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DEEP PURPLE LIT A FIRE IN THE SKY
The Straits Times
By Arti Mulchand
May 11th, 2002
The band delivered a ferocious unforgettable show under the canapy of a black night sky!
DEEP into the second hour of a concert at Fort Canning Park on Thursday night, Deep Purple's guitarist Steve Morse suddenly ripped into some of the most unmistakable riffs in rock.
He teased a sold-out crowd of more than 7,000 with the opening chords of anthems like Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child Of Mine, Dire Straits' Money For No1pxg, and even The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever. Everyone sensed what was coming next. Still, the stupefyingly simple 'dan dan dan' licks of Purple's own timeless Smoke On The Water ignited a frenzy.
Fuelled by cans of San Miguel and shots of Jack Daniels, mat rockers, expat rockers, closet rockers, pseudo-rockers and rocker wannabes pumped their fists into the air. Most had been counting down to the song no one - never mind if you're 10, 20 or 30 years junior to any member of Deep Purple - doesn't know the words to. And they all sang along, word-perfect, with 56-year-old vocalist Ian Gillan. Under the canopy of a Black Night sky covered by wisps of grey clouds, the rock arena atmosphere was complete. It dripped humidity at times, but the moisture just made the crowd party harder. True, the man who first came up with those three distinctive chords, Ritchie Blackmore, the band's founder and former guitarist, was not on stage as he was when Purple last pounded Singapore in 1991. But Morse, 48, who has been with Purple for more than a decade, played them like his own. And with three members who assisted in giving life to the song - drummer Ian Paice, 53; bassist Roger Glover, 57; and Gillan - the song, which is pushing 30 itself, was born again. Gillan rested his famously shrill voice and let the crowd do the chorus. Meanwhile, he bounced around stage barefoot in his white kurta bottom (Indian cotton pajama-like pants) which had started off rolled up to the ankle but were now at mid-calf. He was already wearing his third white top for the evening, after sweating through the earlier two.
He had been flushed from the word 'go', and looked a little older than I remember from pictures - not unlike my late Dad. It was the first time I had caught the band live, although even I could sing 'smoke on the water, and fire in the skies'. I had listened to this very song on CD before the concert, and his voice was different. But then again, it had been almost three decades. But halfway through Don Airey's keyboard solo, Lazy, Gillan turned to one member of the audience and gestured at his own pot-belly. He was not hiding his age.
When he, Morse and Glover sat cross-legged on the stage through the soft opening notes of The Aviator, with what looked like his tabla behind him, Gillan looked a little like Indian sitar legend Ravi Shankar. And when he sang Sometimes (I) Feel Like Screaming, he did not do much of that on stage. Instead, the crowd screamed appreciatively for him at every recognisable riff, and raised their lighters to every ballad. When Airey sauntered into a piano solo after Fools, he started fingering the chords of Singapore community song Rasa Sayang. One long-haired, bare-chested fan shouted for him to do Chan Mali Chan, also a community song, next.
By the time the band finally steered into its encore numbers - Highway Star, Hush and Black Night, more songs everyone was waiting for - no one was ready to stop. But the rockers were ready to retire. The lights came on. The bulk of the crowd started to leave. But some die-hards stared at the empty stage in disbelief. They wanted more.
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