Concert review from the Deep Purple A-Band-On-Tour 1999, Bad Mergentheim and Balingen, Germany

I just came home from a little "tour" with around Germany, hitting Bad Mergentheim, Balingen and Ulm. Gießen will follow on June 27th.

Before I go into concert details I want to emphazise that I had the GREATEST time on that trip. Not only did I meet all the band members before and after the concerts, spending several hours of chatting and partying with them, but I also met some very nice Purple fans from all over the world which was just a huge pleasure. A special "hello" to all you guys !!!

My little tour started in Bad Mergentheim on June 18th. Purple was playing at the Schloßhof, which is a courtyard inside a castle. Unfortunately it was not completely dark outside by the time they started so the first part of the gig was pretty much lacking any light show. Here's the setlist, which was pretty much the same on all these venues, so I'm not going to repeat it for every single review although there might have been little differences which I didn't notice since I was not writing it down other than during the first gig.

The first thing one realized when they came on stage was that Ian Gillan was wearing SHORT HAIR !!!! This is not a joke ! His long curls were GONE. See picture.

They started off with The Boys Are Back In Town of Thin Lizzy, just for a couple of bars, but a nice little joke though. First "real" song was

Pictures Of Home then came

Ted The Mechanic

Strange Kind Of Woman

Bloodsucker and

69    For this song Steve used a different guitar. I was stunned at first. The thing was BLACK. But it was obviously an Ernie Bell Musicman. I've never heard of a black Musicman before. The only guitar change I saw on the recent gigs was that he sometimes used his model with the wammy-bar. But it was still the sunburst blue one. The black one sounded a little different. A touch more bite, aggression. After the gig I asked Steve what this black one was about. He said it was the same one as the blue Steve Morse signature model, same pick-ups, same wood, same everything, it just sounds different. Nobody really knows why. He hasn't done any configuration or changes to the old model. He used that black one again later for - if I remember right - his medley solo. All the other songs he played with the usual blue one, the wammy-bar one was not used at all this time.

Black Night

Woman From Tokyo (LP version with intro and middle part)

Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming (thank you guys for playing it again, unlike the last tour - I just LOVE it, it's so full of emotion and I absolutely love the sound of Steve's guitar on that one. Plus it is very popular here in Germany since a TV sports show used to use it as their soundtrack for quite a while. Maybe somebody gave them that wink.....)

Watching The Sky (little problems with Jon's keyboard here, but the roadie fixed them pretty quick. Ian's problems with the lyrics weren't fixable though.....)

Space Trucking (with the "outer space" solo of Steve's, it's just unbelievable what kind of tones he gets out off his musicman, I have NO clue how he does that.)

Jon Solo

Lazy

Medley (with Zep stuff, Kinks, Lynyrd S., AC/DC and much more). Steve just plays up to twelve bars of each song, (using the black guitar again), in between he does some a-ma-zing things on the e- and a-string on the lower bars. Unbelievable technique, fast as hell and really really hard to play. But: not a single wrong tone. Just a class by itself. The whole medley was made up like he was tuning a radio, looking for the right station (riff), until he finds it and plays

Smoke On The Water (they played it very differently, an unbelievable swinging interpretation, I can't even describe it in words yet. I have to pay more attention in Gießen next week.... anyway, it sounded very cool and I was happy about some variation here, since I'm really getting tired of that song. Too bad that the audience still requests it..... One more word about this medley: when I talked to Roger - late night after the show - he said that Steve sometimes confuses him here. You never know which riffs he's going to pick that night and Rog, who's not much of a cover-player, sometimes gets into little trouble about what HE is supposed to play! Anyway, it worked out fine that night. Next was

another Jon solo which started with variations on the smoke theme and floated into  

Perfect Strangers

Speed King including: Blue Suede Shoes (another one I could easily do without....don't ask me why, but this is the only Purple song which just doesn't do anything to me, I can't even explain why.....)

The encore at this show was

Seventh Heaven and

Highway Star

Summary:

I'd say it was a nice show. The performance was professional (like always since Steve is in the band. You don't have to worry anymore to see some MIB screwing up the whole show and find you wasted time and money......) It also needs to be mentioned that Paicey was feeling very sick during these days, but he played anyway and did not cancel the venue. If I hadn't known about that I would have never realized it. His performance was great as always, the only fact that showed that something was wrong was the lacking of an extensive drum solo like we're used to seeing.

The atmosphere was relaxed (unlike the Balingen festival the next day were you had to live with way too many totally drunk/stoned/f...ed up headbanging jerks who were con-stant-ly banging into the rest of the audience, spilling their beers over people and so on..... They were a real pain in the butt and almost ruined my mood. I had to give up my nice spot, very close to the stage, just to get out of their way because I felt like kicking their butts. It was ridiculous.)

The crowd in Bad Mergentheim was way more civilized, the castle place was nice, they had various different food and drink stands around, the event was a real pleasure, especially the after-show time was unforgettable and a hell of a lot of fun......

The Bang-Your-Head Festival in Balingen, Germany, June 19th, 1999

Actually I was planning to see all the bands on Saturday, but then it happened that I got "stuck" in the bar in Bad Mergentheim with Steve and Rog until ..... (well, the sun was already up). So for that reason I didn't make it to Balingen until late afternoon and the first band I saw was Dio. Some little remarks about that: Ronnie himself was doing great. It's amazing that he lost nothing of his power and range in his voice over the last 20 years ! They were playing stuff like King Of Rock'n'Roll, Rock'n'Roll Children, Holy Diver, Heaven And Hell, Stargazer, (even a little sequence of Mistreated) and way more. All "old" stuff, which suited me just fine. As I said, Ronnie was great but I consider his band rather weak. The guitarist was, I must admit, a little better than Tracy G., but still average. His solo was a joke. Boring, no expression, no technique. (Steve would have played that thing better with one arm tied to his back and only three fingers left on his left hand.) The drummer didn't thrill me either, although he was doing something like a solo.... Ronnie saved the show. Unbelievable how good he still is. I'm really praying for that man (who's also a nice person, as I found out last week in Frankfurt) that he's lucky and finds a better band, supporting him with songwriting and performing on the high level he's on. He deserves better.

Well, let's now get to Purple. The setlist was pretty much the same as in Bad Mergentheim. If there were little differences, I can't tell you, because I didn't make notes. Feel free to correct me here. The little differences in performance I noticed are told quickly.  

The guys seemed to be in an ever better mood. (Yeez, Rog, how did you manage that after that long night.....?) The solos and improvisations were more extensive, the joking and fooling - especially between Rog and Steve was a pleasure to watch. Oh, something else: Jon was NOT wearing a ponytail ! First time in years that I saw him with his hair down. Big Ian's performance left no room for criticism, he used that "catwalk" into the crowd a lot which gave good chances for a shot (2nd pic from right). In general they were moving around a lot, switching stage positions or getting together to laugh, talk or hug. I can ABSOLUTELY not understand some reviews I just heard/read saying they were emotionless. This is B...SH... Only explanation I have for that is, that these people were maybe too far away from the stage to see what was happening or they couldn't "see" anymore at all, not to say worse.

Later that evening in the bar, Big Ian and Rog were in a great mood: Rog was telling jokes, Ian was setting up games, and they even did photos and autographs with a bride and groom who were having their wedding reception at the place. Sorry I can't show you the photos here, but I don't want to get into legal trouble because I forgot to ask the people for permission to publish their photos.

My bottom line is that both gigs were absolutely worth the money. The guys obviously enjoy playing together, they are having fun on stage (again), they communicate, joke and fool around with each other, they improvise. But that is true in general for all their gigs since Steve is in the band.

They did not play some of the songs which I would have liked to hear (Rosa's Cantina or Hey Cisco with their very special groove for example) and on the other hand I could live without Smoke and Speed King. But that's of course just my personal opinion. You'd get 3642 different setlists if you'd ask every fan, I know. I can easily live with whatever the guys decide to play (maybe one day it will be something unusual such as Mary Long or Smooth Dancer, who knows - 25th anniversary of WDWTWA is coming up.....)

I have some doubt that it was the best idea for Purple to headline a heavy metal festival. Those who came for THEM only (which were actually quite a lot ! Hundreds arrived just a short time before Dio started to play) were really annoyed by the majority of the crowd and the headbangers who came for the other bands were probably not too happy with Purple because they couldn't appreciate the quality of DP's performance, they only showed up to hear noise.....