Venue: Hanns Martin Schleyer Halle / Stuttgart / Germany
Concert date: November 8, 2008
Attendance: 12,000
Ticket price: 48.40€ (standing)
After finally pulling ourselves together following a wild night of hanging out and wandering around with Uriah Heep in Burghausen, on the German-Austrian border, then a hearty breakfast and a dose of authentic rural life in the far south of Bavaria, it was time to stretch our limbs and hit the road toward northwestern Germany, the state of Baden-Württemberg and its capital Stuttgart, aka Mercedes city. On the menu: a show by the legendary pioneers of the rock music empire, Deep Purple. Around 3 PM we parked in front of the enormous stadium-museum-arena complex made up of the VfB Stuttgart football stadium called Gottlieb-Daimler Stadion, the Mercedes-Benz museum, the Carl Benz Center, the Hanns Martin Schleyer Halle and the Porsche Arena. We spent the afternoon over full plates and full glasses of wheat beer in front of TV screens, watching live coverage from the German football league. The ideal late-afternoon chill-out ambience for grown men, in other words.
7 PM. In front of the Martin Schleyer Halle, the place is literally boiling. Well-disciplined German citizens were dutifully filling up the truly huge hall, with a total capacity of 15,500 standing and seated.
GOTTHARD: 8:00 – 9:00 PM
At exactly 8 PM the hall was swallowed by darkness and an intro tune that announced the opening act on this year’s autumn Deep Purple tour. That’s the Swiss hard rockers Gotthard, an excellent choice and a first-class hard rock attraction! Today, especially in central Europe, they’re a hugely respected act that is without doubt at the peak of its powers. The guys confirm it above all with regular releases of superbly polished hard rock albums, which Gotthard also carefully present every year on their extensive European tours. The men, who had already wrapped up their headlining tours in support of the current studio album “Domino Effect” (2007), got an amazing chance this time to play in front of jam-packed audiences in various German halls. If I’d hinted a few years ago that they’d one day be opening evenings for Deep Purple themselves, people would have called me a complete nutcase.
Gotthard are known for extremely energetic, high-voltage performances, fueled on stage mainly by vocalist Steve Lee and guitarist Leo Leoni. The former is a superb stage performer, with vivid charisma, flirty glances and poses, and a killer hard rock voice; the latter is an untamed guitar slasher who can twist his solos into the most impossible poses without missing a single note. Years of grinding to get noticed are clearly paying off big time, and Gotthard were received, especially in the front rows, with roaring applause and loud crowd participation, with plenty of die-hard Gotthard fans in the mix. Their hard rock is highly contagious, and if you land at their show as a complete newbie, it’s hard to imagine you won’t turn into a new fan of the band by the end. These guys are tireless workers and have been promoting their new album “Domino Effect” (2007) richly ever since last summer. They haven’t changed the set list much compared to, say, the one they played last October in Graz, close to Slovenia. In fact, they just cut it down to an hour and brought back the newer songs Said & Done (“Lipservice”, 2005) and The Oscar Goes To… (“Domino Effect”, 2007).
As expected, Gotthard dictated a relentless tempo from the very first second, which swept through the hall like wildfire. The men, who cut all the cover songs they usually play at their shows, mixed in some standard classics that can’t be missing from their concerts alongside newer songs from the last two albums, which made up the bulk of the set: the rocker with a contagious hint of eroticism, Sister Moon (album “G”), the cheeky Mountain Mama with its bombastic riff (album “Dial Hard”), which Leo announced with a pig-grunt effect, “Are you ready for the Mountain Mama?”, then Let It Be (album “G”) and The Top Of The World (album “Human Zoo”). During The Call, Leo played a double-neck Gibson guitar. Leo and Steve also treated themselves to a short skit mid-show, nothing new as far as Gotthard concerts go. It revolved once again around an inflatable guitar, on which Leo was teaching Steve to play. Falling, an excellent semi-ballad from the new album, gets turned into a proper ballad live, with only Steve left on stage, accompanied by keyboardist Nicolo Fragile, who also contributed backing vocals, which interestingly came across as slightly annoying in this case, since Steve’s strong, highly melodic voice, rough at the ends of the verses, is everything a song like this needs, especially a ballad. Steve is in top form, his singing convincing, explosive and full of authoritative diction, topped off by the guy’s super-confident stage movement and theatrics.
Gotthard spiced up their excellence with a stellar finish of songs with soaring choruses, The Oscar Goes To… and Lift U Up, in which they effortlessly got the crowd singing, and the crowd stayed on its feet through to the closing anthemic Anytime Anywhere. In a good hour they showed all their greatness. They served up first-rate hard rock goodness, which the grateful German audience rewarded with thunderous ovations. The men played the show without a slip, and delivered flawless sound, which is a real rarity for opening acts. Gotthard confirm the very idea of high quality, something you absolutely need to taste during their first new headlining tour, and so they remain an important player these days in keeping the tradition of the old-school hard rock school alive.
GOTTHARD – set list:
1. Master Of Illusion
2. Gone To Far
3. Top Of The World
4. The Call
5. Mountain Mama
6. All We Are
7. Sister Moon
8. Falling
9. Let It Be
10. Said & Done
11. The Oscar Goes To…
12. Lift U Up
13. Anytime Anywhere
At exactly 9:30 PM, well-known silhouettes appear on the half-darkened stage. The strobes aim at the drums, Ian Paice shakes out the opening rolls of Pictures Of Home, and the hall is ready to party.
The roomy stage, excellent lighting with a colorful play of spotlights, and the noisy welcome from the crowd are certainly nothing new for Deep Purple, even in 2008. The men are their usual selves on stage. Roger Glover, with a pirate bandana pulled over his head that he probably doesn’t take off even when he goes to bed, strides around the stage with long steps, swinging his Vigier bass; guitarist Steve Morse, in wristbands and necklaces with Native American “emblems,” in a decked-out purple shirt, as befits being “Purple,” in his typical squinting pose between bursts of guitar solos; in the back on the right, “hidden” behind a brand-new Hammond, Don Airey; to his left, “little” Ian (Paice) with his hair tied up in a ponytail; and of course the incomparable icon, “big” Ian (Gillan), as always for the last few years in his “good morning, bring me a coffee please” uniform: a plain white T-shirt, worn-out jeans and bare feet.
The men tweaked the set list slightly once more, though it keeps its time-tested repertoire, built mostly from their evergreen classics. They brought back two excellent post-seventies bonbons, Knockin’ At Your Back Door (“Perfect Strangers”, 1983) and especially the melody-rich, melancholy, murmuring Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming (“Purpendicular”, 1996), where Roger and Steve join Gillan’s vocal performance in the chorus with extra vocals. The real icing on the cake of surprises was the instrumental Wring That Neck (“The Book Of Taliesyn”, 1968), in a shortened version of course, given the golden era of unforgettable crossfire between Lord and Blackmore that, sadly, we’ll never experience again. It was followed by The Battle Rages On, with its “fatefully doomed” atmosphere, built on a compact riff and underpinned by Ian Paice’s jerky, highlighted pounding. “Paicey” was especially fired up on stage that night, and the drums sounded lively, dynamic and explosive, though he’s no longer in the mood to include longer drum solos in the repertoire. Morse and Airey took care of the solo spots, as usual. Airey’s spot in particular always leaves a unique mark on the listener with its intelligent virtuosity. The hypnotic effect carries you far away, and it’s hard to snap out of it and realize the piece has suddenly flowed into the solemn Hammond organ intro of Perfect Strangers. From there to the end, the concert jumped to a higher atmospheric level, because from here on Purple just lined up classics. One after another, mostly focused on playing the “Machine Head” (1972) material. The guys treated themselves to a witty transitional “bridge” of rhythmic improvisation and mood-building between Space Truckin’ and Highway Star, which got the whole hall on its feet. The peak, of course, was the closing Smoke On The Water. Before it starts, the stage goes dark for just a few moments. Morse “knocks out” Blackmore’s monstrous riff right in the dark, then the spotlights finally come on, and Glover appears on stage with the legendary Rickenbacker bass, which he uses for this song only and with which he played it at the famous Machine Head tour shows in the first half of the seventies, its sound also captured on the legendary live classic “Made in Japan” (1972).
The encore’s intro belongs to a “goofing around” dialogue between Airey and Morse, when Airey suddenly flips the basic motif at some point, and with its characteristic rhythm the crowd recognizes it as Lazy. Via Hush, Purple arrive at the closing number, whose intro belongs to Glover, and the whole hall explodes as one once more when Purple launch into Black Night.
Gillan is his usual self in his communication. On stage he constantly makes fun of himself, deliberately stumbling and bumping into his bandmates, or acting like he can’t put the mic back on the stand because he can’t find it, or searching for it after sticking it in his pocket. Often, as part of his obligatory shtick, he deliberately pierces the first rows of the audience with his bug-eyed stare, etc… I’ll repeat myself: Gillan’s voice isn’t as fresh as it once was, but the man gets through the repertoire completely confidently and at a level that’s more than enough for the great pedigree of Deep Purple classics. A few times he did allow himself to swallow some “melodies” (with improvising in the pre-chorus verses), which can be seen as deliberately saving available energy and lung capacity, but it never came across as annoying or distracting. For his age, Gillan is an extremely slim guy; he actually looks skinny as a spider.
Deep Purple remain upright. Two hours of a repertoire that has practically become folk music, fantastic sound conditions, a fantastic crowd, a huge stage and hall all definitely contributed to Deep Purple feeling great. You could really feel a kind of magic, which flooded the place especially when the guys tackled their biggest classics in the second part of the show and the encore. The traditionally loyal and devoted crowd, who took going to this event as a kind of duty and an honor, a chance to hang out with legends and enjoy that one-of-a-kind Purple energy, was definitely the tipping point that lifts this concert to a special place. A show that meets your expectations and more. It fills you with a positive energy, woven into a bridge between the band and the audience, flowing invisibly between them. And that doesn’t always happen. Clearly, in Stuttgart everything came together into the right picture. Time, place, people, the band’s mood. In the kind of form the guys showed at this concert, we’ll be able to enjoy Deep Purple classics for a good few years to come.
This show proved that Deep Purple concerts, regardless of the virtuosity and tricks they now pull off with total routine while playing the evergreen repertoire, are strongest in “indoor” halls, and that above all else, the band is worth catching at that kind of venue in Germany. The two-digit number on the ticket next to the “€” sign doesn’t exactly read as wallet-friendly at first glance, but when the last beat of Black Night fades, you know nobody pulled your leg. See you again in Munich, November 15, 2008!
DEEP PURPLE – set list:
1. Pictures Of Home
2. Things I Never Said
3. Into The Fire
4. Strange Kind Of Woman
5. Rapture Of The Deep
6. Wrong Man
7. Contact Lost
8. Well Dressed Guitar
9. Knockin’ At Your Back Door
10. Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming
11. Wring That Neck
12. Battle Rages On
13. Solo Airey
14. Perfect Strangers
15. Space Truckin’
16. Highway Star
17. Smoke On The Water
—encore—
18. Lazy
19. Hush
20. Black Night
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