https://x.com/MrGameHunter/status/2087737677885866359 Now that made me smile. I've been reading about this all day, how Ritchie Blackmore was going to return to Deep Purple for one night only, FOR ONE SONG ONLY! It's been 33 years. Then again, this means that Ritchie played with Purple in the nineties. It's hard to keep Purple history straight. After all, this was a band that made it on Bill Cosby's Tetragrammaton label in the sixties with "Hush" and then emerged in the seventies as a heavy band, what we used to call metal, what would be called hard rock today, and although "In Rock" got very good reviews, assuming you saw one, it wasn't until the summer of '73 when a live track from "Made in Japan" emerged on FM (and then even the AM airwaves!) opening with what became the most iconic riff in rock. Well, is it? What, are we going to go with "Stairway to Heaven"? Well, that's not really a riff. Even "Whole Lotta Love," a ubiquitous hit single, you don't find guitar newbies whipping that one off. Nor "Taxman" or another Beatles song. No, when you've got a rudimentary knowledge of the instrument and you want to play a song... Once upon a time it was "Gloria." And for a little while before that it was "Louie Louie"... So how excited do I want to get about this? I saw today's Deep Purple, or at least the 21st century Deep Purple, perform all of "Machine Head" at the Wiltern about twenty years back, with the guitarist from Kansas, you know, the one who became an airline pilot... And that was excellent, because Ian Gillan was back in the band. And it's always about the vocalist, didn't Alice Cooper prove that, that he didn't need the band? As for Blackmore, he left Purple after the band lost its mojo with David Coverdale, who needed to slide it in to Tawny Kitaen and make his own bombastic music with Whitesnake to break through, but... Blackmore did bring Ronnie James Dio to the forefront, who'd been plying the boards forever. "Man on the Silver Mountain" was ubiquitous on FM, but I must say I prefer Dio's "The Last in Line" to anything he did with Ritchie or Black Sabbath, but... Subsequent to that, neither Purple nor Blackmore had any real hits. But, Blackmore is a legend in anybody's book and... I'm getting ready to brush my teeth, and I'm surfing the dreaded social media, whereupon I stumble on a video of tonight's reunion performance. I wasn't expecting much. Too much time has passed. And it's always audience videos and...you had to be there, and I wasn't. So Ritchie walks on stage like the 81 year old he is. As in hesitantly and a bit unsteady and... The roadie hands him his cord... Ritchie Blackmore don't need no stinkin' wireless, and... Once his Stratocaster is powered up, he tests it, as we are all wont to do to check the amplification. And what comes out of the speaker? It's indelible, he just hits a chord, that's it, just one strum, just a warm-up, but it's unmistakable, this is the sound of SMOKE ON THE WATER! You know, when they all went down to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline. Frank Zappa and the Mothers were performing, as for Funky Claude, he was a real guy, an impresario, did you see his obit? They did a good job when he died a bit over a decade ago. And now I'm primed. Really, are they going to play it? Well, why else would he have that sound... And as many people have played it...when you hear Blackmore play it, it's in the pocket, it's exactly like the record, not a facsimile, but the real thing. And Blackmore crosses the stage to say hi and connect with Gillan, who looks like he just came from Margaritaville... From a distance, you might mistake him for Dean Torrence. Gillan's hair has been short for a while now, all the rock airs, he's discarded them...there's no image. And then... And THEN!!! Blackmore goes right into it... THE MOST FAMOUS RIFF IN ROCK HISTORY! Everybody knows it, everybody can play it, but not like Ritchie Blackmore... The sound, the cadence... And I'm sitting there thinking how this is the musical highlight of the year. Completely unexpected. Nothing lives up to the hype. We've got oldsters refusing to retire running on fumes, a mere shadow of themselves, in some cases ruining their legacy, and Richie Blackmore shows up at a gig in Jones Beach AND SHOWS US ALL HOW IT'S DONE! Oh, forget Olivia Rodrigo. Kelly Clarkson. Even Taylor Swift, never mind Morgan Wallen, not a single one of them or anybody else in the Spotify Top 50 has a track this famous, that reached EVERYBODY, that is known by heart by an entire generation. Smoke on the water... And fire in the sky. This is the power of rock and roll... Not really different from Little Richard, you can't help but move your body, the sound infects you, squeezes the rest of the world right out of you and you're happy and when you see it live... It's everything you ever wanted. It's unstoppable, like a freight train. And they're halfway through the number and Ritchie is soloing like it's the seventies, blowing all the amateurs off the stage, the ones begging for attention on the internet...effortless for him, but everything to us. It doesn't get any better than this. -- Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ -- Listen to the podcast: -iHeart: https://ihr.fm/2Gi5PFj -Apple: https://apple.co/2ndmpvp -- http://www.twitter.com/lefsetz -- If you would like to subscribe to the LefsetzLetter, http://www.lefsetz.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 If you do not want to receive any more LefsetzLetters, http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=unsubscribe&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25 To change your email address http://lefsetz.com/lists/?p=preferences&uid=0eecea7b60b461717065cbde887c8e25
