Bass guitarist Roger Glover said the following in Deep Purple’s 2006 “Live At Montreux” DVD (where the band basically got it’s international fame due to the recording of their epic song there, “Smoke On The Water” which was part of their LP “Machine Head”): “We basically started as a jamming band”.
And that’s certainly the impression I got taking in their great concert on November 9th, 2007, in the small town of Pordenone. There were about 5,000 of us diehard Deep Purple fans on hand for a great little jamming concert by one of the world’s great former hard rock bands, the second time for me after their 2003 concert in Rome (see prior posting for more details).
Lead singer Ian Gillan at 62 years of age was in splendid form voice-wise pushing his vocal cords indeed to the limit (and once again he was barefoot too!). I was (perhaps) one of the few people in the crowd who knew of the significance of what he was wearing on his t-shirt: the red poppy which is a sign of respect for the fallen soldiers of the World Wars during the Remembrance Day holiday which falls on November 11 each year. The poppy is mostly used in the Commonwealth countries. Indeed a nice touch by Gillan.
Drummer Ian Paice (the first original member of the band I believe), while a few kilos overweight, was nevertheless worthy of the title of one of the world's great drummers, as was Glover's playing on the bass guitar (it is in fact Glover, upon waking up one morning in Montreux, who actually gave the title to the song, “Smoke On The Water”. To this day he doesn’t know if the words came to him in a dream or whether he had been influenced by the smoke that had hovered over Lake Geneva after the Casino had burned down there during a Frank Zappa concert in December, 1971). And Don Airey, Jon Lord’s worthy successor on the keyboards, was certainly NO amateur either that night. A nice touch on his part for Italian fans: during his solo he even played a few bars of “Nessun Dorma” which had been made famous the world over by Luciano Pavarotti (and his “Vincero’”)!
Replacing Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, the author of the world’s most famous guitar riff (the one regarding "Smoke On The Water") was America’s Steve Morse who's been with the band now for several years. His solo also included some chords in honour of Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Sweet Home Alabama"), Led Zeppelin and Guns ‘N’ Roses, quite the original thing to do actually. After nearly 2 hours of solid rock’n’roll they concluded with one encore and “Tush” by Joe Smith (their first single in 1968) and “Black Night”.
At one point during the show you could see Gillan cracking up. I had found out later from one of their diehard groupies (who's only seen 80 of their shows so far on this tour!) that Paice had thrown his drumstick at his drum technician, only to hit him straight in the head! After so many years of being on the road, I guess for these "oldies" of the rock world, it's exactly the type of spirit to have, isn't it? And from some of the pics, you can really tell that they had a good time that night in Pordenone!
Walking away I would say that pretty-well all 5,000 present thought that the price of the ticket (35 euros) had been VERY well spent that night as Gillan and his old mates really put on a great show and made a fantastic effort to bring back A LOT of great memories of me growing up as a teenager and listening to songs such as "Smoke On The Water" non-stop on the car radio (as we'd go cruising around the city "trying" to pick up chicks"!). All pics by M. Rimati
And that’s certainly the impression I got taking in their great concert on November 9th, 2007, in the small town of Pordenone. There were about 5,000 of us diehard Deep Purple fans on hand for a great little jamming concert by one of the world’s great former hard rock bands, the second time for me after their 2003 concert in Rome (see prior posting for more details).
Lead singer Ian Gillan at 62 years of age was in splendid form voice-wise pushing his vocal cords indeed to the limit (and once again he was barefoot too!). I was (perhaps) one of the few people in the crowd who knew of the significance of what he was wearing on his t-shirt: the red poppy which is a sign of respect for the fallen soldiers of the World Wars during the Remembrance Day holiday which falls on November 11 each year. The poppy is mostly used in the Commonwealth countries. Indeed a nice touch by Gillan.
Drummer Ian Paice (the first original member of the band I believe), while a few kilos overweight, was nevertheless worthy of the title of one of the world's great drummers, as was Glover's playing on the bass guitar (it is in fact Glover, upon waking up one morning in Montreux, who actually gave the title to the song, “Smoke On The Water”. To this day he doesn’t know if the words came to him in a dream or whether he had been influenced by the smoke that had hovered over Lake Geneva after the Casino had burned down there during a Frank Zappa concert in December, 1971). And Don Airey, Jon Lord’s worthy successor on the keyboards, was certainly NO amateur either that night. A nice touch on his part for Italian fans: during his solo he even played a few bars of “Nessun Dorma” which had been made famous the world over by Luciano Pavarotti (and his “Vincero’”)!
Replacing Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, the author of the world’s most famous guitar riff (the one regarding "Smoke On The Water") was America’s Steve Morse who's been with the band now for several years. His solo also included some chords in honour of Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Sweet Home Alabama"), Led Zeppelin and Guns ‘N’ Roses, quite the original thing to do actually. After nearly 2 hours of solid rock’n’roll they concluded with one encore and “Tush” by Joe Smith (their first single in 1968) and “Black Night”.
At one point during the show you could see Gillan cracking up. I had found out later from one of their diehard groupies (who's only seen 80 of their shows so far on this tour!) that Paice had thrown his drumstick at his drum technician, only to hit him straight in the head! After so many years of being on the road, I guess for these "oldies" of the rock world, it's exactly the type of spirit to have, isn't it? And from some of the pics, you can really tell that they had a good time that night in Pordenone!
Walking away I would say that pretty-well all 5,000 present thought that the price of the ticket (35 euros) had been VERY well spent that night as Gillan and his old mates really put on a great show and made a fantastic effort to bring back A LOT of great memories of me growing up as a teenager and listening to songs such as "Smoke On The Water" non-stop on the car radio (as we'd go cruising around the city "trying" to pick up chicks"!). All pics by M. Rimati
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