A symbolic image of the delusion embodied by the big ’70s rock bands? Deep Purple at the mammoth festival california jam, In 1974, in front of 250,000 people, Ritchie Blackmore smashes a (very expensive) television camera with his Fender Stratocaster guitar, He set fire to the stage and fled the scene by helicopter. real.
“Ritchie was upset that he still didn’t want to perform so early in the daylight and it put a lot of stress on him, but we didn’t know anything about the stage plans. It was a real ‘shock’. You can see in the video right now it’s a wonderful, powerful and dramatic ‘show’”, remembers one of the people who was able to follow the show more closely, still being impressed, even daring to sing, bassist-singer Glenn Hughes. He was then in his twenties and now 71, getting ready to celebrate a resounding one-year anniversary, the 50th anniversary of his debut album with Deep Purple, a tour of ‘Burn’ this Wednesday at Razzmatazz. . “It’s a celebration of an era,” he explains in a Zoom chat at his home in Los Angeles. “and it’s something very few can do, because most of them are no longer there; I’m one of the few people who can celebrate an album’s 50th anniversary.”
without Paul Rodgers
Let’s recall his adventures: Hughes joined Deep Purple in 1973, when the formation that made the band famous (Mark II) disbanded and he and David Coverdale replaced Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. It came from Trapeze, an emerging combination, but the call of the authors of ‘Smoke on the water’ was hard to reject. First of all, when they told him that the solo singer position would go to Paul Rodgers, whose group Free had disbanded. “The idea of singing with him was exciting. Rodgers was a good friend of mine,” explains Rodgers. But Rodgers chose to create his own band, Bad Company, and the microphone went to the unknown Coverdale. Reason for disappointment for Hughes? “I’m a solo singer and the first thing for me is to sing and compose, but joining Purple back then was the right thing to do.” And after all, Coverdale would become his “soulmate.”
Hughes admits that Deep Purple Mark III is almost like a new band. “It would be a mistake to get a singer like Gillan and a bassist like Glover. They wanted something different and it was a good idea to go for a different sound with two singers. An interesting scenario was created,” he says. Another new factor was the inclusion of synthesizers by Lord, “a great keyboardist and a true genius.”
a funky touch
And then there’s the ‘funky’ factor: Hughes is referred to for that unwanted rhythmic twist by Ritchie Blackmore, who “left the band because he wanted to play more classic rock (to create Rainbow)”. Looking more at Jon Lord and Ian Paice, he guesses: “The change was a natural progression for them.” Regarding Blackmore, he says he doesn’t remember the shocking incidents about it. “When we were making ‘Burn’ and the next ‘Stormbringer’, he was there and played great on ‘funky’ tracks like ‘You Can’t Do It Right (with the person you love)’, but suddenly he wanted to do something different and left the band.
His current tour pays homage to Mark III in general and ‘Burn’, an album he has contributed specifically to. only a few years ago, authorship credits were finally recognized in five years. songs. “I was a silent accomplice as a co-author, I cannot explain why now,” he says, alluding to distant contractual issues. Of those songs, his favorite songs are “probably ‘Sail away’ and ‘Might just your life’, but ‘Burn’ is also a great song”.
Meanwhile, Deep Purple continues to tour around the world regularly and with the classic trio Gillan, Glover and Paice at the helm. The tape that Hughes observed from an enormous distance. “I haven’t heard anything Deep Purple have done since ‘Perfect Strangers’ almost 40 years ago, and I don’t know what they’re doing today or how it sounds.”