Concert Review: Deep Purple

A fresh and unpretentious show from a quintet of grizzled rock royalty.

By KAYLA J. ADAMS
Deep Purple 88 224 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Deep Purple 88 224
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Deep Purple Caesarea Amphitheater September 8 Extended guitar passages during which the man with the ax pulled faces so strained, pained and contorted as to raise concerns about his physical well-being. Keyboard interludes featuring hammy excursions into classical music, ragtime and Fiddler on the Roof. Several bass guitar solos that brought to center stage a man of almost pensionable age with a scarf on his head and a lascivious grin who slapped and pummeled his hapless instrument while brandishing it alternately as a sex organ and a machine-gun. Oh yes, the musical dinosaur that is Deep Purple is easy prey for the detractors. These wrinkly rockers have been going since the '60s, four of the five of them are now in their 60s (virtuoso guitarist Steve Morse is a veritable stripling of just 54), and they judder through their deafening and protracted hard-rock catalog as though punk, new wave and three decades of other efforts to puncture their bombast have never so much as crossed their musical radar. And yet, scream it over the ear-splitting din, Deep Purple was terrific at the Caesarea Amphitheater on Monday night, encouraged by a sell-out crowd of 4,000 - ranging from grandparents to the very young - to rock this most venerable of venues in ways its ancient builders could never have conceived. My Jerusalem Post colleague David Brinn has recalled that on their last visit, in 1995, the Purps cut short their single show after moody guitarist extraordinaire Richie Blackmore walked offstage in apparent irritation at members of the audience who were waving day-glo lights. But Blackmore, a grumpy soul by all accounts who managed to sack most of his colleagues over the years, is himself a distant memory now. Morse has mastered all his licks. And the band - only too aware, as drummer Ian Paice told Brinn before this gig, that "We're not the most fashionable unit touring out there in the world. We're not spring chickens" - is evidently having a riot on stage, delighted that audiences are returning to see it. Much of what passed for between-song stage patter from singer Ian Gillan was completely incomprehensible - I think he introduced the wrong tune a couple of times, and he may have remarked that his jeans were too tight - but he was plainly saying "thank you" a lot, telling us we were terrific, assuring us it was so good to be here, thanking us for sending the right "vibe" back to the stage. Barefoot, short-haired (it's been cropped since the photo below was taken), clapping along to his own musicians and dancing a little geekily, Gillan, to his great credit, was anything but pretentious, and that I think is the key to Deep Purple's rediscovered popularity. For all Morse's guitar-god strutting, he also handed his instrument out into the crowd for some at the front to play; for all organist Don Airey's indulgences, he threw in a rollicking "Hava Nagila" for our benefit; for all bassist Roger Glover's hackneyed poses, his musicianship was wonderful - the pulsing engine that, along with Paice's drumming, drives the Deep Purple machine. The set list featured much from the band's glory days - "Into The Fire," "Black Night," "Smoke on the Water" (of course) and its first hit "Hush" (though sadly without the lovely harmonica flourishes of yesteryear) - but there was newer material too; unlike many of its contemporaries who are still touring, Deep Purple is capable of writing fresh material that holds its own against the familiar. And keeping it all together at the back was Paice, that most unfussy of drummers, whose hands never seem to be doing too much (one of his secrets is a double bass drum pedal) and who is prone to none of the look-at-me rock drummers' stick-twirling excesses. Inspired by the legendary jazz sticksman Gene Krupa, Paice, who is now 60, tells every interviewer modestly that he's still learning his instrument. One of the few left-handers who, unlike Ringo, actually plays with his kit set-up for a leftie, he says he regrets to this day that he wan't made to learn right-handed, because that would have given him two "lead" hands and made him a still better player. This is a man who enjoys what he does so much that he has been known to sit in quietly and play shows with Deep Purple tribute bands. Paice and the band are back in Israel next week for more concerts - ticket demand was that high, fueled no doubt in part by their popularity among Russian immigrants. If you never liked them, they won't win you over now. But if you did once and thought they were past it, think again. The Deep Purple dinosaur is not extinct yet.