CityLife

Deep Purple: The Songs That Built Rock Tour

STILL ROCKING: Singer Ian Gillan

MEN Arena, Manchester

November 29, 2011

HAS there even been a rock anthem as ripsnortingly macho as Deep Purple’s Highway Star?

Conflating ‘my car’ and ‘my girl’ into a headlong orgy of speed and sex, it is a song so hairy-chested as to make even the most grunting motor-related utterances of Jeremy Clarkson seem somehow effete.

How do you turbo-charge such a timeless hymn to horsepower? With the addition of a 38-piece orchestra, it seems. Yes, Deep Purple – who pushed the boundaries of rock with 1969’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra – are back with an orchestra, this time Frankfurt’s Neue Philharmonie.

But the proposition here is very different: not some prog-classical experiment, but a set dominated by Deep Purple’s best songs, with the strings and brass giving them added clout.

It works superbly well. No One Came took on a surging new life with the addition of spirited brass parts. Strange Kind Of Woman acquired some jazzy sax solos. Hard Lovin’ Man had all its usual swagger, but with some added harmonic richness.

Deep Purple always were the most eclectic of hard-rockers, with blues, jazz and classical influences jostling amid the busy brew.

But with an orchestra in tow they range even further across the musical genres. And the whole things gels beautifully.

The young women in the string section were delicately head-banging in appreciation of Don Airey’s organ solo on Hard Lovin’ Man. Lazy – that hugely overblown blues with a key-change around every corner – benefited from a violin solo, on top of the blues harp solo, the sterling guitar licks of Steve Morse and Airey’s demented Phantom of the Opera impressions.

There was a time when such virtuosic showboating seemed to have gone seriously out of fashion. But Purple’s appeal has endured across much of the world.

And this crowd had more than a few young fans who would not even have been born when Purple were in their Seventies pomp.

The songs have even survived the departure of the members who first made them so distinctive. The Jon Lord-Ritchie Blackmore partnership is now the Don Airey-Steve Morse alliance, and those old songs sound every bit as vital.

Yes, at 66, singer Ian Gillan avoids the odd high note these days, but he is still a compelling front man and a big voice. This was the best of classic rock, with a dash of classical making it even better.