Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Velden am Wörthersee / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: 15.03.2015
Attendance: 150
After more than four decades as a pro, and especially after joining Deep Purple in 2003 as a worthy replacement for the sadly departed Jon Lord, English keyboard wizard Don Airey has fully earned the label “music legend”. This time Don and his solo band stopped by Austria’s Bluesiana to celebrate forty years in the world of classic rock, and plenty of people were seriously wondering how he’d even manage to squeeze his impressive keyboard rig onto the pretty small stage of this popular rock venue. Luckily, after Eric Sardinas’s recent nasty fall, the Bluesiana stage had been extended a bit on the left side, so Airey’s keyboards found a proper spot and he could throw himself into his own special, virtuosic style without a hitch, with the Hammond organ reigning supreme as usual. Bluesiana was surprisingly packed that night, and it promised to be an evening full of classic rock classics from Don’s rich musical career. Besides some of his solo material, we got to hear great versions of selected evergreens once played by rock giants like Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake and Gary Moore.
Don’s band once again consisted of nothing but superb musicians: singer Carl Sentance (Nazareth, ex-Persian Risk, Krokus), bassist Laurence Cottle (a session player for plenty of big names such as Black Sabbath and Eric Clapton), drummer Darrin Mooney (Primal Scream, ex-Gary Moore), and the excellent new guitarist Simon McBride (Sweet Savage), who is surely one of the greatest Irish guitar talents since Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher. During the show, Simon proved that Gary Moore’s famous legacy is in his “little finger”, nailing both of Moore’s classics that night: »Back on the Streets« and especially »Still Got the Blues«. During the latter, all you had to do was close both eyes and you could easily imagine the ‘immortal’ Moore up there instead of McBride. At times it really seemed like Moore’s ghost was hovering in the shadows above Simon, guiding him along the guitar strings. He was just as convincing playing the legacy of another unforgettable guitarist, the master of legendary guitar phrases – Ritchie Blackmore.
As expected, maestro Airey was in a league of his own, especially during the instrumental moments, but you couldn’t overlook the superb rhythm section that night either, with bassist Cottle getting a few interesting solo moments. The upbeat Sentance did his vocal duties more than solidly and won us over with his heart and charisma, even though he struggled a bit with the higher notes, which he still managed to wriggle out of pretty skillfully. Don’s eager crew opened the show with the Rainbow heavyweight »Eyes of the World«, followed by the solo track »3 in the Morning« and another Rainbow standard, »No Time To Lose«, which came off as highly professional, just as you’d expect.
Then came the first of two bigger surprises of the night, with a performance of the immortal Whitesnake power ballad »Is This Love«. Sure, Airey was never an official member of Whitesnake, but he played on both of their most commercially successful albums as a guest keyboardist, namely »Whitesnake« (1987) and »Slip of the Tongue« (1989). This is where Carl Sentance really shone, getting pretty close to the color of Coverdale’s voice and helping the band recreate the original atmospheric magic that runs through this unforgettable classic. The unexpected »Is This Love« was definitely one of the highlights of the night.
After the excellent takes on both of the Gary Moore evergreens mentioned above, Don’s band played the evergreen »Fire«, a Jimi Hendrix cover that also came off very respectably. Next came the second surprise, a rendition of the Deep Purple masterpiece »Child of Time«, which totally caught a lot of people off guard, since it’s one of the vocally toughest classics around. Sentance did have quite a bit of trouble hitting the high notes, but he scraped through, and you had to give him serious credit for the guts and heart it took to take on such a demanding vocal challenge, considering it’s one of the hardest, if not the hardest, standards in the Deep Purple vault.
The closing stretch of Airey’s set was, as expected, ‘rainbow’-colored, with three Rainbow evergreens in a row from the days when Don earned his bread in Ritchie’s brotherhood. The instrumental »Difficult to Cure«, which features an arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony along with a whiff of prog rock, came off brilliantly, while the fan favorite »Down to Earth« (1979) hit »All Night Long«, where the crowd honestly pitched in too, and »Lost in the Hollywood«, also from that album, were pretty much the expected picks for the finale. Before the instrumental, Don joked that because of how hard it is to play, they’d renamed it Diffcult To Play.
After an hour-long return to the stage, Airey’s crew nailed the big Rainbow hit »Since You’ve Been Gone«, with the increasingly rowdy crowd in the front rows singing along actively, especially on the chorus. It’s kind of sad that most people who aren’t active music fans these days only know Rainbow from this much-covered evergreen, which Ritchie’s gang “long ago” adapted from the original by Russ Ballard. The obligatory Deep Purple hit in the encore, luckily, wasn’t »Smoke On The Water« as is usually the case, but »Black Night«, which came as a relief to everyone who doesn’t miss the best-known classic of the hard rock champs at all, since over the years, especially at gigs, it’s turned into a sort of ‘eternal broken record’.
Don Airey’s gig, with his ever-cheerful and tight band, at Bluesiana was a successful celebration of the last four decades of classic rock, and we got to enjoy quality versions of plenty of unforgettable evergreens all evening long. It’s worth mentioning that, given their polished technical chops, Airey’s band could have played a Colosseum II track or two, but in a night that was mostly classic rock, that might have been too big a swerve into the more complex waters of jazz rock fusion (we did hear a few instrumental moments in that direction), which some in the crowd probably wouldn’t have taken to all that well. Still, we didn’t miss the Colosseum II material that night in Bluesiana, nor Don’s legacy from his time working with bands led by Cozy Powell, Ozzy Osbourne and Michael Schenker, which a lot of people who swear by his exploits with Rainbow and Deep Purple quickly forget.
Setlist
1. Eyes of the World
2. 3 in the Morning
3. No Time to Lose
4. Is This Love
5. Back on the Streets
6. Still Got the Blues
7. Fire
8. Child in Time
9. The Way I Feel Inside
10. Difficult to Cure
11. All Night Long
—encore—
12. Since You Been Gone
13. Black Night
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