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IG: “[1] There really was a survey in the England to determine the number of times per day that the average man thought about sex – really! Now, I don’t know what kind of focus group they used or what the people with the clipboards actually looked like – did the sponsors think of that? But it turns out – they came to the dubious conclusion – that the average man thinks about sex a certain number of times a day – it really doesn’t matter for the purpose of this song, so I chose five, arbitrarily; why am I explaining this? So I said to the focus group around my kitchen table ‘I can’t understand how the average man keeps losing concentration.’ (Ian Gillan)”
Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye
MTV* (European Special Edition Track)
Roger Glover: I went to a radio station when Bananas came out and did a long, in depth interview about Bananas and Don and Bradford and all the interest in the new album. And the guy says, “It’s been great having Roger Glover in the studio. Now let’s hear some music.” And then [sings the famous first few notes of “Smoke On The Water” and sighs deeply]. I know I shouldn’t complain about people playing our records. It’s just frustrating when they play the same two or three all the time.
Ian Gillan:”It´s really about classic rock radio. I come to the conclusion that more traffic accidents are caused by classic rock radio than by drink driving – because people are falling asleep at the wheel through total boredom because they play the same old songs over and over again! – And so there´s another little story behind it: Roger was doing an interview in an upstate New York radio station for half an hour and he was talking about the album “Bananas”, but the girls kept going back to old historical classic rock things and at the end of the interview she said: Good luck with the new album – and thanks for coming in – and here is some Deep Purple, yeah: “Smoke On The Water”! – And they didn´t play the new record. I think it´s a very healthy attitude to be disrespectful of these things and poke a little fun at them.”
Gillan in an interview being asked if there was a chance of Deep Purple being on MTV again. IG: No chance at all! In fact, the interesting thing is that after this last tour, we played about 38 countries and to millions of people, and the average age of our audience is 18 years old!
Well, that´s what I said to my daughter when she came out of Wembley. I said “Who let all the kids in, Grace?” And she said “Dad, you just don´t get it do you?”. Well, that´s nice, but 20 years ago when MTV is in its infancy, they swore they would never play any Deep Purple records because we were too old then. So, actually the song is not about MTV! The song is about classic rock radio and I was listening to a radio station in Buffalo, New York when Roger Glover was on. We were touring and I was staying at a friend´s house and…you can get the whole story if you go on my website gillan.com. But she (radio dj) was not in the slightest bit interested in talking about “Bananas”. He was on for about 20 minutes and everytime he started talking about the reasons for the tour, the new record, she was going “Yeah, tell us about this and tell us about that!”. She did not want to talk about it and in the end as she finished the interview she said “Yeah, Roger Grover, lead guitar, Deep Purple, Smoke on the water yeah!”. She got everything wrong and I thought “My God, it´s happening to radio as well!”. Once you´ve had your time in terms of the people who design these categorys, then you might as well be dead as far as they´re concerned. We know in our hearts that this band is very vibrant, performing to young audiences, totally sold out everywhere we go…in the major venues, but somehow it seems divorced from the industry. So they think we´re dead, so let´s poke them. So I´m poking them with some fun with the lyrics. I know a lot of people in the musicbusiness so I´m not being that wicked. Just a little bit.
“The junkyard blues sound sound familiar I’m never alone always reminds me of home.”
“I spent a lot of time in junkyards when I was a kid. I used to sleep in old cars and stuff like that after going to parties and used to rake around in the junkyards looking for old bits and pieces. Even when we were kids we used to go to junkyards looking for old wheels and bits of metal and his lumps of wood to make the toys and make trolleys and stuff like that. At the White City there was a huge junkyard and scrap metal yard and cars and trash cars and whatever needs to find all kinds of stuff there. And always ran out of money I could never afford the fare home so I’d walk half way and if it start raining or whatever I’d climb into one of these old cars and you could smell the leather and you know maybe another car crash or been dumped by somebody thrown away and you started thinking about these were people’s possessions. At one time and they were good for something another good for nothing but at least they gave me a place to sleep during the night okay.”
The interviewer says, “There was one song about religion.” Gillan corrects him and says, “There are six.”
“Um well you know I can I explain this. I the early, in the stone age if you like, that the beginning of time when humans had started becoming families and tribes there would be a chief of the tribe or a matriarch or a leader of the tribe. The equivalent now would be a president or prime minister or a dictator who looks after affairs of the state and your corporate well-being. About the same time — almost immediately — emerged what would you say the witch doctor, who took care of the mind the spirit and the soul and the equivalent of witch doctor today would be the vicar or the priest or the mother or the rabbi. Charles Darwin was so scared of publishing his papers on the origin of the species and the theory of evolution that he kept them secret for 20 years because he was scared of the church. Same happened with them Galileo Antonin. Presenting the ideas of that were alien that the church didn’t agree with. Every day I’m looking across the water to Northern Ireland and then murdering the bejesus out of each other, the Catholics and a Protestants, and the Christians they worship the same God. Shiites and and Sunnis doing the same thing. When I was at school, when I, the early days of going to church and I went to Bible studies to go to confirmation. I used to be a boy’s soprano in the church choir. I used to go once or twice a week to file the stubs the vicar the local show for confirmation classes as they were called. And, uh, I started asking questions about the virgin birth,, about the resurrection about the gospel truth and he would say, “have faith my son.” And I started at that time to employ my mind into trying to understand what this was all about and he gave me all the wrong answers. And then I realized the Bible was written by men. This when I was 12 years old. I realized the Bible was written by men it wasn’t written by God that they were trying to persuade me it was. Or that God had inspired these people to. And as far as I know all the other religious books were written by men too. I think it’s about time when we look at the expansion of the human population on this planet. The rate of expansion that we have at the moment and look at the projected population figures for 50 years time and tremble. It’s terrifying to think what lies ahead. We’re not genetically programmed to reduce or reverse or slow down our multiplication.”
“The only way I think that we can we have to go is to reclaim our intellectual approach to the thing that we know best but we’ve never been allowed to study and that is our soul and our spirit. There’s no surgeon with a knife opened somebody’s head and said oh I’ve discovered the human spirit or the heart and so I’ve discovered the soul. Nobody even really understands how the memory works. And they’re only just beginning to hypothesize on the way [??] sense of smell works. I know what you’re thinking, not word for word, but I can tell the same as you can with anyone about the whether you’re having an interesting conversation or whether it’s rejection or it’s an open conversation. You can tell the atmosphere when you walk into a room. A mother clutches her heart at the exact moment that has son falls dead on a distant battlefield. And we’ve all experienced these things and we all know that our minds have an extended value and yet we’re, not. It’s heresy if you start talking about it. If I had said this in another country it’s quite likely somebody would come out and chop my head off. I’d said it 300 years ago in another I’d probably have been, have my head chopped off. That’s how terrifying religion is, that’s how brutal it is and that’s how stifling it is on our characters and that’s what all these songs are about.”
Ian Paice: “You never know, “Before Time Began” might turn into something wonderful on stage. But, those two or three [referring to Rapture of the Deep and Money Talks, and Wrong Man], I think they have the spark inside them, which connect immediately to people.”
How come “Things I never Said” was not included in “Rapture of the Deep” album despite the fact that this song is being performed live at just about every show?
IG: Sorry? It’s not on the album? It sure is!
–Actually, it was not on the original U.S. release. It finally came out here when the tour edition of the album was released on the second bonus CD.
IG: Oh, I have no idea what’s on what anymore (laughs). Apparently, there’s a new Deep Purple DVD out and I didn’t even know about that, so there you go. (laughs)
–That song by the way is one of my favorite tracks on the album and I’m glad it’s being played live.
IG: Good! It’s a wonderful transition from 6/8 rhythm into a swing, a 4/4 swing, and it’s a very clever transition. It works very well on stage and starts the set off in one of those embracing ways musically. There’s no break between the first four or five songs. We just go, bang, bang, bang, and it works very well.
Ian Paice: “Yeah, there is not one bad track there, but you get caught in a situation were you have to hold one back for the Japanese. It’s not the track I would have left off. We couldn’t make our mind up which track had to go off, so in the end, we just left it to the record company. We all had different ideas, so you know in the end four of us, maybe all of us, won’t be happy. Who knows? <laughs>”
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Reception and Charts:
The album peaked on Billboard‘s US Top Independent Albums chart at position No. 43.[11] In the US, the album sold 2500 copies during the first week. In the UK, the album sold 3500 copies during the first week and 1200 copies during the week after.[12] It also made the top 20 in several European charts. The title track “Rapture of the Deep” was released as a promo single in 2005.
Ian Gillan: ““We moved on with this record, which I still call an album, because an album is a collection of songs or photographs or experiences which represent one specific time in your life or with a group of people. And I think it should be the same with a rock band.”
Ian Gillan (in an interview with Bankrate.com): “Ian Gillan: It’s completely fresh. In fact, this is one of the most enjoyable records, in a creative sense, we’ve ever done — very similar to how we worked in ’69 and ’70. The band was very hot, and there was not a single note or word written or preconceived notion of how the album would be.”
Ian Paice (From interview with Benny Holstrom): Obviously I think it’s very good. I think that four, five of the tracks have the possibility to become classic Deep Purple songs — because we don’t decide that, the audience do — but there is some very, very good stuff there. The album was very easy to make and very quick; and when the recording is easy and fast, it usually means that the songs are correct, that you are not trying to create, trying to find something which is not in the song.
The whole thing — writing, arranging, and recording the base tracks – was three weeks, which is very quick. And in the same way that “In Rock” was very quick, “Machine Head” was very quick. Those sorts of records tend to have immediacy and a feeling that communicates to people who listen to them. Whereas with some of the records which take a long time, you may end up with perfect tracks, but you’ve lost a little bit of the soul and the heart which you had when you first started to record it.
Because every one of these things has either take one, two or three, and that’s when you still have the excitement to play something new. Once you have played it fifteen, twenty, twenty-five times, to get it perfect, you may end with five minutes of really perfect boring nonsense, as opposed to that first take that was five minutes of pure magic, but maybe not perfect. So everything that we kept was when we were still physically excited about playing something new, and when the actual take wasn’t perfect, it was good enough that you could fix a little bit so it became perfect, instead of going over and over to fix something which isn’t there.
And so, to me, the record is very immediate, and as I said four or five tracks — you almost know straight away, as soon as you’ve heard it once, you sort of know what it is, it’s inside your head. But making a record nowadays is, you know, you’re in the lap of the gods, whether it is accepted or not accepted by people, because music is not the driving force it used to be for the public. They have many other things that they do, whereas thirty years ago, for young people music was everything. You know, waiting for the next record, you waited for the next big band to come to town. Now people travel, have internet — they spend more money on bloody ring tones than they do on records. So it’s different, but all you can do is try to make the best record you can and hope you connect with enough people. That the album generates enough interest and income for things to be able to continue. There are some records you hope is gonna be ok. This one I know is ok.
Ian Paice on working with Michael Bradford again:
THS: How was it to work with Michael Bradford again?
IP: Easier this time than the last time, and the last time was easy.
THS: Because then he was the new guy?
IP: Yeah, Michael’s musical input was a lot less on this record. We didn’t need any of his ideas for songs, because we were just coming up with so much, plus I think Michael’s been very, very busy anyway, so I don’t think he was in a position to stop on any ideas that we may have liked. But as I said, that wasn’t necessary anyway. Michael’s contribution on this record was one of, again, getting the work ethic correct, so that we would work efficiently — not crazy, but every day was a productive day. There wasn’t a bad day, where you went home or didn’t achieve anything, they were always great days.
Occasionally he would stick his head around the corner from the control room and say “you don’t need to do that bit twice, just do it once”. Because you’re inside, you don’t see the big picture. Those in the control room, though — he would go, “no, don’t, don’t need to”. He would just be adding little ideas about the arrangement of things, “you don’t need to do that” or “that shouldn’t stop there, you should add just little time there” and that was basically his musical input on that level. But of course it’s the sound he achieves that you’ve got him there for, you know, and it’s a good sounding record.
THS: And the choice of studio; you also worked in his studio this time.
IP: Yeah, the studio is by his house. That’s the only negative. I mean because it’s in his house. His family don’t think he is away working, they always phoning him up and doing things like that. I have never worked in a studio that small with Purple, it’s probably the size of this room here <indicating the lobby where the interview is being done>. Maybe a fraction bigger, but not much. When we were recording the tracks, basically the drums had the whole studio and all the other instruments were in isolation booths, so that wasn’t a big room. It’s a good sounding room. It’s a very hard sounding room, so it captures the drums in a very natural way, it’s quite easy. I didn’t have to mess around with the drums at all, just hit them properly and sound came out.
Gillan: “Even, for example, on the last album ‘Rapture of the Deep’ there was no master plan. Nothing had been written in advance, no scraps of lyric or even a song title. We had no idea what lay ahead.
We turned up in L.A., someone put on the kettle. We enquired politely about the families back home and discussed the prospects of Sunderland, Nottingham Forest and QPR in the forthcoming football season. Having dealt with the niceties, we dutifully trooped out of the kitchen and picked up our instruments – in my case a pencil. We jammed for a few hours every day – usually from about 1.00-6.00PM – until the record was done a few weeks later.
Roger: “With ‘Rapture Of The Deep’ in particular, we’ve really clicked with this one. There’s a real harmony and respect for each other. This album was a joy to make and it was great to push each other too.”
ROTD sales in the USA and UK
Reports from the USA say that Deep Purple’s new album “Rapture of the Deep” sold 2500 copies during it’s first week in the shops. In the UK, the album sold 3500 copies the first week and 1200 copies the week after. This took the album to #81 in the charts first week and #184 the week after.
A user in the Deep Purple Fan Forum has compiled chart information from the world. Here is the list over which place in the charts “Rapture of the Deep” debuted in each country:
“Rapture of the Deep” jumps straight into number 3 in BBC Radio 1 Top 40 Rock Albums. In Sweden, the album went premiered at number 22 on the Swedish album sales chart. In Germany, the album debuted at number 10 but dropped out of the top 25 the week after.
Thanks to Bjørn Sund for the BBC information.
Roger: “”I love “Bananas”, it got played more than any other Deep Purple record in the history of my home, and with my friends! But it was another transition, because it was the first record made with Don Airey and I think at that time he was considered probably more just moving in to replace on Lord. And I think on this record he is a lot bolder. He made a big contribution to “Bananas”, but I think his personality has emerged over the last couple of years on the road and consequently that has a knock on effect with the other guys in he band. And it´s created that wonderful balance between Don Airey´s organ and Steve Morse´s guitar. Perhaps the last album was more in favour of the guitar – this one is more balanced, I think.”
“As recording artists, Deep Purple has hardly released a brilliant record since the grossly underrated “Burn” in 1974 (highly recommended!), but now the needle points dangerously close to the low point. Ritchie Blackmore first disappeared (Steve Morse took his place), and since last Jon Lord is also gone (replaced by Don Airey). In other words, Deep Purple is far from the songwriting collective it once was, and it doesn’t get any better because Ian Gilian’s voice seems both dull and not overly engaged on a record that lacks most of what a good hard rock record should have, not least good tunes.”
“Deep Purple has no plans to give up. The band, who made their record debut in 1968, have changed labels, and are here with their second record since Jon Lord packed up his Hammond organ and left. With three out of five of the classic crew in the ranks, Purple still limps along. However, the rest of the line-up are no slouch either, with Steve Morse celebrating his 10th anniversary as Deep Purple guitarist this year. Jon Lord has been replaced by Don Airey, who has worked for Ozzy Osbourne, Rainbow and Jethro Tull. It’s been two years since Bananas, which was recorded with the same line-up that drew a full house in Oslo Spektrum the same year. And where Steve Morse pulls in a completely different direction than his predecessor Ritchie Blackmore, last seen in a Robin Hood costume on Sentrum Stage the other day, Don Airey is more Jon Lord-oriented to keep the Deep Purple sound. Rapture Of The Deep is also a little bit rockier than its predecessor, recorded with Michael Bradford again in the producer’s chair. “Money Talks” opens with a completely ordinary Purple groove, and with a Steve Morse repeating himself with triplets, triplets and triplets again. The man Gillan, Glover and Paice refer to as a complete guitar virtuoso is definitely stuck, and here seems less inspired than ever in Deep Purple. There is one exception, however, and that is in the song Ritchie Blackmore would never have had his hands on. “Clearly Quite Absurd” has an impressive chord sequence with many antics that Morse has glued together to a sweepingly great ballad that lifts the album. And imagine a ballad making it onto a Deep Purple album, 35 years after “Child In Time”. Because where Deep Purple has rocked on and seemed invincible from before, they repeat themselves again with guitar riffs doubled with Hammond organ and a 60-year-old Ian Gillan doing his best on top. On “Girls Like That” the primal scream comes for the first time, and it’s not pretty. Incidentally, a song where they surprise you a little with a catchy chorus with a lot of back-up singing. The rest is autopilot from a band that will probably deliver what they need on the upcoming tour with several classics on the setlist. But I doubt whether the 2nd division songs “Back To Back”, “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” and “MTV” will make it there. On January 30, Deep Purple will play in Oslo Spektrum.”
“I have always been of the opinion that Richie Blackmore and Jon Lord have been the most essential pieces in Deep Purple’s unique sound, so the skepticism was relatively great for this release, where both of them shine with their absence. However, the record is very good and I now realize that both Gillan, Glover and Paice are more important elements in the Deep Purple sound than both I and perhaps others with me had thought. Also, both Steve Morse and Don Airey put in a solid piece of work on ‘Rapture of the deep’. It seems as if the band has played and experimented more than in a long time this time, and now and then I get little flashbacks to releases like ‘In rock’ and ‘Fireball’. Yes, Deep Purple has released many albums that surpass this one in terms of quality, but ‘Rapture of the deep’ is just as much a strong album that proves that the band has the right of life even if the calendar says 2005. Have been playing the album apart and together recently and I actually just like it better and better.”
Rapture of the Deep is Deep Purple’s first release in Europe on the German label Edel Records, while in the US the record was released by Edel’s sub-label Eagle Records.
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“Not really. We all put stuff together before we meet up but in a strange kind of way it writes itself really. The songs take on their own life when everyone starts chipping in. We really feed off each other. Sometimes that means they get taken off in a direction you might not of thought of, but that’s OK. Ian writes about 75% of the lyrics and his stuff is often very wild and wacky, whilst my lyrics are more wistful and poetic I suppose. Just those two different ways of looking at things makes for some interesting results. Sometimes you have to fight a bit if it’s one of yours, sometimes you just let it go because it becomes something rather special. If it’s a song that needs to be kept faithful then we all have the luxury of being able to do solo work too, so everybody’s happy.”
‘Rapture Of The Deep’ marks a significant career step for the band, breaking away from EMI. It’s hard to believe they got so complacent with a band like DEEP PURPLE.
“We’ve always been in and out of love with EMI, so it was long overdue for a change. As it worked out, circumstances forced our hand but it really has turned out for the best for DEEP PURPLE. It was a total mystery to me why EMI decided not to continue the relationship.”
IG: Well, in a couple of respects. It´s obviously the same producer, same city, same line up. But there was some differences, yes. We came off the back of an 18 month tour with “Bananas”. I mean literally! The band was HOT! I mean there was a tremendous amount of empathy between the musicians, so when we went into the studio there was a…I sat in amazement every day watching these guys work and music was created. And the ideas were flying back and forth and everyone picking up and understanding exactly what was being offered. Someone would start a twiddle a little riff or something like that and everyone would get it straight away. It was great fun! We had no plans and we just decided on a starting date and everyone turned up at the studio and we put the coffee on and told some jokes and talking about the glittering prospects Queens Park Rangers and Sunderland and Nottingham Forest the forthcoming season (laugh). And then we went in and started banging away. Nothing really happened for the first few days and everybody´s just sort of exploring ideas. The only other thing really, apart from that, from a lyrical point of view, was that the previous album was very…leaning very heavily on a political attitude and this one is very much more of a spiritual type of approach.
IG on the writing process: It´s a matter of discipline. You go in the studio every day and start jamming. These guys are unbelievable musicians! So they start jamming without a rhythm or a riff or a lick or a chord. Somebody starts a chord sequence and everybody follows. Somebody starts a lick and everyone does a counter riff or whatever and then the dynamics slowly…I´ll give you an example! … They don´t get written as such. The big job of course is writing the words and I normally get up at five o´clock in the morning and prepare those when I´ve got the tunes sorted out in my head. I like to work in the quiet, before the sun comes up. But it´s very spontaneous. It seems to be a very nonchalant approach.
Jeff Miers in the Rapture of the Deep Tour Book & Press Release:
“Rapture of the Deep” is the spot-on moniker for the disc you hold in your hands, and I’ll stand on any classic rock radio programmer’s desk in my cowboy boots and scream it loud, proud and Gillan-esque; “This is the best Deep Purple album there is, dammit! Forget ‘Machine Head’ – that was then; this is most decidedly now!”
This is the fourth record created by the revamped and rejuvenated Purple following the umpteenth departure of the mercurial Mr. Blackmore. The guitarist – one of the most significant in British rock history – had ceased to be a contributing force and was in fact draining Purple of its collective spirit when his ship finally set sail for good, a bit over a decade back.
Blackmore’s exit is, in a sense, where our story begins, for the surviving band members left to pick up the pieces in his violent wake – Gillan, Glover, Lord, Paice – agreed unanimously on only one six-stringer, the soon to be knighted Steve Morse. Hardly scraping the dregs from the bottom of the barrel with that choice, boys.
This is Deep Purple, 2005 version. Intense, fearless, full of fire, and wit, and passion. Marked by serious virtuosity, but never a slave to it. Still finding new meaning in a medium they all but single-handedly created. Grab ahold of this, and don’t let go.
Roger: “”Michael Bradford is an engineer, a songwriter, a bass player, he´s a guitarist, he´s good at a lot of things – he´s a good talker, too and he´s a pretty good chef!” Ian and Roger talk about the recording studio “The album was recorded at Michael Bradford´s studio in Los Angeles: He´s moved into a new house with a very nice environment. It´s a small room with a kitchen where we used to stand and write the lyrics and a little yard outside where we could relax and sit in the sunshine, have a beer. We worked there from noon to 6 o´clock – 6 days a week, we didn´t work on sundays, Michael wants a day off, but it´s good to clear your head. And it took five weeks. Yes, it was very interesting, very spontaneous.- Sometimes you have a writing sessions, where you write the songs, then you have a recording session, when you record them. This album was done pretty much at the same time: we´d go in, write what was going to be the idea for the song and immediately go into record mode and captured it. Michael is very good at stopping us from overdoing it. Usually it´s two takes and that´s it! We all played together and the whole album has a spontaneous feel to it we would have lost if had gone over and over. That´s why it´s not perfect!”
I have worked with Deep Purple now close to 8 years. Abandon being my first cover with them and it’s been a very rewarding experience.
The cover drawing is by Tom Swick, it was a color cartoon that Roger Glover saw in a magazine (New Yorker I think) and thought it was an interesting idea to develop further.
Returning from the tour Roger headed down to my design firm, we worked 8 -9 hour days for about a week or so and designed together the packaging for the new album which includes a 2 disc LP, Two Digipaks (10 and 11 song versions) complete with 16 page booklets different from the CD version. 3 CD jewelcases with a 16 page booklet (10, 11 songs version and a Japanese version) and a promo poster.
We created 17 pieces of original art (with the origin being the cartoon) that I’m really proud of. The cover though is really all Roger’s design. He picked the color, font, title art, and had the cartoon version done as a simple B/W.
Roger and I worked together as art directors which was a blast.
We are talking about doing a book project together and will hopefully work on the 2006 tour merchandise late next month.
Ian:”It´s a phrase coined by Jacques Cousteau to define the confused state you get into as a diver when you get down to three atmospheres, which is 30 metres or a hundred feet. And you go through a feeling of euphoria; it has a strange physiological effect on your mind and your machine function. It´s a bit like being drunk and stoned – not that I would know, of course (laughs).-
A fan sent in a small picture: In a small village in England there was a pond and there was a sign in the water saying “Danger – deep water” and somebody had crossed out “water” and put in “purple” instead. And so it was in the back of our minds and “Rapture of the deep” described very well the way I was thinking at the time: If you are in a condition like that, you start thinking about things in a different way. And there is quite a lot of spiritual content in the underlying theme of the lyrics of four or five songs certainly. It´s not to be taken literally – it´s a word picture.”
Ian and Roger: “”The man is standing with two trees on every side and he´s like a reflection, but if you look into the water, the trees are wobbling and he´s straight. It´s thought-provoking, that´s the idea of it.- Rapture is a happy state, it´s a state you´d like to be in, but the more happier you get, the more dangerous it is!”
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Raff Kaff
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Album Tracks:
Money Talks
From Wikipedia: “The track “Money Talks” sees singer Ian Gillan perform the widest vocal range heard on any Deep Purple recording, with the bridge featuring a double-tracked deep bass vocal and the song’s coda featuring a high-pitched scream.” (uncited)
Ian Paice (from interview with Benny Holstrom): There is another one, “Money Talks”, that I think can be a really great live track. And one of the obscure ones, one of the strange ones could turn into something wonderful.
Gillan: “This is based on the principle, I think, that money as a currency is an essential tool in civilization. However, when money becomes a commodity it takes on a very nasty complexion. If people are just interested in trading money to make money someone else has to pay for it! So it´s talking about that, it´s talking about the corruption. I mean, there is nothing wrong with earning money, there is nothing wrong with enjoying life but it´s against the greed and corruption that takes place just to accumulate wealth on other people´s expense and so there are references in that about having more food on your plate than you need and not to worry, cause there are guards at the gate. Money always comes back to money, money makes money and it whispers in my ear, it laughs at me – it´s corrupting!”
Girls Like That
Ian Paice, when asked if there was a song he would have left off: ““Girls Like That” was that song for me. I thought that’s ok, but I would have left “Girls Like That” off, but Don [Airey] thinks “Girls Like That” is great; so there we go, we just gave up in the end. One day all the music will come out, so it doesn’t matter.“
Wrong Man
Ian Paice: “Wrong Man” is just a great rock ‘n’ roll track. They’re the only two we have tried on stage so far (referring to “Rapture of the Deep”, but I get the feeling that three or four more will happen that way.
“Wrong Man” got lost. The idea for that came out of the “Bananas” sessions, right at the very, very end. We had finished recording, we were just jamming and I captured it on tape, brought it back to the studio and said, “This is too good for us to throw away”. And there are a couple of other things which we started jamming on earlier in the day before we got into the process of recording what we had done the day before. So some tunes got forgotten, but they are still there, so whenever we go back into the studio again, I’ll bring them back in.
We have one wonderful thing Steve [Morse] does, which is very fast, very rhythmic and has the same appeal to me as the riff from “Wrong Man”. I’ll bring that in next time and we’ll get a little bit of extra help from “Rapture” on whatever the next record is, we get something to start with anyway. There are so many ideas, we could have gone on for another three weeks and done a whole new album. We could have done two albums, but we made one album, that’s enough. But the ideas were flowing in, I must say… the ideas were just coming out, coming out and they were great ideas.
Roger: “Wrong Man” – it´s such a driving riff and it is great to play live.”
Rapture of the Deep
Ian Paice: “Well, I think “Rapture Of The Deep” will become a very similar track to “Perfect Strangers”. I think it has that sort of appeal.
IG: “Rapture of the deep”, the title track, we came back in from a coffee break and Don was going (sings the melody). I was going “Ahh, that´s cool!”. He said “You know what? I hear that we´re going to Istanbul. I´ve never been to Turkey before, so I´m just playing…this is called `Turkish delight`!”. And he was just doodeling or whatever you call it, and just exploring a different scale, it´s an Eastern scale. So emediately Ian Paice started playing along with it and it changed the thing completely when you get two musicians. And then everyone else started playing and it became a joy. So all of those things, they evolve.
Roger on Don: “A couple of years later after we’d toured Bananas he was much more confident and much more assertive in his ideas. He was the one who came up with the riff that became “Rapture of the Deep.”
Clearly Quite Absurd
IG: It was very difficult to write that one and also “Before time began”. They were really written as instrumentals. Steve Morse, his guitar playing is very lyrical so sometimes it´s difficult to find exactly where to fit in some vocals on the tracks. But you just have to keep working on it and I think these two songs particulary and “Kiss tomorrow goodbye” fit the spiritual…I have this theory that Deep Purple is still going to be going 2000 years from now, in a metaphysical form. So one of the things I´m talking about lyrically on this record is that in order to survive I believe that the human race needs to mutate in to something non physical, because the rate of expansion is clearly unsustainable at this rate. And if you look at the predictions of the population figures of the planet in 50 years from now, that´s all, it makes you tremble. It´s horrific! Anyway, I´m not Bono and I can´t misrepresent the rest of the guys with my views.
Rapture of the Deep is Deep Purple’s first release in Europe on the German label Edel Records, while in the US the record was released by Edel’s sub-label Eagle Records.
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Over 600 credits on Discogs. Worked with Lamont Dozier, Neil Diamond, Adele, Barbara Streitsand, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Star, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson,
David Coverdale: “Elk Thunder was at that time the medicine man for many Native American tribes. He came to the studio to help us shift some uncomfortable energy.”
“We had so many tech issues we couldn’t believe it. So, I thought, bugger it … it must be something we can’t fix. We held a Spirit Feast, and lo and behold, everything started working well again. We were very, very grateful to him.”
Adrian Vandenberg: “The recording of Restless Heart was rather different from any other recording experiences before or since for me. We started off rehearsing and recording in a cozy studio located in a charming Victorian style mansion in Reno, and later on moved to a mansion close to Lake Tahoe that used to belong to disco singer Donna Summer. A complete mobile studio was set up there to the specs of brilliant engineer and producer Mike Fraser. The place had a bit of a weird vibe about it. It could easily have made a fitting haunted house in a thriller movie. From day one we had some very unusual and weird experiences. Mike Fraser attributed a bunch of technical problems to the fact that the house might have been built on an. ancient Indian burial ground, and he wanted to bring in an Indian medicine man.”
“He told us that he has native Indian roots in his family. A string of pretty weird, unexplainable things happened. A medicine man by the name of Elk was flown. in and performed ritual dances around the estate. The band chewed on grilled buffalo testicles by a campfire while he barked ritual Indian songs and shook Toys R Us-like Indian percussion…”
“After the spirits left the building the recording went smoothly, and we laid down the tracks with a smile on our faces. Stories to tell! He convinced us that he was a great mouth harp player, and pretty much insisted on contributing his stellar playing to our album …”
“So we decided that Elk could double a slide guitar lick in Woman Trouble Blues’ with his mouth harp. This is an extremely simple lick, but apparently it still appeared to be pretty impossible for Elk to play it properly, and it ended up taking a whole afternoon. And after that breathtaking performance, it took another few hours for our experienced engineer Bjorn to edit it to a point that it’d be bearable. At least we escaped an ancient Indian curse.”
EMI TOCP 50090: UK/Europe : June 2nd 1997 CD It’s getting a hit like the old times again – what with a Gillan (the man – not the band) album out, Lordy’s effort due any day, and offerings from the man in black. If it all seems increasingly less vital than it did fifteen years ago, that’s probably just me feeling my age, but sadly there’s not a vast amount on David’s new offering to stop me getting all nostalgic about Whitesnake classics of yore. Things became a little overblown on the last two Whitesnake albums (to say the least) so it’s good to find David toning things down in favour of a more basic approach. Out too has gone the sponsorship by L’Oreal, and a more craggy wet look David Coverdale adorns the front of what is billed as the final Whitesnake album. And Ritchie could well take a leaf out of David’s book, or at least call him for the name of the photographer. as it’s a great moody image. Some things never change though, and the old poorly executed paintings of concrete heraldry still adorn the rest of the package. Still, let’s persevere. People had, after all, being calling me up claiming this to be his best vocal performance in years.It has to be said that by and large they were right. Perhaps the time off has done him good. It’s still uniquely Coverdale, but somehow a little richer in tone, a little smoother in delivery – and it suits him very well. That then is the good part. The downside of it is that sadly very little else on display here is up to this vocal return to form. Musically it lacks memorable tunes, melodies, riffs – anything really. It just kind of washes over one in a stream of fairly bland metal. The opener, Don’t Fade Away. is very typical -plenty of recognisable AOR Rock signatures but nothing too deep or original. All In The Name Of Love sparkles at the start with a few bars of grungy Hammond, but ditches this in favour of a plodding, pedestrian beat. A good production to be sure, but largely lifeless. Title track time, and some good deep vocal lines growl promisingly, but are dissipated via a really inept band performance. Try the last minute or so though, and see how it might have sounded. Strings sneak in, must be time for a tearjerker. Too Many Tears – more excellent vocals, but a very obvious guitar solo, wet drums and a conservative feel to it all. The best you can say is that the tracks could sound stronger in a live situation. There is no doubt that this is an important album in that while it may not be the strongest he has ever recorded, it does mark a return to the Coverdale most of us like to hear best, and so holds some promise for the future. The fact that David has discovered his voice again also prompted more reviews of the album from readers than we would normally expect.”Mercilessly slagged off in the music press (well in ‘Kerrap’ magazine at least) and old D.C. stating in publicity interviews that this ‘final”Snake album summarising 20 years of the band, I feared a ‘Stranger in Us All’ type hotch-potch / self-rip-off. However, whilst there are certainly plenty of reminders of David’s post-Purple works (ranging right from Northwinds era to Coverdale/Page) they fall far short of self-parody. Indeed Coverdale goes less for the ‘Slip of the Tongue’-screaming and more for a back to his blues / Paul Rodgers-type phrasing and style, to great effect. Backing is courtesy of the Coverdale/Page touring band with Vandenberg ‘replacing’ Page, but the material is generally quite laid-back as compared to the C/ P album, and all in all quite in keeping with ‘Whitesnake’. I should say that fans of early to late-middle period ‘Snake (“true Whitesnake”?!) should not be disappointed by this album. Indeed, had this followed ‘Slide It In’, Coverdale’s credibility-rating might not have taken the nose-dive which it did with many ‘older’ ‘Snake fans. Lyric-wise David manages to rise above the groin for the most part, and the production (credited to D.C.) is somewhat brighter than the old Martin ‘Boring’ Birch produced efforts.” Tim Summers.I think it fair to say Tim’s views are common to just about everyone who ventured their opinion.
NEXT EPISODE SLIGHT DELAY! MACHINE HEAD SUPER DELUXE! – will be out on Monday approximately 12 hours later than normal!
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Over 600 credits on Discogs. Worked with Lamont Dozier, Neil Diamond, Adele, Barbara Streitsand, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Star, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson,
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When this version of the band underwent one of their intermittent reformations in the 90s, they also began to lay down tracks. Strident hard rocker ‘Breakdown‘ on Lost Tapes Vol 1comes from that latter period, the song sounding immensely fresh and contemporary even today. “This is from what we might call the second coming period, around ’93. The three-piece recorded it at Garage Studios, with Glenn singing, where they also recorded the original version of Homeland.” The latter a rare Hughes-Galley co-write surfacing on Welcome To The Real World: Live At The Borderline a live album released in ’93 documenting the previous year’s tour, then Hughes’ own solo album From Now On… the following year.
Glenn and his band have been gigging throughout 1993 in Scandinavia, having decided to set up base there to record his new album. He went into the studios on August 16th with The King Siguurd Band – the guys he’s been working with since January – and 12 songs were already written. They had three weeks of rehearsing before the session, which lasted a month. Vocals were done separately, and they booked a show in Skara (about 80 miles from Gothenburg), where the studio is, for Sept.11th. This was to be taped, with the idea of adding some bonus tracks to the Japanese version of the CD when it comes out. In the end the live recordings didn’t turn out too well, so they went back to the idea of taping new studio versions, and this they did in Stockholm on November 17th. “Burn” and “You Keep On Moving” were the chosen songs. Blackmore declined to appear – he’d expressed some interest in doing the solos when asked about it earlier in the year. Glenn had hoped to get Ian Gillan in to guest on a couple of tracks, but the timing was out. Glenn’s band has a new drummer, Ian HaugIand,another Europe member, making three in all. Ian joined in time to play on the Stockholm session.
GLENN HUGHES : FROM NOW ON : UK : Roadrunner RR 09007: 1994 CD The Japanese version (Xero XRCN 1080) includes “Burn” and “You Keep On Moving”; the UK version just has “Burn”, while the original Swedish issue has neither!”I’m a little perplexed and slightly confused as to the mish-mash of styles, suggesting that the tracks were written over a long period of time. I expected more of a strident hard-hitting funk-metal album, something like Living Colour or Chilli Peppers, and I’m surprised he played no bass on the album. As with “Blues” last year, the vocals stand out as the highlight of the album. The really important thing is that Glenn is back and singing well. ‘ Walkin’ On Water” is my favourite. Funk-metal as only GH can do it. A basic groove, with deft touches of rock guitar and great bass variations.” Roy DaviesThe album does cover a wide range of styles, and is much better than the LA Blues set. Here we go from Purple stompers like “Pickin’ Up The Pieces” (the keyboards especially), to the bluesier based Brit-rock as on “Lay My Body Down”. That said, little here really begins to break new ground, but perhaps that wasn’t the intention – it’s more of a reaffirmation of Glenn’s return to the fray. “Walkin’ On The Water” and “The Liar” both hold out some promise. The former is interesting both lyrically and in its musical structure, lots of varying time changes (though these perhaps show up certain weaknesses in the drum dept), while the sampled keyboards on the latter are a bit out of the ordinary, and the ending where Glenn is working with the guitarist might have been worth making rather more of. As someone else said of the new take of “Burn” – “Why fix something that ain’t broken”!
Glenn Hughes has added to his already prodigious output of the last several years with another new disc, “Burning Japan Live.” Proclaiming himself substance and alcohol free since 1991, Glenn has never looked, or more importantly, sounded better. Although he has said in numerous recent interviews that his Deep Purple days were not necessarily the best days of his life, seven of the fifteen tracks here are indeed Deep Purple songs from the MK III and IV era. There are also four tracks from his studio release of earlier this year, “From Now On…,” two from the 1982 Hughes/Thrall album, “Coast To Coast” from his Trapeze period, and the newly written “Still In Love With You.” And despite quotes from Glenn for years that he wants to break away from the hard rock that he’s done for most of his career and move toward a funk and soul direction, this disc rocks as hard as any he has ever done. In true Deep Purple MK III and IV tradition, the opening number of the show is the classic “Burn.” With an appropriate introduction as “The Voice of Rock,” Glenn and band launch into a very spirited and uptempo version of this 20 year-old tune. Because Glenn does all the lead vocals during the show, I feared that the impact of his original entrance into the song would be lost. This was not the case though, as he let the loud enthusiastic crowd sing the chorus intro, “All I heeeeeeeeear!” Fist-pumping stuff! Guitarists Thomas Larsson and Eric Bojfeldt don’t alter the song’s basic riff, but do interpret Blackmore’s solo their own way, resulting in a sound somewhere between Ritchie himself and Yngwie Malmsteen, although it would be unfair and futile to compare these guys to either of those legends. Drummer Ian Haugland, with a driving open hi-hat beat, and keyboard man Mic Michaeli, with his Hammond B-3, both sound close enough to the original to be passable. Hearing Glenn performing all the vocals in this song, his fans no longer have to dream about what Deep Purple would have sounded like had Ian Paice and Jon Lord got their wish of having Hughes as the lead vocalist of Deep Purple [note: Ian and Jon were outvoted by Ritchie, who wanted two vocalists]. Like all his previous live work, and even more so now without the encumbrance of a bass guitar hanging from his neck, Hughes displays his immense vocal talents at every opportunity. In this song alone, I stopped counting at ten upper-register full-throated screams, and this count seemingly increased as the show went on. Hughes fans who live for the screaming-at-the-top-of-his-lungs-at-the-upper-end-of-his-formidable-range will think that this is the finest effort of his storied career. Conversely, those who think a subtler singing style is a preferable philosophy should steer clear of this disc and head straight for the Michael Bolton/Barry Manilow section of the record store. Next up is “The Liar,” a song from his latest album that sounds somewhat like Led Zep’s “Immigrant Song” with its frenetic throbbing riff and the banshee wail background vocals. This version is pretty faithful to the studio recording, although anyone familiar with Glenn’s performances knows that his live versions always include added vocal pyrotechnics. Glenn primes the audience for the next tune by saying, “We’re gonna get funky now,” and the band rips into the muscular riff of “Muscle And Blood” from the Hughes/Thrall album. This song is probably the heaviest track from that album, and the dual guitars here keep it that way with a chunky sound much like that of Gary Moore back in his metal period. Hughes ends the tune with a short a capella break, “I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man made of muscle and bloooood!” The next three tracks, “Lay My Body Down,” “From Now On…,” and “Into The Void,” are all from the “From Now On…” album, and the band plays them all very close to the originals. Again, the difference between the live and studio interpretations of these songs is mainly the variety of vocal stylings added by Glenn in the concert setting. It’s really a pleasure to hear Glenn reinterpret these songs live if you are familiar with the studio recordings, because of all the subtle variations he is able to do on the original. He seemingly has an infinite assortment of vocal shades, and often changes the texture of the original. The one new song during the set, “Still In Love With You,” is introduced by Glenn as, “I was fooling around with something today at soundcheck – figured you might want to hear it.” It is also the only song where he plays an instrument – surprisingly keyboards! The tune is performed by Glenn alone, and is a nice ballad-type thing, although it’s not really a song on its own yet, but more of an intro to the next tune, “Coast To Coast.” For those who get into such things, Glenn really loosens up the vocal chords in this intro, and hits his highest notes of the show – I could imagine all the dogs in my neighborhood perking up their ears while I was playing it. 🙂 “Coast To Coast” is perhaps Glenn’s best-ever writing achievement – a truly beautiful song. No one can touch him when he’s singing this one, and he doesn’t disappoint in this show. Nothing short of an Yngwie guitar solo could ruin this song, yet that’s exactly what the guitarist tried to do! The original solo laid down by Trapeze guitarist Mel Galley was a simple, yet elegant solo that actually enhanced the song with its melody. The live solo here is an unnecessary speed display that doesn’t even follow the melody of the song. Fortunately, the solo is short. Following “Coast To Coast” is a block of four Deep Purple MK IV tunes. After a dedication to Tommy Bolin, Glenn delivers a soaring “This Time Around” to an appreciative crowd. Michaeli has Lord’s keyboard work down on this song. Like on the “Come Taste The Band” album, the song segues into the instrumental “Owed To ‘G’.” Again, like in “Coast To Coast,” a hyper-kinetic guitar solo almost ruins things. Some things are meant to be left as is. Aside from the solo, the song is performed crisply, and the band acquits themselves well. “Gettin’ Tighter” is next, and I’m not sure what to make of this version. The rhythm guitar has been funkified to the point that it would work on an Isley Brothers record, yet the opening guitar solo is in the neoclassical vein. Hmmm? The song does settle into a cool wah-wah guitar funk piece the rest of the way. Can’t blame them for trying a new approach, but gun to my head, I’d have to say that I prefer the original Tommy Bolin version. “You Keep On Moving” is a masterpiece however. I thought I would miss the Coverdale/Hughes harmonies here, but Glenn survives on his own just fine. The crowd gets in the act during the reprise of the verse after a “Sing it with me” urging from Glenn, and responds impressively with a loud “You Keep On Moving, Far Away, Far Away.” The last three tracks are two MK III tunes sandwiched around another Hughes/Thrall number. “Lady Double Dealer” – nice job. The Hughes/Thrall tune, “I Got Your Number” really showed how enthusiastic and knowledgeable about Glenn’s music the audience was. A loud cheer greeted the opening notes, and this time they didn’t need any urging to complete the opening line – [Glenn] “How ya been?” [crowd] “Alright!” This crowd knew and loved the song! “Stormbringer” closes out the show – pretty much the same as the original, and the guitar solo captures the mood of Ritchie’s excellent solo quite nicely. So what’s left to say? Well, before the obvious comparisons to Deep Purple, it should be made clear that this is not a permanent band as Deep Purple was. The concerts, as well as the albums, are promoted and marketed as “Glenn Hughes” – not “The Glenn Hughes Band,” or even “Glenn Hughes and band.” It’s just Glenn Hughes. The main job of the band here is to not get in Glenn’s way. I don’t mean to disparage the band in any way, as they are very competent and talented professionals who do a fine job supporting Glenn. It’s just that this music will not go down in history as one of the all-time performances. That’s the way it is. As far as showcased hard rock singers go, the list of singers with with Glenn’s versatility is very small or non-existent. His voice has an appealing pure quality to it, his range is legendary, and his sense of pitch is right on. The endless arsenal of tonal variations is what keeps his work interesting – he is able to improvise at will, and perhaps never will perform a piece the same way twice. This unpredictability is what keeps the man intriguing. The bottom line is that this album is a definite must-have for Glenn’s fans, hard rock vocal fans, and even Deep Purple fans, even if the music isn’t quite up to their lofty standards. Glenn has given a monstrous performance here, with the vocals of every song exceeding those of the original renderings. Maybe in the future he will join another supergroup like he had in Deep Purple, but for now, this is his best vocal effort to date. I had a lot of fun reviewing it, and will be grooving to it for a long time to come. reviewed by Bill Jones for the newsgroup alt.music.deep-purple Sept 24, 1994
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Ashely { Still I hear, “Burn” } Rose upgrades to the $3 “Nobody’s Perfect” Tier
Hey Nate! Hope you’re doing well! Gotta be honest, I was laughing at John’s Jennifer Coolidge impression then was sold on the random painter calling to check in on the 911 alert. I Recently just got a good pay bump at work and seeing as all I do is listen to podcasts at work for 8-12 hours a day I have you guys to thank for my pay bump by keeping me occupied (and laughing) also felt fitting to upgrade on one of my favorite album episodes. Thanks for all you guys do and hope to catch you guys soon!
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Did album covers for Pink Floyd (Animals), Wings (Venus and Mars), Led Zeppelin (Presence), Deep Purple (Nobody’s Perfect), Led Zeppelin’s 1990 box set.
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