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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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DEEP PURPLE
The British International Motor Show Music Festival,
The Excel Centre, London, July 30th 2008 |
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| I’ve
never been to a motor show before, Serge, and it
strikes me that they’re pretty weird places.
For a start, they’re full of cars. And they’re
full of people looking at cars. To be more accurate,
they mostly seem to be people taking photographs
of ludicrously expensive cars that they’ll
never have a cat in hell’s chance of owning.
Why would anyone want to do that? And why would
anyone want to have to listen to the incessant warbling
of past-their-sell-by-date TV C-List ‘personalities’
extolling the virtues of the in-car entertainment
system of the new Ford whatever-it’s-called?
It’s ghastly. It’s a nightmare. Why
are we here? Well, it’s the lure of the British
International Motor Show Music Festival, a week
or more of evening gigs targeted, as the marketing
guys would say, at a particular demographic aligned
with the core consumer of motor show products, or
in other words, blokes largely aged between thirty
and fifty. It’s a way of increasing footfall
through the show in the evenings when punters tend
to stay away. And just look at the artists –
Status Quo, Jools Holland, Alice Cooper, Blondie,
Chicago, Meatloaf, and a whole night of British
has-beens from the 1980s, headed by Paul Young and
Midge Ure. Dad rock if you ever saw it. And before
anyone points an accusing finger, let me explain
that I’m here as facilitator, not a fan. It’s
the boy (“Have you ever heard of a band called
Deep
Purple, dad?”) who’s here
to see the eighth incarnation of one of the UK’s
longest serving rock bands, and arguably one who
could, along with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin,
be accused of writing the rule book of ‘heavy
metal’. |
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It
happens to be the band’s fortieth anniversary
but I have neither the space nor inclination to
do their history justice. But so that you know,
drummer Ian Paice is the only survivor of the original
band, bassist Roger
Glover and singer Ian
Gillan both date from the seventies second line-up
(the one that recorded all the really famous albums
like Deep Purple In Rock), guitarist Steve
Morse replaced Ritchie Blackmore when he walked
out on the band for the last time in 1993, and organist
Don Airey
succeeded Jon Lord, who retired from the band in
2002. Their most recent album, their eighteenth
studio work, was 2005’s generally well-received
Rapture of the Deep, but it’s perhaps not
surprising that only the title track makes it on
to the set list. Few in this three-quarters-full
6,000-capacity stadium in the car park of the Excel
Centre in London docklands (during the day it’s
the ‘Honda Live Action Arena’, which
no doubt accounts for the lingering aroma of burnt
rubber) have come to see new stuff – and they
were no doubt pleased that the majority of the material
came from the band’s zenith in the seventies.
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| Certainly
it meant that the group of ladies behind us could
sing along with Ian Gillan almost all night long,
which to my surprise I found the Photographer doing
too. And so ubiquitous was the band’s work
in the seventies (no party could be without at least
one of their very useful gate-fold albums) that
I even found I remembered about half of the songs
they played. |
| It
has to be said that Mr Gillan needed all the singing
assistance he could get. He seemed somewhat out
of sorts, and rarely came close to the sort of vocal
pyrotechnics that characterised his earlier performances.
He stumbled over some of the lyrics, shortcut through
others, was frequently absent from the stage and
was visibly being carried by the band who seemed
to take on lengthy solos to cover his deficiencies.
It’s a shame, as otherwise they turned in
a really cracking performance, although perhaps
a little benign, lacking the menace of years gone
by. |
Glover, Gillan and Morse (L to R) |
| Glover
was hugely exuberant on bass, and with Paice, drove
the band through the set like a steam train. Airey’s
keyboards adequately filled in for Jon Lord, providing
much of that classical/rock Hammond sound that was
one of the signatures of the band’s sound.
Morse, after a slow start, delivered a master-class
in heavy rock guitar techniques, without the histrionics
normally associated with the genre. I’m assured
that his playing involved the following techniques:
two-handed tapping, sweep picking, raking, volume
swells, dive bombs, alternate picking (apparently
“good enough to rival Paul
Gilbert”), whammy bar tomfoolery, pinched
squeals, bending and pre-bending, and “more
natural harmonics than most people know about”.
Pretty good, eh? |
| For
all that, what the audience had come for was the
hits, and in a rather rushed set of about an hour
and a half (I sensed a local authority-imposed curfew
looming) they delivered ‘Fireball’,
‘Into the fire’, ‘Strange kind
of woman’, the hugely dated-sounding ‘Mary
Long’, ‘Space truckin’’,
‘Highway star’, ‘Smoke on the
water’, and an encore of ‘Hush’
and ’Black night’. Sadly, no ‘Speed
King’, which would have been a most appropriate
valedictory caution to petrol-headed Motor Show
devotees, and no ‘Child in time’, which
frankly would have been beyond Gillan’s vocals. |
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But
as I said, a cracking performance for all that,
and in listening to some of these classic songs
a nice reminder of just how influential Deep Purple
were, or should I say, are? And by the way, Serge,
did I mention I picked up a new bus for this year’s
Whiskyfun Festival Specials? Quite a bargain at
one hundred and thirty-eight grand. - Nick
Morgan (concert photographs by Kate)
Listen:
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Purple's MySpace |
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