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Jim Corrigan and Nick Soveiko's photos

Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany
November 6, 2003

Highway Star
Strange Kind Of Woman
Silver Tongue
Knocking At Your Backdoor
House Of Pain
Lazy
Bananas
Contact Lost
Haunted
Space Truckin'
I've Got Your Number
Steve Morse Solo
The Well Dressed Guitar
Don Airey Solo
Perfect Strangers
Smoke On The Water

Hush (including Ian Paice Solo)
Short Roger Glover Solo
Black Night

For me it was the best show since the Concerto-tour. The setist was OK, six songs from Bananas for the fans, the most remarkable classics for the rest of the audience. The band were enjoying the gig as much as the audience, not only Steve was smiling all the time. The soloing was more extended than on the previous tours, I liked it very much.
Don is the perfect replacement for Jon. Not only concerning his playing and stage-presence: Maybe it was the lights, but it looked like his hair is turning grey...
All bandmembers were in a stunning form, including Ian Gillan. But where was the tambourine-solo he promised us for later when he announced House of Pain? Maybe the verses he sang before starting Black Night - I couldn't figure out what it was, definitely not Fever or Hit the road Jack - were a better "solo" for him...
It was a wonderful evening, and even my wife turned into a fan, after having seen them for the fifth time. Ah yes, and by the way: I still like Haunted very much, meanwhile even more than When a blind man cries.
The only (very personal) complaint: On Saturday a very nice person offered me a backstage pass for the Düsseldorf show on Sunday. But I had to work on Sunday and coudn't get out of it in such a short time. I think I missed one of the great opportunities of my live...
All in all: Dortmund showed that there's still no better band around than the one and only DP!
Molly Hatchet, by the way, were IMO a much better support-act than Lynyrd Skynyrd this summer. Just because they seemed to like music more than showmanship. But they also were not my cup of tea. And I can do without all this US-nationalism too: We've had too much of nationlism in our own German history.
Friedhelm Wenning

What a night!
Mein letztes DP-Konzert war 1993 in Essen (die letzte Tour mit Blackmore). Meine Erinnerungen daran waren nicht die schlechtesten. Die neuen Purple mit Steve Morse und Don Airey sind anders, im positiven Sinn. Jetzt ist Teamwork angesagt.
Nach der Vorband Molly Hatchet standen Purple um 21.30 Uhr auf der Bühne. Die Westfalenhalle war zur Hälfte abgeteilt, die Bühne in der Hallenmitte aufgebaut. Ich denke zwischen 5.000 und 6.000
Fans haben die Show gesehen. Die Set-Liste war sehr ausgewogen und abwechslungsreich, Schwerpunkte bildeten die "Made In Japan"-Ära (Highway Star, Strange Kind of Woman, Lazy, Space Truckin, Smoke on the water), sowie das aktuelle Bananas-Album (Silver Tongue, House of Pain, Contact Lost, Haunted, I've got your number, Bananas).
Steve Morse hatte seinen Solo-Auftritt mit The Well Dressed Guitar und Don Airey bei seinem Vorspiel zu Perfect Strangers. Morse, der immer lächelnde Amerikaner, bot eine Galavorstellung seiner Gitarrenkunst. Klassische Purple-Riffs und immer wieder die für Morse so typischen Licks aus Jazz, Rock und Klassik waren angesagt. Eine Lehrstunde für jeden Gitarrenfreak. Don Airey machte ebenfalls einen guten Job. Seine Hammondorgel-Einlagen lassen jedoch manchmal den Sound und die Spritzigkeit seines Vorgängers Jon Lord vermissen.
Ian Gillan war bei guter Stimme, auch wenn die ganz hohen Töne nicht mehr erreicht werden (z.B. Space Truckin "Come on ..."). Er sparte nicht mit Lob für die "neuen Kollegen" Morse und Airey.
Ian Paice trommelte wie ein Uhrwerk, absolut präzise. Im Zugabenteil gab es ein kleines Drum-Solo, das erahnen ließ, was in ihm noch steckt. Roger Glover spielte meiner Meinung nach so gut wie nie.
Ich glaube, dass er am meisten von dem Steve Morse-Zugang profitiert hat. Er hatte sichtlich Spaß.
Als Zugaben gab es "Hush (Super-Groove)" und "Black Night". Danach standen alle Purple-Musiker minutenlang noch auf der Bühne und bedankten sich bei ihrem Publikum und verteilten Picks und Sticks. Schön anzusehen.
Fazit: Ein schönes Konzert mit "alten Kameraden", die mit Steve Morse und Don Airey eine Zukunft haben und sicherlich noch eine Weile sehr gute Musik machen werden.
Martin "MaC" Langwald-Machens

This was my third visit to a Purple show and the first outside India!
They first came to India in 1995 when they played in a huge football stadium in New Delhi, followed by the epic concert in Bombay, released as a live DVD. My cousin walked out with an Ian Paice drum stick from the Delhi gig, which he never parted with!
DP returned to India again in 2001, and played Bangalore and Bombay. The Bangalore concert was tremendous, 50000 odd people packed the park, and I managed the first row! That was an awesome concert, unadulterated Purple music as they had no new album out at that time, all the classics were there.
On 6th November, I had wound up my assignment in Germany and should have got out of there, but for the fact that there were no seats on the airplane out of Germany for me. This gave me another day in Germany, and I chanced upon a magazine which mentioned the DP concert in Dortmund the same evening, some 70 kms away from where I was. I grabbed the ticket from a shop and headed out to Dortmund, was the fourth person to get to the venue, which meant, managed the first row again!
The show was absolutely amazing, the best I had been to yet. But I really missed Jon Lord on the stage, not sure if Don Airey is in the same league yet. I felt he lacked the originality that Jon had, resorting to playing some popular movie themes on the keyboard and passing it off as a solo! He needs to get that out of his routine.
Morse was amazing on Lost Contact, though the album version is just about a minute long. Wish DP had put in an extended version of the track on the CD as well.
Gillan and Glover interacted with the crowd really well. I even managed to have a brief sign-language conversation with Roger, in which I conveyed to him I had not yet received a guitar pick from him which he had been throwing around. At the end of the conversation we both gave each other a thumbs-up and out came a guitar pick in my direction. A fantastic memorabilia to carry back from the concert, with DP printed on one side and Glover’s signature printed on the other.
I forgot to take camera to the concert - I could have done some fantastic pictures from my position. Cameras are not allowed into concert venues in India, which is a pity. There were some people apart from the journalists who perhaps got some nice pictures from the show, and if anyone would like to share their pictures from this show, I would really love it!
Before I sign out, I really hope that DP comes back to India again. This is the only band which has performed in India on more than one occasion, why not another time! We’ll pack the park again!
Anshuman Caprihan