Location: Festivalgelände / Wiesen / Austria
Concert date: 07.07.2006
Attendance: 6500
Ticket price: from 39,00€ to 65,00€
The day after Legends Of Rock! Morning at the campsite! Uuuu, my head! It felt like a tank had rolled over it. Emerson swept the floor with the competition the night before! A morning stroll through Wiesen helps a lot with the slow, gradual business of pulling yourself together. Then again, nobody will miss a thing if they never treat themselves to a morning stroll through Wiesen in their whole life. Wiesen is a “pint-sized” place, or rather a village, and it’s home to little people who live “small deeds” and speak “small words”. Totally out of sync with the Slovenian pulse I know. Wiesen is a village that has two churches, a giant linden tree next to one of them, a hairdresser, even a town hall (!), a post office, a tobacco kiosk, a grocery store and a stream “regulated” back in 1937, which runs through the village forever trapped in a canal, a shameful mockery of man and his subjugation of nature! Yuck!
Right at the turnoff from the main road leading toward the main entrance of this year’s festival in Wiesen, there’s a restaurant you should steer clear of! You walk in, sit down to grab a bite, and the landlady yells “Bitte!!!” across the counter. Then you ask her for a menu and realize this place is mostly a pizzeria. Hmm… Resigned to the fact that Austrian pizzas cost twice as much as back home and are light-years from the quality of the ones baked in Slovenia, and starving enough to devour every annoying fly in the world, you order anyway. You order a pizza, and after an hour of waiting the very same landlady comes over to ask what on earth pizza you ordered. So Peter and I whistled the Slovenian evergreen “Kje so tiste stezice”, paid for our drinks, and politely told the “kind lady” that we were heading back to the festival for some “doggy bag food” and that we’d lost all appetite for pizza. At 17:30 we showed up at the counter, and there Wal made our day by handing us VIP tickets for Deep Purple, which we hadn’t expected even in our dreams. It’s unbelievable what a pleasure it is to work with promoters from the western part of Europe.
NO BROS: 20.00 – 20.45
The opening act, No Bros, kicked off the event! There was a lot of symbolism in it. This was a reunion of the lineup after 20 years of total silence. The band also released a comeback mini EP, “Mighty And More” (2005), last year and is currently in the studio recording a new album. Rock-solid hard rock riffs seasoned with an excellent dose of melody, a perfect melodic vocal that glowed with punchy power and a cannon-like rhythm section instantly convinced everyone that this is a masterful hard rock band from Austria that can proudly claim real legend status. Their sound has an incredibly classic English approach. If I hadn’t known where they were from, I’d have declared them natives of Great Britain, not to mention the excellent English accent the No Bros singer has. So, with classically chiseled hard rock riffs, plus keyboards, definitely an organ, the heavy party for lovers of sausages and sauerkraut, or more precisely our northern neighbors, was on. No Bros hacked away for 45 minutes in total. Their set was intense and full of feeling. It was easy to tell the guys are hungry for gigs, and they certainly didn’t skimp on energy and relentlessness on stage. Of course the wild reactions from the home crowd fired them up even more, and it was a beautiful sight to see a packed ground of about 4000 people cheering and applauding their darlings, who have finally risen from the dead after 20 years. The lineup of Enzinger (vocals), Schubert (guitar), Opperer (keyboards), Ausserhofer (bass) and Heumader (drums) delivered great sound and a perfect measure of tightness. Of all the material, the slower-paced Be My Friend came across as especially impulsive. The guys ramped up the show minute by minute, and it peaked right toward the end, when they fired off Hungry For A Good Times, followed by a cover of Bob Dylan’s Mighty Quinn, and wrapped up a great show with the encore Heavy Metal Party. In short, with No Bros a band is coming back to life that’s marked by a classic, big-riff approach to hard rock, tasteful bombast and epic flair brought in by melodic hard rock trimmings, with noticeable leanings toward good old N.W.O.B.H.M., which just goes to show when No Bros were born. The guys are calm gentlemen now, and the tousle-haired guys in spandex have been replaced on stage by short-haired fellows in nicely buttoned shirts, who definitely haven’t forgotten how to kick up the dust with proper riffs! The organizer picked a great opening act, and No Bros warmed our ears up nicely!
DEEP PURPLE: 21.15 – 23.05
Whoa! The night before, you couldn’t feel this kind of feverish euphoria for any band at Legends Of Rock. The space under the tent was filled to the max and certainly counted 5000 heads. Add the ones watching the show from the lawn and from sleeping bags, peeking through the trees right at the top of the grounds, plus the “VIPs” on the balcony, and you get about 6500 people in total who came to cheer on the legends. You could feel that Deep Purple would be (once again) embraced by real die-hard fans, forever devoted to the band. Wherever you looked, the place was filled with people well over 50, which only confirmed the fervor and loyalty toward one of the most legendary bands in the history of rock music, which in large part pretty much built rock itself.
What kind of intro is our good old Paice cooking up? Will he build up the opening rhythm with a solo again and send us off into Highway Star, or what? There they are! The crowd greets them with a roar! Paice’s “rolling” and? The guys launch into Pictures Of Home. The sound was practically perfect right from the first go. The classic came out nostalgic, and the very start announced that this time it would be a gig with the legends, the real deal. The band didn’t wait long to present last year’s album “Rapture Of The Deep” (2005) and kept it fiery with Things I Never Said. The classics Hush and Strange Kind Of Woman followed, and the first impression proved right. Ian Gillan was the biggest surprise: first of all, he’d taken a big personal step and lost weight, so he looked incredibly sharp, as if the guy were 40 years younger than he actually is. He turns 61 this year (20.08.2006, and a riddle for the witches: Maybe he is a leo,… or maybe he is not…) and he’s holding up great. True, Gillan is no longer the Gillan of the seventies when it comes to vocals, but fine. Who among his peers is still in seventies form these days? Glenn Hughes, probably the only one. Anyone else? Anyway, the man steered skillfully through the vocal forms and made sure to keep his voice strong in the high registers, either cutting the “screams” way short or, with his improvising streak, riding them out in a lower key. Skillfully done, with the ease of long experience. The ever-smiling Ian Gillan cracked us up a few times during the show with his remarks, especially when he “clucked” instead of screaming during Lazy and later on (was it Space Truckin’?). The song Rapture Of The Deep, a sort of equivalent or modern-day Perfect Strangers, went down great. With a hefty dose of symphonic epicness, dressed in Arabic melodies, it got the crowd serious for the first time and took them into a brief trance, especially in the outro. Then came the return to solid ground with the best possible pick. The legendary high-strung cannonade Fireball, which landed back on the setlist after ten years. That was the first mini-peak of the show. Steve Morse also came alive during this song and only kept ramping up his mood from there through the rest of the show. Glover constantly egged on the crowd, and the guys seemed to have come to actually cast a spell and turn Wiesen to dust. They played all-out and visibly enjoyed the sight of the packed hall, where heads were bobbing all around under their classic beats. How popular Purple still are today was shown above all by Ian Gillan, who managed to get the people below the stage involved with his every gesture or move. The crowd sang along with the band and, on Gillan’s cue, waved their arms in the air in unison whenever he decided so (especially during Airey’s wild keyboard solos).
The band spiced up the setlist with Lazy and When A Blind Man Cries. With them the show slowly tipped into its second half. After the unrivaled clowning around during Lazy came a sobering-up with Don Airey’s solo, which the guy finished by working in the main theme from Star Wars. Of course, as is Deep Purple’s habit, the thing with Skywalker and Yoda didn’t just end there: Airey finished by smoothly and unpredictably slipping into the opening Hammond part of Perfect Strangers, probably the atmospheric peak of the show. A big contributor was the special “white flashing transcendental” lighting during the song itself, and Ian Gillan spiced it up too, spinning around the stage during the solo in the style of the most skilled belly dancer. The bombast and epic grandeur of the song are always cranked to the max in Purple’s live shows with Perfect Strangers.
Gillan put on his good old familiar sleeveless colorful shirt and in it once again reminded me of Slovenian folk customs, or rather of our old grandma in her apron, who’s just cooked up a nice batch of žganci in the farmhouse parlor. Perfect Strangers was the start of the closing all-out concert party! It was followed by the undisputed ultimate classics from the album “Machine Head” (1972). Among them Space Truckin’ and Highway Star, in which Deep Purple only confirmed their excellent mood, since they were truly having fun on stage while playing, and doing it with such impressive polish and intensity as if it were judgment day. Ian Paice especially stood out in these songs, attacking the drums with an extra-solid intensity and drive. Ohoho! In the break Glover swaps his Vigier bass for the legendary Rickenbacker, the original Rickenbacker used to record the album “Machine Head”. There was a whiff of smoke in the air. No beating around the bush! A hit from the get-go. The unforgettable riff, a riff probably played more times than any other on planet Earth. A lesson in class. Why would I even name it. “Smoke on the Water”. Unforgettable! End of the regular set.
The guys were back on stage very quickly. After a few minutes of playful improvised tuning-up together, it spontaneously turned into the expected classic. Black Night or Speed King? The former. A predictable closer, which delighted the already thoroughly bewitched congregation one last time.
Deep Purple surprised me personally. I expected routine. But it was way more than that! The guys literally “burn”! They burn like kids. Apparently we got lucky with our visit, because two days earlier their show in Innsbruck was accompanied by rain, and Deep Purple left the crowd there with sour faces, with their own sour face (read: live performance). The chemistry between the audience and the band during the show was outstanding. Not a single flub could be heard. Purple took our breath away (as always) with their familiar trademarks. Flawless solos and the flow between songs through witty improvised jumps. A unique energy and power that only the one-of-a-kind, unforgettable Deep Purple can conjure up. It was simply an event where everything was clearly set up to come together into a live optimum. Deep Purple simply reigned in all their glory. I hope we’ll see each other again soon, guys. Maybe it’d be nice if you surprised us again with some “forgotten” classic from the albums “In Rock” (Living Wreck, Blood Sucker, Flight Of A Rat) or “Fireball” (Mule, No, No, No or No One Came). Praise be to the deity “Rock”! And you went and played practically the whole of “Machine Head”! My respects.
Setlist
NO BROS:
1. Ready For The Action
2. Good Morning Sir
3. Manifest Your Destiny
4. Hello Hello
5. Be My Friend
6. Blind
7. Hungry For Good Times
8. Solo Drums
9. Mighty Quinn
10. Metal Thanx
—encore—
11. Heavy Metal Party
DEEP PURPLE:
1. Pictures of Home
2. Things I Never Said
3. Hush
4. Strange Kind of Woman
5. Rapture of the Deep
6. Fireball
7. Wrong Man
8. Steve Morse’s solo
9. The Well-Dressed Guitar
10. Junkyard Blues
11. When a Blind Man Cries
12. Lazy
13. Don Airey’s solo
14. Perfect Strangers
15. Space Truckin’
16. Highway Star (with Steve & Roger jam leading intro)
17. Smoke on the Water
—encore—
18. Black Night
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