this from Herr MacGregor of all people, that unabashed Led Zep floozy who probably languishes in a folding chair with a sink in hand all day long waiting for the Tasmanian forest to echo with laughter!
https://youtu.be/soJBGLP7Akk
September 22nd, 2024 at 21:28@ 12 – ha ha ha, yes that was a bad cover version that one. You will never guess what happened to me today whilst gardening at lady’s residence. She is originally from the state of Wisconsin & moved out here about 50 years ago. Anyway me being me I couldn’t help but to ask, did you see any rock bands back then when you were a younger hippie rock ‘n roller. No she said, but my favourite band was Led Zeppelin. Ha ha ha, oh I did grin widely indeed. And why do I think of Uwe when these things happen? I do think it is about time Uwe invokes that famous Henry II saying from the dim & distant past. ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome band? Cheers.
September 23rd, 2024 at 06:48@11
Thanks MacGregor 😄
I did survive though☀️ look forward to hear more about the plans..
@12
September 23rd, 2024 at 07:14🤣🤣
@ 9
Oh yes Karin!
Tango! Yours is a brilliant intuition!
I have never understood why pieces from THOBL have never been played in concert😔
September 23rd, 2024 at 11:28But they did play songs from THOBL on the tour back then: Bad Attitude, The Unwritten Law, Hard Loving Woman, Dead Or Alive, they even gave Call Of The Wild a try a few times. I was there.
They just never played anything – to my knowledge – from THOBL again on subsequent tours. Not with Joe Lynn Turner, not with a returned Ian Gillan, not with Joe Satriani or Steve Morse.
I think Simon could do a killer version of Bad Attitude, that is right up his alley.
September 23rd, 2024 at 14:26@ Uwe alt 16
eh! thank you very much: it was the promotional tour..
September 23rd, 2024 at 16:26Me too I went to those concerts.
The Unwritten Law with the following drums solo 🥁
September 23rd, 2024 at 17:18@15 oh thanks AndreA ☺️
@16 Call of the Wild and Hard Loving Woman are energetic and amazing songs 🤩
September 23rd, 2024 at 17:37I am going off my memory here but DP didn’t really support THOBL that much on the following tour, did they? Anyway that is the very reason I did not buy the ‘Nobody’s Perfect’ live album. How many of THOBL songs are on there? Three I think & one of them (Hard Lovin Woman) is one of the worst DP songs ever. I couldn’t put that album back in the rack at the record store quick enough. They may have performed a few more songs at some concerts, I don’t know. I would at least hope so. Cheers.
September 23rd, 2024 at 23:18@20
September 24th, 2024 at 07:34Macgregor, you don’t like ‘Hard loving woman’!
Well well well 😅😅
I attended 2 shows of the HOBL tour. They did play Bad Attitude, The Unwritten Law, Hard Loving Woman and Dead or Alive at those shows. At some shows they tried Call of the Wild, I’ve got a bootleg with that one on it. As far as I know they did give Mad Dog an airing as well.
Dare I say I quite enjoyed Nobody’s Perfect though I would have liked a few more new tracks too. But it’s good fun -especiallly Hard Loving Woman. Just your nice little Purple-rock’n’roll-song, think Lady Double Dealer or Lay Down Stay Down.
September 24th, 2024 at 08:59Karin! No double entendres here, please. This is something we are not used too.
What Max says: My most magical Mk II gig was from the THOBL tour and Nobody’s Perfect is unjustly derided. I does suffer from nearly everything being played too darn fast – that takes some of the might and grandeur out of the Purple sound – , but that is first and foremost Ritchie’s fault as he rushes the band – as he did all Rainbow line-ups (until of course he couldn’t anymore, with RAIunioNBOW he was often too slow in bpm, all those decades with BN plus age had him lose his Rock’n’Roll swiftness). DP only settled for their more groovy speeds again once Joe Satriani and then Steve Morse played for them. Ritchie’s renditions especially of older material were sometimes so rushed they sounded loveless – as if he wanted to get it over with quickly.
I remember playing Nobody’s Perfect in the car with an accomplished guitarist sitting beside me – neither a DP nor a Blackmore fan per se (more the Allman Brothers type), but someone with open ears. And he made a comment on Ritchie’s playing that really startled me back then, not a nasty one, it sounded more concerned: “Listening to this you can hardly believe that this is the same guy playing as on Made In Japan. What happened to his natural fluidity? He used to play the guitar like a violin and now it is all stops and starts and rushed runs that are not that precisely executed, disappointing.”
September 24th, 2024 at 15:33@23
September 24th, 2024 at 22:12Nothing double here at all! Uwe I was just surprised there was a song, any song of DP he didn’t like 🤔
K
@ 21- ha ha ha, it is a fine line between pleasure & pain Karin. Cheers.
September 24th, 2024 at 22:53Yes indeed the 1980’s & it could be possibly what was mentioned not long ago in regards to 80’s Rainbow. The Peruvian mountains snow could have been drifting around the place. I do find Blackmore’s playing in the 90’s much more realistic, in the sense of it not sounding as rushed at all like during the 80’s. Cheers.
September 25th, 2024 at 03:08@ 23 – “but that is first and foremost Ritchie’s fault as he rushes the band – as he did all Rainbow line-ups (until of course he couldn’t anymore,” Hang on Uwe, poor ole Cozy was blamed for that a while ago according to what you often stated. I returned a comment suggesting that on the Munich dvd concert it was Blackmore starting many of the songs too fast. So does Cozy now get let off at all, most probably not as he will still get the ‘ham fisted’ approach blamed on him & the ‘barbarian at the gates’ bludgeoning to everything. Oh dear, I suppose someone has to go into bat for him. No harm in trying, again. Cheers.
September 25th, 2024 at 03:19Uwe, sorry I can’t find the post, but somewhere you said that Andy Scott worshipped at Blackmore’s altar, or something like that ☺️
September 25th, 2024 at 07:59Now I have been listening carefully to both gentlemen, and I must say, and please remember I know nothing about anything regarding the understanding of music 😝, Blackmore is a poet, even when he is playing rough.
Whereas Andy Scott is no poet what so ever! He plays wonderfully but he is much more rough and not gentle at all!
Well this is just one ordninary woman’s opinion 😊
K
@25 sorry Mac, hadn’t really read the lyrics before now, and now I’m blushing ☺️🤭
September 25th, 2024 at 08:01K
Now I’ve received two autobiographies by Ian Gillan and his GW!
Well I thought it was volume 1 and 2, but it seems to be the same.
There are differences though, but that’s not what I’m writing about 😊
I’ve a completely new view on RB, not because IG is talking him down, because he isn’t, actually IG is a wonderful man about all that, and I’m really impressed with his phenomenal way to own up to the situation!
If I didn’t already was impressed with IG because of his wonderful voice and singing, I certainly would be because of his kind way of being a real human being.
I would love to hear other readers comments 😃
September 25th, 2024 at 12:30K
If Blackmore had not enjoyed Cozy’s natural rushing of the beat, the latter wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in Rainbow. They were kindred spirits in so far.
The Munich gig was legendary if you were there. Ritchie was extremely on edge and high-strung from his incarceration in Austria. He hit the stage like an animal unleashed.
September 25th, 2024 at 13:02yea, unfortunately Ritchie’s fast and terribly dirty playing, combined with the awful sounds of the 80’s have been immortalised to perfection in “nobody’s perfect” which is truly incomparable to the levels of the 70’s.
a couple of weeks ago I listened to the 85 live at knebworth again and I didn’t remember it being so bad.
That said I always regret being too young to go see Purple on the Perfect Strangers tour
September 25th, 2024 at 21:15Princess Karin, I didn’t say that Andy was as good as Ritchie, he just tried to be! He’s Ritchie several notches dumbed down and without the mystique. But if you want to hear both of them together in one song, voilà!
https://youtu.be/qIFxWz1UG3I
There was always this theory that Sweet’s non-Chinn Chapman B-sides sounded like proto-Purple
https://youtu.be/Wrhe9f7RVzE,
Yeah, there was a passing resemblance, but I think the whole thing was overstated by Sweet fans with an inferiority complex, wishing to latch onto DP’s credibility as musicians. Sweet had their first hit not penned by Chin Chapman only in 1975 with Fox On The Run (itself a rip-off from Free’s Alright Now), by then their career was beginning to come to an end.
And Sweet weren’t the only ones who in the early to mid 70s experimented with a riff-laden Purple sound:
https://youtu.be/F-lwEANyI3I
Just think of Uriah Magpie:
https://youtu.be/mrVUok4YRfI
https://youtu.be/v4JAUCRQ9_g
September 25th, 2024 at 21:45@ 33- I don’t hear anything Uwe in those Uriah Heep songs that resembles ‘riff laden DP’. Each to their own & Status Quo?????????? Regarding Heep & Salisbury is a really poor album, not in my cd collection. The worst of the Byron era Heep. Ken Hensley hadn’t found his mojo yet. I have always thought that the female journalist who said ‘if this band makes it, I will commit suicide’ could have easily been talking about the Salisbury album. It deserves a comment like that, in a joking sort of way of course. She is still alive, just like we all are. Cheers.
September 26th, 2024 at 08:09@33
😄😄 no you didn’t, and I didn’t say that either, but I just thought of what you did say: that AS worshipped at RB’s altar 😄
And I just can’t hear AS at all sound anything like RB 😊
I do really like AS’s way of playing, but it’s so very different to RB. Whereas RB is poetic most of the times, even when he went crazy playing Gipsy’s Kiss 😊, AS is much more rock’n’roll.
Thanks so much for the links.
About bass players, was Kelly Groucutt anything near what the fans of ELO put him up to be? Or was there a very good reason for Jeff Lynne to sack him and most of the band, and play all the instruments himself?
And regarding to Jeff Lynne I read that Francis Rossi said that he didn’t admire Deep Purple but he does admire Jeff Lynne, as the only one to admire (sorry can’t find it)!
September 26th, 2024 at 08:12Very amusing I think, because when I was in my teens and really loved ELO, EVERYBODY said ‘oh ELO is just a plagiarism of Beatles, and Jeff Lynne is a mediocre musician’.
But then he started out to produce some old forgotten Beatles tunes, he joined Travelling Wilburys, and today it’s just as hard to get tickets to his concerts as it is to Deep Purple!
Suddenly everybody simply adore Jeff Lynne! Funny how things change!
K
#Karin
Ritchie changed his style and sound a bit from the 70s to the 80s, of course Scott doesn’t sound like Blackmore from the 80s, but if you listen to the whole Sweet discography you realise that The Man in Black influenced him a lot.
Uwe&MacGregor
on the other hand in the early 70s there were often points of contact between hard rock bands, the sound was practically the same and in general terms also the style of the songs
Uwe& MacGregor:
I world say that Deep Purple were as evident an influence on Uriah Heep as they were on Sweet, but there are some points of contact.
of course for me Uriah Heep are a fundamental and always underrated band that has written indelible pages in the history of hard rock, I don’t put them in the Olympus of the fabulous 5 (Jimi and Crem together with the triumvirate), but in the second tier with Blue Öyster Cult, ELP, Lynyrd, UFO, Grand Funk Railroad… I’m surely forgetting someone in the second tier.
September 26th, 2024 at 13:34Weird, Herr Mac Gregor, Salisbury was one of the most popular Heep albums in Germany. For me, Heep always sounded like Purple-by-numbers, with more catchy chorus parts and those overdone background vocals.
But there is also a DP song that sounds like Uriah Heep to me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMHFlls6lE
Andy Scott vs Ritchie … I can understand where the comparisons came from, Scott is more rock’n’roll, less classical than Ritchie, but Ritchie has a rock’n’roll component too and that is where I find Scott and him closer together than Ritchie and, say, Jimmy Page, OR Andy and Jimmy Page. On a track like Space Trucking, I believe Scott would have come up with something similar to Ritchie, Ritchie does play a little glam-rock’ish on that one
Kelly Groucutt? Good singer and bass player, nothing amazing, but his voice was part of the classic ELO sound. Jeff Lynne? Always dug him, but the ELO sound is a bit of a one-trick-pony, similar to Marc Bolan and the T. Rex sound. They both invented signature sounds, but then stuck with it forever. When Lynne produces something, he so much puts his own stamp on it that it borders on the hilarious: There is this one Bryan Adams number Jeff Lynne produced and you wonder when you hear it, why bother, Jeff, you should have sung it yourself, it sounds like Bryan doing an ELO tribute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbiBM1Piy1Q
Francis Rossi doesn’t like heavy metal or even heavy rock. He likes pop and C&W. For much of the early 70s there was strife within the Quo camp between Rossi’s direction and Lancaster/Parfitt who wanted Quo to be predominantly a heavy band. The two started going to DP gigs and wrote an album together – ‘Quo’ from 1974, the heaviest in SQ’s oeuvre, with most songs sung by Alan Lancaster and Rick Parfitt and one disliked by Rossi because of that fact (it’s my favorite one and most old time Quo fans agree). They sidelined Francis for much of the writing process and he saw that as an attempted coup: “But we’re NOT fucking Deep Purple!” That same Francis Rossi, however, said in an interview in the 80ies that he didn’t like heavy metal with ONE exception: Rainbow. And he meant the poppy Graham Bonnet/Joe Lynn Turner Rainbow by that.
Rossi is caustic and has a wry sense of humor. Rock’n’Roll machismo amuses him and he can’t take it serious, hence his distance to any rock music too chest-beatingly male and stern (which to him was represented by Alan Lancaster).
A lot of Quo songs are actually country’ish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFHM_dg15ig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCs4MJPxQc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yccbNqPOhwE&list=RDyccbNqPOhwE&start_radio=1
So no, most of DP’s music would have been too muscular and dark for Francis. Graham Bonnet otoh was right up his alley, Graham’s first two solo albums were produced by Pip Williams who produced much of Quo’s later work once Rossi had “won the (tug of) war” against Lancaster. Bonnet sang songs written by Rossi and Rossi + Parfitt guested on his albums pre-Rainbow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBXQrCBWzpw
Here’s the Quo original from a few years before:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqcS_72pKRI
If you’re a Quo fan like me, you need to accept both their sides, the heavy rock one and Rossi’s love for C&W and pop.
For Herr MacGregor: Cozy P delivering ample evidence that a smooth shuffle was not his forte – not like Ian Paice or John Coghlan at least, even the Tasmanian will have to agree for once …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LczdjBhMOaw
September 26th, 2024 at 18:17Ok guys, thanks so much for your inputs and links 😊
But let me ask you this one question:
Do you in all honesty think that Andy Scott (whom I really like as a guitarist, he is very rock’n’roll, the good way) would have been able to play the intro to Anya as Ritchie Blackmore did in the dvd-concert of Come hell or high water?
September 27th, 2024 at 08:10For me RB there was completely poetic, gentle, warm and really wonderful! (I’m NOT thinking of his personality, because I don’t know the man)
Steve Morse and Simon McBride would not be able to do it the exact same way either! They are both terrific, no wonderful, in their own ways, my point is just that RB was/is(?) completely different.
I don’t doubt that RB changed and played different, but that Anya intro, and also Beethoven’s Ode to Joy was magnificent.
K
@37
One-trick-pony you say 😂
Ok maybe I don’t fully understand the concept of that, but I guess you mean Jeff Lynne found a sound and stayed faithful to it, still does actually!
Yeah you’re completely right! It’s always so easy to hear the gentleman’s influence when he is producing anything!
Yes ‘Don’t let go’ from ‘Armchair Theatre’ has a very identical start to Bryan Adam’s ‘You belong to me’.
Actually when ELO split up, Bev Bevan, Kelly Croucutt, Mik Kaminski and maybe also Hugh McDowell and some singer made ELO part II, and I must admit when the song ‘Honest men’ was released there was so much Jeff Lynne’s print all over it!
The singer was not in any way near Jeff’s voice, but the arrangement (was Louis Clark part of it? I seem to remember he was) made me think if Jeff had regretted splitting up the band and send out another single.
But of course he hadn’t.
I somehow imagined that ‘Honest men’ was a tune that Jeff had started, forgotten all about it, left it on the disk when he ran out of the door, and the other guys said to each other: ‘well it’s a start’!
I loved Jeff Lynne’s music once, now I find it too melancholy 😞
Let me give an example:
ELO’s ‘Telephone line’, has depression written all over it!
Deep Purple made a similar song ‘Call of the wild’ (yeah I know the difficulties about that album HOBL) but that song was also about a guy who had met this fascinating woman and needed the operator to help him, just like ‘Telephone line’, but man what a difference!
‘Telephone line’ is beautiful for sure, but woah ‘blue days, black nights’ 😰 compared to ‘And I’ve got to see her again that gypsy child, Operator this is a call of the wild’! The latter has joy, happiness and lust for life written all over it, Jeff’s ‘Telephone line’: ‘I look into the sky (the love you need ain’t gonna see you throug)’, I imagine Mr Lynne must have been very depressed writing this.
September 27th, 2024 at 08:44And of course there is always room for sentiments like that, but please!
There are different ways to tackle the hard times life’s throwing at you, me, I prefer to ‘fight’ me out of it while humming a happy tune 🥰
I mean: you don’t have to make it much worse than it already is!
K
“For me RB there was completely poetic, gentle, warm and really wonderful!”
Karin, you told is like it is for m too. That is what made me love his music so much. In fact I don’t like all of the songs, I found the antics amusing the older I got, some of the album covers made me cringe, as did some of the lyrics (Rock Fever anybody?) to the songs (he didn’t write them but he didn’t do anything about it obviously) and the whole BN thing is a bit ridiculous anyway, Schlager, as Uwe said.
But as soon as he starts playing … it’s like a language only he had command of and some people seem to u nderstand it. Nothing ever moved me like this. Well in music, that is.
September 27th, 2024 at 14:45Liebe Frau Verndal, let’s go through your numerous items one by one, btw I do appreciate how you give us all homework from time to time, say did you consider becoming a teacher at one point?
1. Andy could have played the intro to Anya no sweat, he was very adept at emulating various styles, Sweet were always a lot more versatile than people thought from their singles and ran a gamut of different styles in their chequered career. The thing is, however: He couldn’t/wouldn’t have come up with it. He never shared Blackers’ penchant for Eastern scales and melodies which Ritchie already had in the late 60s, early 70s. Regarding that aspect of Ritchie’s playing someone like, say, Uli Jon Roth is much closer to Ritchie than Andy Scott. But then again both Blackmore and Uli watched closely what Hendrix did and the latter was never averse to playing something Eastern-tinged on his Strat.
2. I haven’t checked, but one-trick-pony is probably derived from circus people lingo describing an animal or artist who can do one spectacular stunt, but nothing else.
There is a fine line between “being immediately recognizable”, something many bands strive for, and becoming a one-trick-pony. THE BEATLES and QUEEN are probably arch-examples of bands that were immediately recognizable, but never became one-trick-ponies.
3. Jeff Lynne is a great songwriter and forged a sound, but he very much stuck with it. Once he had wrested control from Roy Wood in early ELO the one-trick-pony loomed on the horizon and he never climbed from its saddle. ELO have seen deserved re-appreciation in recent years, but I distinctly remember a time in the late 70ies and early 80ies when their trademark sound was regularly ridiculed – much like disco era Bee Gees.
Telephone Line’s subject matter – feeling homesick and calling a loved one over the Atlantic in an age when those connections were fraught with breaking down – is wonderful, but Lynne overdid with the backings and turned it into a schmaltz aria. That doesn’t mean I dislike the song, hey, I can dig schmaltz as Herr MacGregor never fails to point out mercilessly, it is my favorite ELO track along with the giddy dance floor stomper Living Thing.
Among my one-trick-pony guilty pleasures are these guys …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkYkeeM8qIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHDn34IQgyo
But it gets worse. I will now ruin my credibility here with a single post … I also appreciated these guys here (watch all German HS members turn their heads away in cringing shame 😁):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHl4FoK1Ys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5C8AC6V2KQ
I’ll never recover from this, I know.
4. I really dug Call Of The Wild, the vid, the song, the lyrics, the looseness of the performance and how Roger changes from the root note to the third for a short while in the coda. And it was ELOish, true.
Have you heard this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjbjNlA2tUQ
And this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTrp02hpI2E
September 27th, 2024 at 17:56Agree regarding Ritchie being so damn melodic with his guitar solo’s. He is in that elite realm along with David Gilmour. There are not many lead guitarists who deliver so constantly & effortlessly than those two. Not to my ears at least. Cheers.
September 27th, 2024 at 22:25@40
September 28th, 2024 at 06:51Yeah Max, if only that great guitarist could have controlled his temper, maybe his envy or jealousy towards Ian G, many things regarding Deep Purple would’ve been different 😊
K
@41
Uwe, I do sometimes wear my hair in a bun an I do possess some harsh looking glasses but I’m pretty sure the world of teaching and I are in much better places kept far away from each other!
Ad 1: oh I would simply love to hear Andy Scott play the intro to Anya like RB did it!
Ad 3: Unfortunately I’ve never met the FABULOUS Roy Wood neither the AMAZING Jeff Lynne, so I don’t have this info firsthand but I’m of this impression that Roy wanted to part with Jeff on good terms.
They went in different directions, on the other hand I do not think ELO would ever had existed without Mr Woods impact in the beginning!
Roy just wanted to go more in the experimental direction whereas Jeff, as you so neatly pointed out, later on took a turn into the disco world! And yes in one song copied BeeGees (what was the tune?? Midnight Blue perhaps?)
Btw I do adore Sailor – it’s very uplifting when I’m vacuuming or washing the floors 😄
I do have way too much respect for you to think badly of you liking Modern Talking! And I guess I don’t need to mention my own sentiments in that matter!
Ad 4: No had never heard Velvet Revolver with ‘Can’t get it out of my head’ before and hearing it now I do prefer the original with Jeff’s soothing voice.
And Ace F with ‘Do ya’ I can easily live without! Again Jeff does it better I guess.
May I add no 5?
Ok Ad 5: I would so much love to hear Ian G singing ‘Can’t get it out of my head’, and Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Silver Spring’! That would sound beyond brilliant I’m sure.
If anyone in this forum have some connection with the amazing Ian G, couldn’t you suggest this to him?
Ad 6: now I really need some lovely coffee! Take care and have a lovely weekend 🤗
September 28th, 2024 at 07:49@42
September 28th, 2024 at 09:46Hi Mac 👋🏼
I’ve listened to ‘Wish you were here’ several times now!
Yeah Gilmour is an amazing guitarist and singer!
Can you perhaps introduce me to some tunes with a little more ‘r’n’r’ in?
Without the dreadful impact ‘the wall’ made on me 😱
Thanks
K
That is a difficult request in certain aspects Karin, as Pink Floyd don’t really do rock ‘n roll per se. There are shorter individual songs are on those two earlier movie soundtrack albums I mentioned previously, some songs rock out a little, some are acoustic folk style & a few instrumentals. Animals is their most rock driven & guitar to the fore album. Still only three lengthy songs, although the album is bookended with two very short acoustic songs. Cheers.
September 28th, 2024 at 22:10Karin, here you have Dave Gilmour playing rock’n’roll:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM2x2ofLEyA
He can – if carefully instructed by a hard taskmaster from Liverpool.
He can even play hard rock (his solo is at 03:42):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tsw3nKDlBE
Don’t thank me, I aim to please. And will not lose a word about your appalling fraternization with this MacGregor type.
September 28th, 2024 at 22:24Karin @ 44 – “I do have way too much respect for you to think badly of you liking Modern Talking! And I guess I don’t need to mention my own sentiments in that matter”! Karin NEVER back off in dealing with Uwe, as we all have been working away at him for eons. We do feel we have him just where we want him at present after much tireless work chipping away at his armour. So give him heaps as we all do at times, he gives as good as he gets. NO compassion or empathy & definitely NO FEAR!
Uwe pictured below in a rather compromising position. Cheers.
https://etc.usf.edu/clipart/11800/11885/tied_11885.htm
September 29th, 2024 at 04:48This is a rather apt image as there is one individual from that group standing on Uwe’s chest, verbally going off big time by the look of it. I do wonder which one of us here that could be, anyone’s guess I suppose. And the lady on the horse, that easily could be Karin working out which attacking move she will use next. Cheers.
https://au.pinterest.com/pin/gulliver-tied-down-free-illustration-vintage-antique–402016704239933965/
September 29th, 2024 at 05:01@46
September 29th, 2024 at 11:55Yeah ok Mac, that’s what my sweetheart told me after I’ve been writing to you.
It’s too bad really, but because David Gilmour’s voice is gentle and soft I do have a hard time imagine him letting out a primal scream like Ian does 😄
I have been listening to PF now, and it’s a bit too – oh what’s the word? Spooky? No, not spooky, but very different than DP! But very emotional and tear-soaked 😞
Btw: does anyone know how come Ian doesn’t wanna sing songs in concert from the time where he wasn’t in the band? There are some really nice songs he didn’t write and recorded.
@50: He has said that those versions of DP feels like seeing his wife in bed with another man. Personally, I have always thought it natural that IG dont wing those songs. Just as Ozzy didn’t sing any Dio tunes in Sabbath.
September 29th, 2024 at 12:07@47
Thanks so much Uwe, I had completely forgotten the concert from ‘99 with Paul McC and Ian P behind the drums 😃 it’s lovely to see them together!
I did not know Ian P also worked together with Tom Petty and George Harrison in Leathal Weapon II’s super hit Cheer Down. Actually I think I can hear Jeff Lynne singing backing vocals to that tune?
In the autobiographies by Ian G (they should be identical I guess, but there are differences ☺️) Ian doesn’t mention Beatles very much!
Is there any info if they did collaborate in some way?
They are around the same age I guess.
The link to SOTW with David Gilmour among many others, is rather fun! I do think the singer is butchering the song 🤦🏼♀️ but it’s nice to see DG go a little further than what I have heard him do before.
Fraternisation? 😄😄 I immensely enjoy talking to you all in here!
September 29th, 2024 at 12:11Thanks
K
@ 48+49:
😄😄😄😄😄
I enjoy your friendly batterings 🙌🏼
September 29th, 2024 at 12:14@51
September 29th, 2024 at 12:17Oh ok, Svante, that makes sense that Ian doesn’t wanna sing those songs then 😂
I just think that maybe people at the concerts would love to hear the other songs, but feeling like that I understand completely he skips them.
Thanks,
K
“He has said that those versions of DP feels like seeing his wife in bed with another man.”
Yes, but isn’t that an entertaining thought to quite a few people?!
My guess is that Big Ian found it insulting that in 1973 no one from the remaining band and management tried to talk him back into staying with DP whose voice he had been. He never really took DC and GH seriously as his successors and, of course, their lyrics were likely above his intellectual pain threshold. Likewise, I don’t think that either DC or GH ever saw much in Ian’s vocal and lyrical style, it explains why they really weren’t all that good in interpreting the Mk II material. They were both singers heavily influenced by black vocalists (coming from the North and the Midlands of England they were very much more immersed in that kind of music than IG as a Londoner was, ’Northern Soul’ was after all a movement and a genre in English pop music in the 60s and 70s) and DC especially had a preference for much more conventional (but catchy) vocal melodies than Big Ian who employed a curious mix of the unexpected and the very much expected (his penchant for singing Blackmore’s riffs in synchronicity, generally more of a garage band thing to do, yet very much a trademark of the early MK II sound) when constructing his vocal melodies.
September 29th, 2024 at 15:53@55
September 29th, 2024 at 19:05But what a triumphant way to show of how much better a singer he was and is, by singing their material how it really should have been sung in the first place 🥳
But maybe I don’t completely get the male competition 😉
K
There’s nothing in it for Gillan to sing Mk 3 and 4 material. He doesn’t identify with the lyrics and (maybe) holds a grudge against the music of that time, so he’d never give his all. And then, even if he did give them an honest go, he’d be lambasted because his voice and delivery sounds nothing like DC’s or GH’s.
So instead of hearing “oh, why don’t they play Burn? Gillan should quit being such a wuss and do it”, in an alternate reality it’d be “Gillan sucks at singing Burn. He should stick to his own material”.
September 29th, 2024 at 19:53The vocal & musical comparisons are what separates covers from originals. Creating your own is far more enlightening than replicating someone else’s. I can understand both sides of the coin, some vocalists had to cover others because of the situation at the time, Dio, Coverdale & Hughes etc. Others can afford to say ‘I don’t think so’. Ian Gillan, Jon Anderson, probably Rob Halford & Bruce Dickinson too. Is it being a tad disrespectful or snobbish or whatever word fits the bill. No I don’t think so, personal preferences. However there are some vocalists who do enjoy other singers & simply dig certain melodies & lyrics. It goes both ways. Iconic lead vocalists singing replacement singers & different melodies & lyrics. I do agree with them not going there, they don’t have to, why should they? Cheers.
September 29th, 2024 at 21:12Gillan, Coverdale, Hughes and Turner were all fine singers in their prime, I wouldn’t say one is better than the others. I prefer Gillan’s lyrics and tone, DC had perhaps the most commercially engaging, yet still individual voice, Glenn had the most impeccable technique and astounding range and Joe Lynn Turner was the most versatile one, but they were all excellent vocalists. You don’t get to sing with Ritchie if you’re not up to the job.
That is not to say Rod was bad, but I don’t consider him in the same league as the other four. There is also less material over a shorter period to judge him on, the guy can only be heard on five studio albums, three from DP and two from Captain Beyond (where I liked his voice actually better than with DP).
I know you’ve said that you like Living For The City by Gillan – that was a case where I thought that Big Ian couldn’t do a song justice at all (to his defense: it wasn’t his choice to cover it).
https://youtu.be/7_RgaYueeh4
That is a number that both Glenn (obviously, being the Stevie Wonder fan he is) and DC could have done much better, even Joe Lynn Turner. Ian’s singing style just isn’t Black American enough for something like that. Instead, that Gillan version sounded like some NWOBHM outfit had gotten its hands on the poor song. I’m no great fan of Ian doing No More Cane On The Brazos either, it’s a stretch to see him toiling in the heat on a molasses farm in the not so Grand Old South (if you were black).
September 29th, 2024 at 21:13There’s a reason why Wonder has the reputation he has as a musician – this is friggin’ awesome:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=o-mW-ybcDoI&si=dYORzMoZer0t5qG3
September 29th, 2024 at 21:44Gillan singing Burn would be as convincing as him singing Heaven & Hell with Sabbath, that left much to be desired and lacked Dio’s passion for the (non-sensical) lyrics too.
September 29th, 2024 at 21:51…and why should IG sing Mark III stuff if they’re having troubles fitting their own classics plus a couple of new songs into their setlist? What was said here about lyrics and style being totally different is certainly true. Plus: Mark III didn’t even have real “hits” that need to be played like SOTW or Black Night (Hush he DOES sing) or PS. Burn or Mistreated spring to mind as possible additions – but can anyone imagine IG doing them justice? I can’t hear him sing Mistreated … and feel it. The lyrics et al. (Though he did a fab job on If You Believe Me – but being blues as well it still has a gillanesque lyrical edge to it.) I’d rather have DC covering When a Blindman Cries …
September 30th, 2024 at 06:40Ok – I really don’t get the masculine competition 🤓
I know what you mean Uwe, Stevie Wonder is an amazing singer, no doubt about that.
Ian is, in my tiny universe, so much more fantastic. He possesses the inner primal scream but in connection with finesse and intellect (I’m not saying any other singer you all can mention isn’t intelligent I just dig Ian’s way of telling the story)
David Gilmour, Jeff Lynne, Stevie Wonder, even Paul McC, are great singers, but (oh sorry for this I’m about to say 😝) Ian Gillan seems to be much more a lion compared to them!
September 30th, 2024 at 06:45Please before any of you suggest I’m affected of Ian’s noble looks ore anything like that (I’m a VERY happily married woman) I just really love his voice as it has been and has evolved over the many years he has been in that world of music.
I remember Luciano Pavarotti praised Ian G, and I guess LP really knew his way around singers ☺️
Have a lovely day 😊
K
I liked Gillan’s version of Living For The City back in the 1980’s. It is a different heavy version & why not. I haven’t ever watched this video for it though, amusing to say the least & it is good to hear the song again. Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ARDbgeDFWQ&t=3s
September 30th, 2024 at 07:01Uwe @ 61- the lyrics to the song Heaven & Hell are about certain aspects to life itself in this world. I would have thought that in itself would have ticked a few boxes. Oh well not to worry, each to their own, again. However I do agree with Gillan more than likely not getting that song right vocally & also the Ozzy era as well. Not that I want to listen to it. The same with the song Burn or any other Coverdale & Hughes DP songs. A quality singer will sing the song(s) they helped create so much more realistically. I call other versions with different vocalists covers, because to my ears that is what they sound like. A bit like Dio singing Ozzy era Sabbath & Mistreated. Or Queen + or non Jon Anderson ‘Yes’. Remember Judas Priest & Iron Maiden in the 90’s era. Or better off not! Cheers.
September 30th, 2024 at 07:45A two minute talk (rant) from Ronnie James Dio of what he was inspired by for those Heaven & Hell song lyrics. Cheers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLuUDrrP44k
September 30th, 2024 at 08:23Ian not being able to sing Burn or Heaven & Hell technically is not the issue, of course he can. But does he sound convincing doing it?
Paul Rodgers sang all the Freddie Mercury stuff fine when with Queen + he was Freddie’s favorite singer, but did he sound convincing? You can’t sing something like I Want To Break Free and mean it without being flamboyantly gay. Rodger’s always had his issues with gay people as his distraught relationship with Andy Fraser showed.
September 30th, 2024 at 10:58@64
September 30th, 2024 at 11:25Yeah isn’t it lovely 😃
K
@67
September 30th, 2024 at 18:23He would be able to make those songs his own! I’m pretty sure he can sing anything!
Heard him sing ‘Nessum dorma’, with Luiciano Pavarotti (yes I know, you all have seen this many times before ☺️) and obviously Ian had no hand on that lyrics but it was beautiful 🤩
#63 Karin:
from my point of view you are absolutely right,
The other singers have always been in their own backyard, in their own area, except the great Freddy with the variety of styles of Queen and except Robert Plant with the ethnic trip, I can’t think of any great experimentations by singers…
only Ian has gone through 70’s hard rock, NWOBHM, rock-jazz, AoR, classical, cartoon soundtracks, Elvis-style r’n’r, and all the rock that I consider experimental and innovative from the Morse era (the first period more vivid, the second more boring but still of high quality)
Ian has a diverse discography that is unmatched in the music world.
is he the best singer ever to walk the face of the planet?
for what he has done and for the longevity of his career I firmly believe so.
as for his voice I’d like to say yes, but I think that’s a yes for the 70s, and then he ruined his voice in the 80s (damn him!!) and it was never the same again.
September 30th, 2024 at 22:24otherwise he would truly be the number one rock singer in the world from the 70s to today!
@70
Yes he did do damage to his voice, didn’t he? I seem to remember he had some surgery in the throat and went of with Black Sabbath, screaming his way through the year with them, and I’m afraid that wasn’t the most healthy thing for him to do.
But we see eye to eye on Ian G’s phenomenal voice. I truly admire and appreciate his singing now, on =1 I mean, and I do so much hope they’re making some more music for us 😃
October 3rd, 2024 at 09:56K
Actually, I heard damage in Ian Gillan’s voice as early as on Made in Japan. I believe that his last album with his voice at 100% was Machine Head. It then decayed gradually, but all things do.
Mind you, I still like his voice today as long as he doesn’t overstretch himself.
October 3rd, 2024 at 17:28@72
October 3rd, 2024 at 19:14Ok, let me tell you a little tell tell sign I can see as a trained homeopath:
Even as early as 1973 he twisted his mouth as it hurted when he strained himself singing.
It’s really obvious to see, and I have always thought it looked like he was hurting a bit.
Besides that I have noticed he often have coughed while singing.
It looks like he have had some kind of bronchitis, not pneumonia.
But his voice has always been phenomenal, I’m just sorry for him if it has been hurting 🥺
@ 72 – Even earlier than Made In Japan Uwe. Those live clips from the Fireball era, Gillan is shot there vocally. He looks pretty out of it also. Rock ‘n roll eh. Cheers.
October 3rd, 2024 at 21:11I don’t agree that Gillan was ruining his voice already after Machine Head, more likely the grueling tours, colds, bronchitis and hepatitis weakened him….moreover he was still young and his larynx was still young.
when I say he ruined his voice, I mean in the incorrect way that he began to assume in the last years of his solo career and then continued with Sabbath and then in the reunion of Perfect Strangers, that is, singing dirtier, rougher, this was noticeable also in the studio albums but especially in the live performances.
It’s clear to me that it was his deliberate choice to change his way of singing, which wasn’t his natural way and this then created more problems for him than before.
making a parallel also Davide Coverdale when he started in the second period of Whitesnake to not sing in a natural way anymore after which he obviously ruined his voice
October 3rd, 2024 at 22:35Karin, he actually did suffer a severe bout of bronchitis in 1972 – it is the reason why he liked neither his performance on MIJ nor on WDWTWA because he could still hear it in his voice.
Big Ian always sounded ‘gravelly’ and slightly distorted on the MIJ recordings to me, but a lot of people seemed to like just that. To me it sounded as if something wasn’t quite right. It’s one of the reasons why I prefer the Machine Head tracks in their studio versions – unlike most people.
October 3rd, 2024 at 23:00@76
I’m not surprised he kept on singing actually because he did give everything he had in him, still does 😊☺️
It’s easily cured, but you need a homeopath to get to the root of the problem. If you don’t get to the root it’s just like putting a bandaid on a broken leg, can look almost ok but underneath it’s not.
Well I guess Ian G figured something out because his voice now seem really good and balanced 😊
I noticed in the official video for Perfect Strangers, when he is singing in a room where you also can see Roger G and Ian P, he is twisting his mouth and lips, really looks like he was in pain there 🥺
October 4th, 2024 at 06:35Amazing he has kept on singing all this time ⭐️👍🏼
Have a lovely day everybody 👋🏼👋🏼
#77 Karin
Don’t be fooled by the music videos, they are playback and then synced with the recordings.
in the studio Ian, like all singers, doesn’t run the risks he runs live, it’s all in the safe zone, it’s not like singing on tour for 2 hours every night.
you can understand this comfort zone in the studio listening to the masterpiece Fighting Man, but you can also understand the bad habits listening to the incredible Vengeance!
more than a homeopath, a singing teacher would have been needed to make him stop the bad habits he had acquired, the problem was not the grimaces he made with his mouth, but rather the use of his vocal cords, above all probably the fact that the prolonged use for years of the false vocal cords to “distort” his timbre had become dominant compared to the arytenoids (which are used for the transition to head voice/belting) with the result that Big Ian when he reached the high range would go too far beyond the chest area putting an unnatural strain on his larynx.
but this has nothing to do with facial grimaces, grimaces are necessary to take high notes with head voice/belting to make the sound turn and keep the larynx low….since each person has a different skeleton from another, everyone makes different grimaces, it’s normal.
Ian Gillan in the 70s had a fantastic natural technique, he hit the high notes of Child in Time with a ton of high harmonics (you can hear them even in made in Japan), his strings were pulled perfectly and this is demonstrated by the perfect intonation (which he didn’t have in the 80s) and he didn’t have the sharp break between the two voices like Robert Plant or Glenn Hughes, but he had a natural passage.
for him, and for all singers there are Deep Purple songs more technically difficult than Child in Time if a singer has a correctly set head voice.
Woman from Tokyo and Space Truckin for example are very bastard songs for a singer because they play a lot on the register transition notes, which are the notes that if you don’t do them well (making the chest voice go beyond the limits, maybe even with the false chords that dirty everything) in the long run the voice goes away, goodbye!!
If I were Ian, I would have removed these two songs from the set list back in the 80s!
but the greatest suicide singer was David Coverdale who in the 80s not only changed his way of singing drastically, but also wrote almost all the songs of 1987 which have so many difficult notes in the register transition area, and he didn’t sing them well and when he unleashed the Whitesnake his high voice was gone!
I say this because I studied singing for a few years when I was young and I sang in some cover bands (even a Deep Purple tribute that never made it out of the rehearsal room because we never found a decent keyboard player)
October 4th, 2024 at 09:18@78
I know what you mean, but I just mention that video because there it’s very obvious how he was twisting his mouth, just as he has been doing many times in live performances 😊 otherwise you’re completely right of course.
I’ve seen the same movement of the mouth in children who have severe throat problems.
Ha ha 😂 he did actually need a skilled and trained homeopath, allow me to explain:
Our bodies are brilliant ingenious machines so to speak. When everything is running smoothly the body is completely capable to perform what ever you want of it, BUT – when something is going wrong, if you sprain an ankle f.i you will overcompensate to spare your sprained ankle. If you don’t get the sprained ankle fixed it will manifest throughout your whole body very soon and give a lot of other very difficult problems.
When something goes wrong anywhere you will overcompensate, often without being aware of it at all, when you then feel pain in other parts it’s not easy to see through the reason, a lot of people just think that ‘oh great now I have a new problem/situation, well thank you very much 😖’ 😃 but actually the new bad situation in the body is often directly connected to the original problem.
So if you have sprained an ankle the solution is easy, lift your leg, get a bandage on and get some homeopathic remedies that actually speed up the healing process extraordinarily.
When it comes to the delicate area in the throat, vocal cords, fine ligaments etc, you’re often not aware of the problem!
It maybe start feeling a bit peculiar and without realising you start to overcompensate, which in fact will end up ruining other parts in the throat.
I’m sure a singing coach could be helpful but not for long if it was f.i nodules on the vocal cords (there can be dozens of other problems going on there 😊)
Or in the case of our favourite singer, he seemed to suffer from bronchitis, why he did that is not for me to say, but that coughing he did could be enough to irritate and give inflammation, which again will start a process from being bad to becoming worse.
What I mean is, bad habits as you mention, do come for a reason.
I saw him perform with Episode Six, on YT, and there he seems much more at ease.
Maybe it was because he was smoking, I don’t know. I just know bad habits aren’t coming from nothing 😊 there will always be a reason.
Actually also personal problems caused by troublesome people, can also manifest itself in serious illnesses, so it’s not always easy to explain or figure out why someone is hurting.
Oh you’ve studied singing, so you are very much aware how delicate an area we’re talking about here 😊
October 4th, 2024 at 15:08You have some great observations, Fla76, very instructive!
Yes, you’re right, Gillan had a great passaggio voice between his tenor and his falsetto register, not like Glenn Hughes, Robert Plant or Rob Halford who basically just “switch” between the two. Graham Bonnet has that passaggio too though his voice is otherwise quite unlike Big Ian’s.
“But the greatest suicide singer was David Coverdale who in the 80s not only changed his way of singing drastically, but also wrote almost all the songs of 1987 which have so many difficult notes in the register transition area, and he didn’t sing them well and when he unleashed the Whitesnake his high voice was gone!”
Wiser words have never been spoken. I don’t (and neither did Jon Lord who shook his head about it years later) know what possessed him. DC tends to be aware of what goes around him and then knee jerk-assimilates that into his own personal style in a rather unreflected way sometimes: I believe in the early 80ies he looked at the US charts he couldn’t crack and saw them populated by Foreigner, Journey, Toto, REO Speedwagon and Styx – each one of them a band featuring a lead vocalist with a naturally considerably higher range than his. He then devised this great master plan to emulate them (with a pretty boy guitarero like John Sykes in tow for image reasons), when in truth he was closer to Bob Seger, Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp as a singer.
And that is how we ended up with DC “singing”/screaming his balls off to something like Still Of The Night. When I heard that song for the first time, I was so disappointed and thought: “What is the point of this, you’re not Rob Halford, you lose all expression and sexy machismo singing/screaming that high?!”
Mind you, I don’t mind falsetto singing at all, one of my favorite Priest songs has Auntie Roberta hit the stratosphere in the middle eight at 03:32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_HISjd_K7U
and I’m a sucker for Glenn’s impossible whale frequency squeal here at 01:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z_OkiSPzPI
or what Bonnet does with his turbo charged falsetto in General Hospital at 01:23
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kao1XeVAPBE
but DC just wasn’t made to sing like that. Nor did he need to except through his own vanity and insecurity.
Coverdale paid the highest price imaginable for a professional singer with that folly.
October 4th, 2024 at 17:20#79 Karin
trust me that bronchitis does not make you lose your head voice (due to the synchronized movement of the arytenoids and the soft palate) … Big Ian in the late 70s began to deliberately change his singing style and timbre and this without a vocal education and a style different from his own caused the loss of his head voice.
Stylistically Ian does not have a light voice like for example Steve Perry, John Waite, Lou Gramm or in metal Geoff Tate, James Labrie, Michael Kiske or Timo Kotipelto….
Singers with light voices are naturally more advantaged in maintaining it, although as they age they too lose the high notes.
Geoff Tate is a special case, an extraordinary voice and technique from low to high notes, a monstrous control of the larynx.
Ian can be generically placed in the vocal color category of Ronnie Dio and Bruce Dickinson, with the difference that they had a more “lyrical” setting that allowed them to keep their voice in shape (net of the physiological aging of the individual or illnesses).
Dickinson owes the fortune of his unmistakable vocal setting to the far-sighted Martin Birch who, when he began producing Maiden, forced him to change his way of singing!
I repeat, leaving aside the grimaces in the studio playback videos which are just cinematic acting, grimaces and efforts in live performances are not an indication of bad vocals.
professional singing is effort and fatigue not only for the voice, but for the whole body, it’s like running 20km with continuous accelerations and slowdowns, you sweat like a camel and they have to try to always stay rested and in shape for the audience, there are two fundamental things, physical shape and the right vocal setting, but if the second is missing you can be 100% fit but you will lose your voice.
Do you want to hear a singer with an extraordinary natural vocal technique?
the great Steve Lee of Gotthard, if I remember correctly he didn’t study singing, but he studied his voice and understood by himself how to sing correctly from when he was a boy until he found his death on the American route 66….high voice performed mechanically to perfection and above all mixed voice performed mechanically to perfection!
October 4th, 2024 at 17:24Do you want to hear a singer who makes faces live because he can’t hit the notes correctly?
the good and honest Nic Maeder who replaced Steve in Gotthard. He has a nice scratchy timbre, but it is precisely his timbre that has made him acquire a wrong vocal setting that does not allow him to reach the high notes that his type of voice could surely reach without difficulty.
All vocalists are up against it big time, especially if over doing it. Too many performances, too much touring etc etc etc. However the old adage of being their own worst enemy could very well apply to some. Obviously not entirely their fault as grinding touring schedules are booked by managers,agents etc who sit in an office or in a Rolls Royce. It can happen to any singer at any time. Rock ‘n roll of course isn’t the best scene to be involved in as the younger generational bad habits & adrenalin constantly kick in. Gillan is lucky that he can still sing at all to my ears. He sort of gets away with it still, depending on the night. Really dedicated vocalists retire once they cannot attain a certain level of delivery. However as we still witness every day, Ian Gillan & the word ‘retirement’ do not exist in the same world. Not as yet anyway. It’s rock n roll & the bar isn’t set as high as with other genres. Cheers.
October 4th, 2024 at 21:36@81
October 5th, 2024 at 02:58Ok then 😊
If only we had a portable door that could bring us back in time, I would’ve loved to check him and to see what the right remedies could’ve done.
@82
October 5th, 2024 at 05:06You’re completely right MacGregor 😊
The decay of time hits us all.
What I just find so very interesting in Ian G’s voice is the fact that he really early on seemed to be having troubles, and now years later sing very much at ease again. I know he cannot perform as he could in his 20s, but still there seem to be an improvement 😊
I truly hope he’ll keep singing ☺️