... and they still rock!
The English rock band with the melodious name "Deep Purple", founded in April 1968, is one of the most influential representatives of hard rock. In the 70s, their songs were played up and down on almost every radio station every day. They stormed the charts worldwide and the song "Smoke on the Water" achieved cult status. The band even made it into the Guinness Book of Records in 1975 as the "loudest pop group in the world" at 117dB thanks to a 1000 "horsepower" - I mean wattage, of course - Marshall PA system.
A few days ago in the packed Hallenstadion in Zurich, they demonstrated that 50 years later, with a lot of patina, they can still do it. Thanks to their songs "Speed King" and "Highway Star", there is also a small connection to "Zwischengas", as two Jaguar XK120s suddenly stormed the stage.
Ian Paice (drums) 74, Roger Glover (bass) 76, Ian Gillen (vocals) 77, Don Airey (keyboards) 74 and the youngest member of the band, Ritchie Blackmore's replacement Simon McBride on guitar 43. Blackmore was one of the founding members of the band as a guitarist and songwriter. The other founders were Rod Evans (vocals) until 1969, Nick Simpel (bass) until 1969, Jon Lord + (keyboards) until 2002, as well as the only remaining Ian Paice, who is still on drums. The band broke up in 1976 after disputes, but reunited in 1984. However, frontman Ritchie Blackmore turned his back on "Deep Purple" for good and realized his musical ideas with his own hard rock band "Rainbow".
Even a new album, "Whoosh", was recently released and on it you can hear great similarities to the songs from the 70s. The evening in Zurich was "calm" and civilized, absolutely no comparison with the performance at the California Jam, when Ritchie Blackmore, as so often, dismantled his guitar into its individual parts on stage, wildly hit a TV camera with it and was almost blown off the stage by an ignited Marshall backline, so that the concert got completely out of control with fire on stage.
The double album "Made in Japan" is still one of the best that hard rock has to offer and is considered an absolute milestone in the history of hard rock.
