Deep Purple

BP Pulse Live, Birmingham

4 November 2024

It's been two years since I saw Deep Purple, but it feels longer. It's been much more than two years since I was last at the NEC, but as soon as I left the station my feet remembered the long, familiar walk. And as I walked, I joined others, in ones and twos, and then in whole streams, all converging on the entrance to the venue. And I knew all of them. I didn't know their faces, but I recognised them all, because this is my audience. I've been to concerts in a lot of different genres over the last few years, and been in all kinds of audiences, and I've even pretended I belong in them. But this is where I belong. This is my audience.

I'm not even at the venue, and I'm already all emotional. This is silly.

I've timed it so I have time to buy a t-shirt and find my seat—not the best seat in the house, but I am content. There's a short wait for the support band, Reef. I don't know them at all. They do a decent job, but honestly they're a distraction, because my mind is already anticipating Deep Purple.

There's an excrutiating wait for the stage change-over. Then the lights go down, and the familiar intro tape of Mars, The Bringer of War plays while the band sneaks on, and when it crashes to a climax, we get a smack of snare drum and the stage lights come on and Ian Paice is playing the intro to Highway Star, playing it in a way I've never heard before, cramming it with extra added drum beats to give it a galloping rhythm, and the band come in, in the proper order, and I'm suddenly worried because nobody is standing up, and I don't know what to do, the guitar is wailing away and I don't want to be the only person to stand up, then Ian Gillan starts to sing and we're all on our feet like it was planned, and the world is perfect.

Gillan struggles through Highway Star, sounds kind of ok on Bit on the Side, and when the third song is Into the Fire I think it's bad choice if his voice is sub-par. But he's miraculously warmed up and he delivers the song perfectly, and if his screams sound more like angry howls then that's fine, it fits the song. And he's on form for the rest of the night, obviously not singing like a twenty-year-old, but delivering the performance we expect, and also saving himself for a quite unbelievable When A Blind Man Cries. And his song intros are back to their old rambling, insane meanderings—literally having the rest of the band laughing out loud at times. There's a lot of humour on the stage tonight, from Don pouring himself a glass of wine in the middle of his solo (without actually ceasing to play) to Simon pretending he's forgotten he's supposed to start Smoke.

Simon McBride gets a solo surprisingly early in the set, and up to this point he's being playing the songs pretty "straight", but now he shows us what he can do, starting with sounds that aren't a million miles from something Steve Morse might have played, but gradually stretching out in new directions, building up the speed and distortion until it's close to just a wall of random noise—close, but never actually that, there's always structure and direction to the solo. And you realise what the direction is when Ian Paice joins in with a familiar drum beat, then Don Airey plays a familiar synthesised fanfare, and the solo segues unexpectedly into Uncommon Man, unexpected except it also feels like the most natural transition in the world because that's what this band does.

And this is why I come to Deep Purple concerts. It doesn't matter what the titles of the songs in the set list are. What matters is how the band plays the songs. And plays with the songs. We get a total of six new songs tonight, which is almost unheard of, and to fit them in some things have to go. And I don't care. They drop Perfect Strangers, and that should be unthinkable, but I don't care. They could drop every classic from the set and i wouldn't care. Because this is all you need in a Deep Purple concert: not any specific song, but the joyful, playful, virtuosic soloing and improvised jamming, and the interplay between the musicians as they explore new ways to make everything sound fresh and new. I want drums that swing like a jazz band, I want Don to include Black Sabbath among the classical quotes that make up his solo, I want Roger to quietly underpin everything with the most beautful, understated, melodic bass playing. I want 100+ minutes of one musical miracle after another by the greatest rock band in the world.

And that's what makes the best concert I've ever seen.