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Deep Purple, 50 years old, bringing ‘The Long Goodbye’ tour to San Diego, plus revisit our 1987 Purple interview

Ian Paice of Deep Purple is shown performing at an August concert in Illinois. He is the sole original member of the band who is in its current lineup.
(Photo by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP)
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Deep Purple, which is now celebrating its 50th anniversary, announced its “The Long Goodbye Tour” in December of 2016.

That was six months after the band’s drummer (and sole remaining original member), Ian Paice, suffered a minor stroke — and eight months after the hard-rocking English band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

“What we hopefully won’t be remembered for is being the loudest band on earth according to the Guinness Book of World Records,” Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover said, with a chuckle, in a 1987 Union-Tribune interview that you can revisit in full below.) .

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Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan recently predicted that the group may carry on for several more years. That makes it impossible to predict if the current edition of Deep Purple’s concert next Wednesday at Mattress Firm Amphitheater will actually be its final San Diego show.

Then again, their concert here is with Judas Priest, which launched its own farewell tour eight years ago and whose lead singer — Rob Halford — became a part-time San Diego resident in the 1990s. (Halford discussed his band’s farewell in a 2010 Union-Tribune interview taht you can read by clicking here.)

Deep Purple and Judas Priest, with The Temperance Movement: 7 p.m. next Wednesday, Sept. 26. Mattress Firm Amphitheatre, 2050 Entertainment Circle, Chula Vista. $35-$95, plus service charges; $199.45-$239.53 for platinum passes with seating in the first five rows. (800) 745-3000. livenation.com

Deep Purple returns: hard rock in shades of the ‘60s

By GEORGE VARGA

May 29, 1987, San Diego Union

Most bands hope to be remembered for creating timeless music. Deep Purple has another concern.

“What we hopefully won’t be remembered for is being the loudest band on earth according to the Guinness Book of World Records,” said Roger Glover, the group’s bassist, chuckling wryly.

Actually, Glover needn’t worry.

According to the most recent Guinness Book, Deep Purple’s record was eclipsed by the Who’s 1976 U.S. tour, which featured a 76,000-watt sound system that produced 120 decibels of sound. (By comparison, the roar of a Boeing 727 jet taking off is a mere 98 decibels.)

And, presumably, many of today’s young heavy-metal upstarts, such as Motley Crue and Yngwie Malmsteen, equal or shatter this record nightly.

But regardless of whether Deep Purple is remembered as a lucrative source of business for hearing specialists, it is clear the group’s musical influence has been formidable.

Along with fellow Brit-rockers Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple remains one of the most imitated hard rock bands ever — from singer Ian Gillan’s high-pitched screams to guitarist Ritchie Blackmore’s quicksilver, classically inspired solos. (Swedish six-string wunderkind Malmsteen is an especially blatant Blackmore-imitator.)

Likewise, many of Deep Purple’s best-known songs — such as “Highway Star,” “My Woman From Tokyo” and “Smoke on the Water” — have been shamelessly recycled almost note for note by numerous other bands.

“I don’t regard our being imitated as anything but flattery,” said Glover, 41, who performs at the Sports Arena here tonight at 8 with the recently reunited Deep Purple.

“I think sometimes a parody can be stronger than the original. So if people take what we’ve done and become a parody — because they take the strong points of what we’ve done, rather than the subtle points — they become a stronger whole.

“The danger is that we become a parody of ourselves. We don’t take being hailed as an innovative band lightly. The only thing we can do is do what we did in the first place. The difference is that there was something about that era — the late 1960s and the early ‘70s — that was absolutely fantastic. There was a great spirit, and it wasn’t just with us. It was a great era, and there’s a lot of attention being given to it now.

“I find that indicative of a certain lack of substance in today’s music; there’s no subtlety or depth in it. Modern hard rock has become insular and one-dimensional.”

At its best, Deep Purple combined instrumental virtuosity with an exciting, no-nonsense approach to songwriting. The original lineup of the band scored a major U.S. hit with its 1968 version of Billy Joe Royal’s “Hush,” but only hit its artistic stride after Glover and Blackmore joined up in late 1969.

During the next year, the quintet released the classic album, “Deep Purple in Rock,” and collaborated with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a concert and record of organist Jon Lord’s “Concerto for Group & Orchestra.”

“At the time Ritchie and I joined, the band was noted for overblown, Vanilla Fudge-type arrangements,” Glover recalled. “Jon was certainly into the classics, and Ritchie was into virtuoso guitar playing. The intent of the band was to show off our musical prowess, which was good.

“Of course, Jimi Hendrix and Cream were still big, and we wanted to play hard. When Jon’s concerto with the Royal Philharmonic happened, it gave us a lot of publicity for all the wrong reasons. It promoted Jon as the ‘leader-guru’ of Deep Purple, which he admits he wasn’t. That made the rest of us resolve to play even harder, which is why `In Rock’ was such an unrelentingly hard album.”

By 1973, Deep Purple had become enormously popular in America and Japan. But with that success came an increasing reliance on a formulated sound, and it wasn’t long before Glover and singer Ian Gillan grew dissatisfied.

“Looking back, the motivation in the band was largely destroyed, mainly due to overworking,” Glover said. “Ian announced his intention to leave before I did. He felt the band had not lived up to its progressive label, and that we were just churning out albums to make cash. I agreed in principle. I wonder how much bigger or smaller we would have been if we’d been more adventurous.

“In the beginning I wrote a lot of songs and was one of the main instigators, but by the end of ’72 I felt my input was not wanted and my musical suggestions fell on largely deaf ears. But I wasn’t prepared to leave. After all, I was making more money than I’d ever dreamed of. We’d all come from poor families, and we’d gone from relative obscurity to prosperity in a few years. But I realized some of the band didn’t want me around, so I quit. I think mistakes were made. It wasn’t a pleasant time.”

Glover subsequently recorded a fetching orchestral solo album, 1975’s “Butterfly Ball,” before joining guitarist Blackmore in the hard rock band Rainbow. The decision to resurrect Deep Purple two years ago came only after serious thought.

“Ian Gillan tried to get the band back together in ‘83, which Ritchie and I resisted, partly because of the way it ended, and partly because I thought it was a phenomenon of its time,” Glover said.

“I did think long and hard. What changed my mind was when I realized we still had something to offer. We have a new audience, and I think that’s great. I may be old, but I’m not an oldie.”

george.varga@sduniontribune.com

Twitter @georgevarga

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