This is the only set from the festival that has been released in full, on the album "California Jamming." I've included it in order to present the entire festival.
Deep Purple was the biggest name out of all the artists for the festival. As such, they got to pick their time slot. They chose the second to last slot because they wanted to go on around sunset. Almost always, festival schedules ran far behind. But this one was unusual in that it actually ran ahead of schedule! This is due to a unique innovation: the entire stage was built on tracks. It could be moved out of place quickly. Meanwhile, the instruments on a second stage were prepared, and that stage was moved into position, with the two stages swapping back and forth. As a result, there were only a few minutes of down time between sets.
But this caused a problem, because Deep Purple really, really wanted sunset to happen during their set. So they waited at least an hour after the end of the Black Sabbath set, causing the audience to grow restless.
There were more problems too. Lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore is a great guitarist, but he sounds like a prima donna type. The entire festival was being filmed by ABC-TV. During their set, camera people often got close to where Blackmore was standing, in order to get close-ups of his guitar playing. This annoyed him so much that at the end of the set, he attacked one of the TV cameras with his guitar, repeatedly smashing it.
But wait, there's more. It seems the main reason the band wanted to wait for sunset was because they had pyrotechnics they wanted to set off at the end of their set. They did so, but they used too much. It caused a massive explosion and fire on stage, as you can see from the cover photo. Fearing they were in trouble and could be arrested, the band left the festival as fast as they could.
It should also be noted that this concert was one of the first to feature the band's new line-up, with two new lead singers, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes.
This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.
60 talk (Deep Purple)
61 Intro [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
62 Burn (Deep Purple)
63 talk (Deep Purple)
64 Might Just Take Your Life (Deep Purple)
65 talk (Deep Purple)
66 Lay Down, Stay Down (Deep Purple)
67 talk (Deep Purple)
68 Mistreated (Deep Purple)
69 talk (Deep Purple)
70 Intro [Instrumental] (Deep Purple)
71 Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple)
72 talk (Deep Purple)
73 You Fool No One - Lazy - The Mule (Deep Purple)
74 talk (Deep Purple)
75 Space Truckin' - Mandrake Root (Deep Purple)
76 talk (Deep Purple)
The cover is from this exact concert. I believe that's Glenn Hughes standing in front of the fire the band had caused.
Thank you very much for the whole series - by the way didn't Ritchie Blackmore pinch the rainbow set design for his future group?
ReplyDeleteThe cover features a snap from the famous Blackmore extravanza: he attacked a TV camera with his Strat, which can be easily seen in the video, set fire to his rack (or what looked like a fully functional rack?) and destroyed a Strat right on stage. The person in front of the inferno is Ritchie himself. The band had to leave the festival area in a rush and ABC sued them.
ReplyDeleteRitchie looking witchy!
ReplyDelete