Rapture of the Deep

MAY 19 — Deep Purple performed Malaysia in 1982, 1999 and 2001, and I missed all the shows. When they were here again last Sunday night, it was an opportunity not to be missed. Never mind their age; rock and roll is ageless. And never mind that the venue — Genting Highland’s Arena of Stars — is usually associated with evergreen performers the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, Cliff Richard and countless acts from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

So how do you describe one of the pioneering hard rock bands that has been performing for more than 40 years? Well, if you want to hear the original studio version of “Highway Star”, “Fireball”, “Smoke on the Water”, “Space Truckin’” and “Black Night”, you better stick to your CD or LP collections. Vocalist Ian Gillan can indeed belt out those numbers but gone are his screaming days. I guess that’s the reason why “Child in Time” was not on the set list.

Deep Purple perform during their recent concert in Genting Highlands.

But you wouldn’t have been disappointed with his rendition of “Perfect Strangers”, “Rapture of the Deep”, “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming” and a few more numbers from the British band’s latter albums (“Rapture of the Deep” is Purple’s last album recorded in 2005).

Well-known guitarist Ritchie Blackmore may be long gone from the band but Steve Morse has proven that he’s one of the best guitarists around. He thrilled the crowd of a few thousand that night, mostly ageing rock fans like me, with his guitar licks as well as his unique solo performances.

At 55, he’s the baby of the group, with Gillan, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice, all in their 60s, surrounding the American axman. Keyboardist Jon Lord, who retired in 2002 to concentrate on his classical compositions, has been replaced by another rock veteran, Don Airey, also in his early 60s, who kept the spirit of Purple by sticking with the Hammond organ to maintain the original sound.

The only snag was that the open area in front of the stage was filled with chairs. How do you enjoy a rock concert sitting comfortably on your chair? I guess the guests — some of them the “datuks and datins” — who were reliving their youthful days wouldn’t mind paying a hefty sum for the ticket to just sit back and relax.

There was one peculiar little incident I noticed at the beginning of the gig, when Deep Purple opened the show with “Highway Star”. When a group of girls (or were they women?) in the front row stood up to dance, an elderly fat man went to scold them, demanding that the excited fans to sit down. They complied. But not for long.

More than an hour later, when the opening rift of “Smoke on the Water” was heard, the fans couldn’t help it anymore. No, they did not throw chairs. They merely walked to the front of the stage and went nuts, singing, “Smoke on the water and the fire in the sky…” Hey, we Malaysians may be conservative, or at least pretend to be, but you can’t stop rock and roll.

A leaner and skinnier Gillan looked so relaxed, as if he was really enjoying himself (I think he did), dancing and prancing around, with a touch of mock belly dancing to the Middle Eastern tunes of some songs such as “Rapture of the Deep” and “Perfect Strangers.”

Unlike some of the newer and younger bands I’ve seen, these veterans never once pressured themselves to perform. After more than 40 years on stage, they knew their game well. 

It was also a strange night for me and some good friends I was with — while we were enjoying the show, I was also anxious about the Sibu parliamentary by-election results. The technology of the SMS, while it disturbed my concentration of the gig with non-stop mobile phone beeps, did not annoy me with running details of the result.

It was in fact a sweet night before the encore when the unofficial result showed that DAP had captured the seat from the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN), despite the odds. Well, you know Malaysian politics — BN’s promises of millions of ringgit with all kinds of projects. It was some kind of a miracle.

By that time, after “Smoke on the Water”, fans including me in front of the stage, couldn’t care less about anything as we were enjoying the finale “Black Night” — “I don’t need black night, I can’t see dark night, maybe I’ll find on the way down the line, that I’m free, free to be me, black night is a long way from home.”

We were enjoying our horrible chanting vocal exchanges with Glover’s bass and Morse’s riff with “yeahs” and “woos”, typical of fans hungry for more rocking stuff, before the gig ended after about one-and-a-half hours of fun. Many thanks to ZI Productions for bringing in this great classic rock band. And a great appreciation to my cool friends who were rocking all night long.

The next day, however, when the body was still aching after last night’s senseless headbanging, I heard the sad news — Ronnie James Dio had died of stomach cancer. He was 67.

When Dio left the great Black Sabbath to form his own band, it was Gillan who replaced him as the singer for Sabbath’s “Born Again” album in 1983. It was a bad choice for Gillan as Sabbath fans never really appreciated his effort but it was also a stroke of luck when he left Sabbath to rejoin Deep Purple in 1984 – with the release of the “Perfect Strangers” album.

For Dio, the master singer of Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio and until recently of Heaven and Hell (the late Dio plus Sabbath without the enigmatic Ozzy Osbourne), rest in peace. Now I regret not going to Heaven and Hell’s gig in nearby Singapore in 2007.

Note to self: Never mind the ticket prices; as long as you can afford it, just go and enjoy those gigs — you only live once, and they may only be here once in your lifetime.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.