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Rating: It's around 11:50 PM and I'm driving my car on the A1, returning from Bologna with a friend. Deep Purple have just blown our minds with their sharp riffs.
We had spent the afternoon predicting what kind of concert we would see. We were anticipating the opening of the Pretenders, the guest band, about whom no one, absolutely no one of the few present, cared a bit (terrible was the moment when the 47-year-old singer Chrissie Hynde irritably addressed the indifferent audience with: "Do you know who we are? We are the Pretenders, you know?" and then, even more irritated, she started a couple of their hits, among which the teary "I Stand by You" stood out, in an attempt to stir the apathetic crowd).
We wondered how Don Airey could replace the sacred monster John Lord on keyboards. Well, I was sure he knew his stuff — you don’t play with Rainbow, Whitesnake, Michael Shenker, Ozzy Osbourne, Cozy Powell etc., if you don't have the guts! But I never expected anything like what I was about to hear.
I knew well their former-new guitarist (already 4 years with them), the semi-god Steve Morse, from having listened to him extensively both with the Dixie Dregs and the Steve Morse Band, but even in this case, my palate was well satisfied and surprised by his exquisite technique and his contagious modesty and friendliness. I also thought he might have had a facial paralysis since he was smiling throughout the entire performance!
The Purple had also tried Joe Satriani to replace Blackmore (a tour in Japan and one in Europe, unfortunately without official audio-video documents) before choosing him, who, to quote Ian Paice, "is truly a monster of professionalism and skill, and his modesty is matched only by his infinite technique."
The concert starts at around 10:00 PM and will end in a short span of an hour and thirty minutes.
The beginning sends shivers because those wild oldies immediately offer us, amidst screams of joy and moans of pleasure, the majestic "Highway Star," unfortunately ruined by an incompetent service that cranked up Roger Glover’s volume to the max and mortified Morse's guitar. I hope you're reading this, stupid bastard!
The sound will get fixed shortly after, but we missed the solo of the ever-smiling and composed Morse.
The concert slides by quickly, too quickly, and the about a thousand present enjoy all the legendary tracks of the Purple, from "Hush" to "Lazy," from "Smoke on the Water" to the incredible performance of "Speed King," in my opinion the best performance.
There’s also space for tracks from the album coming out this summer, among which "I Got Your Number" struck me.
What else to say? Ian Gillan has lost much of his vocal dynamics and his historic falsetto highs are now somewhat stifled. On the plus side, he still retains enviable charm.
Paice and Glover are two automatons, time can’t stop them, they would have played for another three hours.
Airey gives himself the luxury of offering us the pinnacle of the concert, a mix of amazement for his skill (he moves equally from classical to jazz to experimental to hard without fear) and hilarity as he sings a tune popular in our areas: "A soun stè alà féra ed San Làzer" (I was at the San Lazzaro fair, sung in Bolognese dialect).
Morse is a semi-god and that alone is enough to tell you what he can do. It's now 12:21 AM, I've arrived home, parked in the garage, and I'm going to bed. Goodnight and deep purple dreams to all!
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