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Deep Purple

Video: BRUCE DICKINSON, GLENN HUGHES, IAN PAICE Pay Tribute To Late DEEP PURPLE Keyboardist JON LORD

Manos Spanos
Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH, BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION, CALIFORNIA BREED), Bruce Dickinson (IRON MAIDEN), Ian Paice (DEEP PURPLE), Don Airey (DEEP PURPLE, OZZY OSBOURNE, RAINBOW), Rick Wakeman (YES), and Micky Moody (WHITESNAKE) are among the musicians who celebrated late DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Jon Lord's life and music at a special concert on April 4 at London, England's Royal Albert Hall. Hughes was joined on stage by Dickinson for both "You Keep On Moving" and a storming "Burn" with a mesmerizing keyboard solo from Wakeman, followed by Hughes alone backed by an orchestra for a roof-raising vocal delivery on "This Time Around". Fan-filmed video footage of the performance can be seen below. Jon Lord died on July 16, 2012 at age 71 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Lord, who was known for his keyboard virtuosity and his reinvention of the Hammond B-3 organ sound, co-wrote such PURPLE classics as "Smoke On The Water" and "Child In Time", among others. Lord and drummer Ian Paice were the only original members to last through the band's initial run from 1968 to 1976. He was on board for their 1984 reunion and stayed on through to his 2002 retirement from the band, after which he's worked primarily in the classical field. Over the course of his career, Lord also worked with the ARTWOODS, FLOWER POT MEN, PAICE, ASHTON AND LORD, WHITESNAKE and good friend and neighbor, George Harrison. In an interview with Peter Makowski, METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich stated about Jon Lord: "I'm not sure that the people in today's hard rock world really truly understand how innovative this guy was. He wasn't just another keyboard player on the side of the stage. In '66/'67, when Hendrix, Townshend and Ritchie Blackmore were taking the electric guitar to a new level, by using banks of Marshall stacks beefing up the sound, Jon Lord was one of the first guys in hard rock to take the keyboards through the same process. He took a fairly standard instrument like a Hammond organ put it through amplifiers and Leslie cabinets and introduced a whole new way of forcing the sound out of the keyboards. "Ritchie Blackmore said the other day that Jon formed DEEP PURPLE; he was certainly the instigator that made things happen. If not the musical leader, Jon was the spiritual leader of the band. He was a pioneer, and I think that somehow that's gotten a little lost in the last few [months]. People are talking about, obviously, what a gentleman he was and what a fantastic band member but he really did something nobody had done before with the sound of the keyboards and I think that's probably the biggest thing to remember him for."
03 min read

DEEP PURPLE: Promotional Video For ‘Above And Beyond’ Single

Manos Spanos
DEEP PURPLE will release the track "Above And Beyond" as a CD-single and on seven-inch vinyl on October 25 in Europe. The single artwork was based on the original graphic work of Black Dwarf Designs. A promotional video for the single can be seen below. "Above And Beyond" comes off DEEP PURPLE's latest album, "Now What?!", which sold 4,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 115 on The Billboard 200 chart. "Now What?!", the 19th studio album from DEEP PURPLE, was released in North America on April 30 via earMUSIC, the Hamburg, Germany-based international rock label which is part of Edel Group. After various songwriting sessions in Europe, the band recorded and mixed the album in Nashville, Tennessee with producer Bob Ezrin (KISS, PINK FLOYD, PETER GABRIEL, ALICE COOPER, KANSAS). The CD contain 11 tracks, including "Out Of Hand", "Weirdistan", "Uncommon Man" and "Above And Beyond". The latter song references the band's late keyboard player, Jon Lord, in the lyric "Souls having touched are forever entwined."
02 min read

DEEP PURPLE Singer: ‘Classic Rock Is Never A Label That We’ve Given Ourselves’

Manos Spanos
Jane Stevenson of the QMI Agency recently conducted an interview withDEEP PURPLE singer Ian Gillan. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below. On being considered a "classic rock" band: Gillan: "Classic rock is never a label that we've given ourselves — it's one of the many labels that's been imposed on us. We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based so the songs always came later... It's just the influences in the band are so diverse, coming from orchestral composition, jazz, blues, big band, swing and rock 'n' roll. So there's always been that element of adventure within the band. But I think, after all this time, [producer] Bob Ezrin pointed out all those things and so we all lifted up all our heads and said, 'Hmm, sounds interesting.' So there was a reason to go back in the studio. So we went back with enthusiasm." On the new DEEP PURPLE song "Vincent Price":
02 min read