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Rating: Gigantic screens, endless stages, a riot of speakers, light shows, and explosions: Deep Purple do not need any of that to ignite the audience, because the universality of art in their performances is provided by the music alone. But let's take it step by step.
The historic Mk2 reached the unreachable peak of their career in 1972-73. Masterpieces like In Rock and Machine Head can already be defined as milestones of emerging hard-rock. The five purples, before the interminable lights of Queen's stages and the enormous oval screens of Pink Floyd (not to take anything away, of course), manage to deliver an incredible show to those who come to see them live, simply by relying on the genuineness of their sound—hence the incredible success of Made in Japan.
Back to us: this DVD takes us on a beautiful journey into the past, in the only performance of the historic line-up filmed in its entirety, with added snippets from other nights.
The Copenhagen show, recorded by Denimarks Radio (as the excellent internal booklet tells us), is a surprising explosion of sounds. It starts off great, and right away, it's a classic: Highway Star - the classic opening of concerts from that period - in great form. Excellent emphasis on the musical foundation created by Lord, over which Gillan fully extends his voice. There's no time to breathe: here comes Strange Kind Of Woman, with a great opening and sublime ending, and in between, a highly entertaining challenge between Blackmore and Gillan to see who can hit the higher note with their respective instrument (electric guitar and... voice!)... The result? A draw!
At this point, a break, an energetic pause to all the chaos: Child In Time borders on perfection. Perfect as always, despite some more 'critical' moments when Gillan has annoying coughing fits. In the body of the song, a blues bordering on psychedelic, a slow rock that gradually leads into the phenomenal Blackmore solo (considering that today he's turned to medieval music... sigh!), I'll leave it to you to imagine the audience's sense of rapture...
The Mule is a different story, in many (trust me, really many) bootlegs at my disposal, I've always considered it a less inspired song—despite my passion for drumming, I believe that a piece based on a single instrument is quite pointless in a band of headstrong soloists—yet this version, more than others, manages to involve you: perfect, especially the final sprint.
With Lazy, we return to the good old blues so dear to the band. A hair-raising rock 'n' roll, with Blackmore in great prominence, even if the track seems to want to be just a prelude to the highest musical point ever reached (in my humble opinion) by Mk2, which is that Space Truckin' that closed all Deep Purple's performances. In the central part of this hard-blues, the psychedelic wall brushed upon in Child In Time is here torn down by a brilliant performance of the various soloists (let's also include Gillan on the drums). The real spectacle is provided by an unprecedented Blackmore who, before the medieval castles and mandolins, remembering Hendrix, takes the guitar off his neck and, to produce all possible sounds (and applause), does everything with it: first, he rubs it against the amps, then raises it to the sky like a scepter, finally strums it against his backside (!), then swings it around and, seeing that it falls, takes the opportunity to 'play' it with the soles of his boots (always with incredible class, like a true English gentleman).
And thus the finale, the show would be over, but the audience wants more and more: so the 5, who had said goodbye just a few minutes earlier, return to the stage. Just enough time to reconnect a few wires and change (obviously) Ritchie's guitar, and off we go:
Fireball, one of my favorites, exquisite, with those Hammond-Drums duets, and Lucille, perhaps even better, are certainly not mere sops, for an audience never satisfied—in fact, after Lucille, Deep Purple thank and exit again, but, loudly acclaimed, return for a dramatic finale: Black Night, the historic hard-blues single never featured on an LP. Lengthened, distorted, a perfect conclusion to a truly impressive performance. There's also room for Glover, who is known to always have had the job of bringing a bit of order to a band of virtuosic soloists.
It's the final farewell, and the DVD would already be perfect as it is, but the curators wanted to go overboard.
Here we are in New York, at one of the many universities of bearded and bespectacled folks still with '68 remains in their veins (we are in '73). This time the footage is in color, but alas, there is no complete video of this concert, so we only have three clips. And between a Strange Kind Of Woman, where, unbelievable but true, the high note challenge mentioned before is won by Gillan (who even mocks the Man in Black) and a furious Space Truckin', here you have (and so do we) a blazing Smoke On The Water, where Blackmore steps on the accelerator pedal, along with a highly inspired Gillan: the song, of course, speaks for itself but, oddly, the third verse is omitted.
Shall we stop here? Not yet!
The last remaining video of the DVD, here directly from the BBC video, is the opening song of the blazing California Jam, namely Burn, with which we can see the ex-lingerie store salesperson (Coverdale) and the ex-Trapeze (Hughes), of Mk 3, in action.
What more can be added? A wonderful DVD, spectacular, an absolute must-have, although it must be said that from this point of view, Deep Purple were a bit mean (!). The concert never came out in Italy, and I could only find it available in England (and I even had to pull out all the stops to buy it). By the way, before not exactly inspired albums, before disbandments, repeated line-up changes, before arguments—and before reunions—this is what the five Deep Purple are: a force of nature, a band capable of delivering a TOUR de FORCE of EMOTIONS.
Hail God, Amen.
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