Roll The Tapes: Glenn Hughes - Life After Deep Purple

ROLL THE TAPE: BLACK COUNTRY COMMUNION & GLENN HUGHES

Rev. Keith A. Gordon 

ARTIST: Black Country Communion

VENUE: John Henry’s Ltd., London England; 09/20/10

SOURCE: “Live in the Studio” FM broadcast

SET LIST: Black Country /One Last Soul /Beggarman /Song of Yesterday /Stand (At the Burning Tree) /The Great Divide /Medusa /Sista Jane

COMMENTS: Formed in late 2009, Black Country Communion was a British/American classic rock “supergroup” comprised of blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, singer and bassist Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple, Trapeze), keyboardist Derek Sherinian (Dream Theater), and drummer Jason Bonham, who has played with everybody from Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers to Foreigner, the Quireboys, and his own solo bands. BCC was named for the “Black Country” area of the West Midlands in England where Hughes and Bonham were born and raised. Featuring a sound that was a throwback to the classic rock jams of the ‘70s (a sound that Hughes helped create and define), the band’s 2010 self-titled debut displayed a lot of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple influences alongside those of more contemporary rockers like Soundgarden and Queens of the Stone Age.

This incredible first BBC performance in support of their debut album occurred the same day as its release, September 20th, 2010, as a showcase in front of a handful of people (around 100) – radio contest winners, music journalists, and such – and launched the band’s first “Black Country Tour.” It’s an explosive performance, with Glenn Hughes, known as “The Voice of Rock,” in perfect form, with songs like the opening “Black Country” displaying his enormous energy and ability to create electricity with his expressive vocals. Joe Bonamassa is an extraordinary guitarist who masterfully captures the zeal of blues-based ‘70s hard rock with his tough-as-nails guitarplay. Jason Bonham, the son of legendary Led Zeppelin big-beat percussionist John Bonham, proves that he’s his father’s son with the ability to both punch his way through a performance or support the other instrumentalists with his subtle fills and brushwork. 

It’s keyboardist Sherinian, who has also played in Alice Cooper and Billy Idol’s bands, who is often lost in the mix here, overshadowed by the overwhelming force of nature that is his talented bandmates. Nevertheless, his keys are an essential ingredient, adding texture where needed as the performance of each song here has the impact of a hurricane-strength shockwave. Whereas Hughes – a skilled wordsmith dating back to his days with proto-metal rockers Trapeze – pens most of BCC’s lyrics, one of the best songs from the LP is Bonamassa’s “Song of Yesterday,” which is provided a white-hot take here with the two frontman swapping vocals, Bonamassa’s fretwork taking flight above Bonham’s blistering drumbeats. 

“The Great Divide” is afforded a larger-than-life performance that leaps out of your speakers and demands attention, with roaring vocals, imaginative slash ‘n’ burn guitar, and rhythms that sound like lightning bolts tossed to Earth from Mount Olympus. A cover of what is, perhaps, Trapeze’s best-known tune, “Medusa,” is updated and re-charged (and was actually added to the debut album as an afterthought). The song displays the full range of Hughes’ impressive vocals, from the soulful balladeer which opens the track to the vocal gymnast with the pipes of a Robert Plant or Ian Gillan that grinds out the lyrics alongside the band’s nasty instrumental groove. The band’s chemistry is quite apparent even this early into their roughly decade-long career, and while Hughes is just doing what he’s always done – sing his ass off – with Purple, Sabbath, or his solo albums, BBC also allowed Bonamassa to explore a different musical direction from his day job as, arguably, blues music’s favorite and best-selling artist.     

A note about the venue here – evidently, John Henry’s Ltd. is a multi-purpose facility geared towards the entertainment industry. Located in central London, a band can rent equipment, rehearsal space, and tour transportation as well as store their gear when not on the road. John Henry’s also offers a full range of production services, including studios for TV and radio broadcast, live recording, and even album production. Maybe this is why the band chose this venue for its “coming out” party, the secret showcase also broadcast on FM radio in London. This show has circulated in tape trading circles for years, and the sound quality is pretty good – a notch below true CD quality, but better than many more “legit” concert releases. Capturing the band’s impressive first performance, it’s well worth tracking down for Black Country Communion fans.  

# # #

ARTIST: Black Country Communion

VENUE: “Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea IV” cruise; 02/26/18

SOURCE: Fair audience recording

SET LIST: Sway /One Last Soul /Save Me /Wanderlust /Song of Yesterday /The Outsider /Cold /The Crow /The Last Song For My Resting Place /Man In the Middle /Black Country /Mistreated

COMMENTS: This performance is from the February 2018 “Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea IV” cruise, departing from Miami (not Tampa), Florida and sailing to Montego Bay, Jamaica. Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa is the star of these cruises, and the driving force behind them as the founder of the Keeping the Blues Alive Foundation, which had raised over $180,000 as of this event to help fund scholarships and music programs for students and teachers across the country. Aside from Bonamassa’s usual solo set during this “floating music festival,” the cruise featured a “special reunion” of Black Country Communion as well as performances from both well-known artists like Los Lobos, North Mississippi Allstars, JJ Grey & Mofro, and Chicago bluesman Toronzo Cannon as well as up-and-coming talent like Ana Popovic, the Marcus King Band, and Larkin Poe, among many others.   

The BCC “reunion” came in the wake of the release of the band’s fourth and, according to Bonamassa, final album, BCCIV, in September 2017 just months before this cruise performance. To be fair, BCCIV did mark a reunion for the band after a five-year hiatus where both Bonamassa and Hughes toured heavily as solo artists. BCC only performed a handful of concerts in England in support of the album before setting sail, and the setlist for this performance is fairly balanced, including four songs each from the band’s first two albums, four songs from BCCIV, and a cover of Deep Purple’s “Mistreated.” Noticeable by its absence are any songs from the band’s third album, 2012’s Afterglow, widely considered by fans to be the weakest of the four LPs to date. 

The performance cranks up quickly with the bombastic “Sway,” a song that perfectly displays Hughes’ soaring vocal style, but is itself driven toward the edge of chaos by Bonham’s staccato drumbeats and Bonamassa’s stylized riffing. It’s a heady performance designed to set the audience on its collective heels from the first note. “One Last Soul,” from the band’s debut album, was also that LP’s first single, and it sounds as devastating in 2018 as it did in 2010, showcasing the soulful side of Hughes’ vocals. The mid-tempo “Wanderlust” is an electrifying cross between Zeppelin and Soundgarden with an FM radio-ready vibe that would have sounded natural blaring out of the speakers of a ’73 Challenger. 

“The Outsider,” also from the band’s debut, hits your ears like a runaway locomotive teetering down steel rails with flames licking the tracks. Hughes’ metallic vocals ride atop Bonamassa’s razor-sharp guitar while Bonham’s drumbeats explode like artillery shells and Sherinian’s keyboard riffs dance maniacally in the flames. Bonamassa jokes about the ballad “The Last Song For My Resting Place,” about a musician on the Titanic, being an “appropriate” song for a cruise ship, but the band sinks its teeth into it nonetheless, with Bonamassa’s plaintive vocals accompanied by his scorching guitar solos. BCC revisits Hughes-era Purple with a blistering attack on “Mistreated” from the band’s 1974 album Burn. After a truly satisfying instrumental intro that will singe yer ear hairs, BCC slinks into a solid groove for Hughes to show both the strength and subtlety of his vocals while Bonamassa cuts a solo worthy of Robin Trower or Jimmy Page.   

The lack of dynamics on the recording seem like it was made by an audience member, with a hollowness and echo that sounds like it was recorded in the ship’s bilge. Still, there’s definition to Hughes’ voice, Bonamassa’s guitar rings clearly, and only the bottom-heavy rhythms really get muddy in translation. Knowing the Bonamassa organization’s reputation for quality live recordings and their ability to capture the most filigree nuances of a performance; if this is a soundboard recording, it’s a raw tape at best. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, as it’s still a rocking concert guaranteed to satisfy fans of BCC, Glenn Hughes, or Joe Bonamassa.

# # #

ARTIST: Glenn Hughes

VENUE: Alcatraz; Milan, Italy; 04/10/19

SOURCE: possible soundboard/audience matrix

SET LIST: Stormbringer /Might Just Take Your Life /Sail Away / You Fool No One /You Keep On Moving /Gettin’ Tighter /Holy Man /Mistreated /Smoke On the Water, Georgia On My Mind /Burn

COMMENTS: As mentioned above, Glenn Hughes is a rock ‘n’ roll lifer who first came to prominence as part of late ‘60s hard rock pioneers Trapeze before replacing Roger Glover in the bassist’s seat with Deep Purple in 1974. With Purple, he shared vocal duties with David Coverdale on the band’s three mid-‘70s albums and supporting tours. Hughes has enjoyed a lengthy solo career with better than a dozen albums under his belt since his 1977 debut Play Me Out, and was a member of Seventh Star era Black Sabbath with guitarist Tony Iommi. He’s also collaborated creatively on recordings with various guitarists like Iommi, John Norum, Pat Thrall, and Joe Satriani and, as an in-demand session player, Hughes has lent his talents to albums by artists as diverse as Gary Moore, Gov’t Mule, Quiet Riot, The KLF, and Night Ranger, among dozens of others. 

Aside from his tenure with Deep Purple – for which he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2016 – Hughes is more recently known as a member of Black Country Communion, releasing four studio and a live album with that band. Throughout much of 2019, however, Hughes trotted across the globe with his “Classic Deep Purple Live” tour, recreating some of the band’s songs for adoring fans. It’s an interesting gambit, as what could more-or-less be considered the best-known line-up of Deep Purple is still trodding across the planet and performing “Smoke On the Water” and “Highway Star” along with new material for diehard DP fans. Still, Hughes performed 46 shows in 2019 as part of his Purple remembrance tour, including a couple dozen North American dates as well as stops in Germany, the U.K. and other ports in the European Union.

According to the tour’s official Facebook page, Hughes’ backing band for this show at the Alcatraz club in Milan, Italy included guitarist Soren Andersen, keyboardist Jesper Bo “Jay Boe” Hansen, and drummer Ash Sheehan, who also played with the tour’s opening band, the Dead Sea Skulls. It’s a pretty deft crew backing the legend, and they take these classic Purple songs and reimagine them for the modern age with performances and arrangements that enhance rather than merely mimic the original versions. The raging “Stormbringer” (from the 1974 album by that name) is provided a machine-gun performance with Hughes spitting out the lyrics above a thunderous clamor of screeching guitar and stomping percussion. “Might Just Take Your Life,” from 1974’s Burn, is every bit as malevolent as the original, with Sheehan’s drum rolls building anticipation while Hansen’s Jon Lord-styled keyboards create a dark-hued ambiance.

Also from Burn, “Sail Away” is one of that album’s better songs; here it provides a showcase for Andersen’s six-string prowess as the guitarist rips and tears through the song while Hughes growls the lyrics with cymbals crashing in the background. “You Keep On Moving” and “Getting’ Tighter” are two tracks from the underrated 1975 LP Come Taste the Band, the former galloping out of the gate to Sheehan’s double-fisted drumbeats and Hughes’ thundering bass lines while the latter is a bluesy rave-up with stinging Andersen guitar solos, Hughes’ best Chicago-styled vox, and gorgeous Booker T/Stax soul keyboard riffs. Although he didn’t appear on the original recording of “Smoke On the Water,” you can bet that Hughes has performed the song a time or two over his lengthy career, and here it’s provided a jazzy guitar intro before the band plows straight ahead with reckless aplomb into the familiar plodding riff that announces the song to the world. The encore, featuring the title track from Burn, does just that, the performance cutting through the mix like a plasma torch, the band combusting like magnesium meeting water. 

 

Overall, the band is engaged in the performance of these classic-era Deep Purple songs, but longtime fans may chafe at the expanded and imaginative arrangements provided some of the tracks. This is 20th century Purple brought into the new millennium with young blood and new energy. The setlist relies heavily on songs from the three Deep Purple LPs that Hughes was part of, and he picks liberally from the songs on each to create an entertaining and inarguably rocking concert experience. The sound quality is a bit dodgy, a fair-to-middling soundboard or possibly a good audience recording, with a shallowness that sometimes blurs the lines between instruments and muddies up the vocals. It’s an electrifying performance overall, however, and for those old-school Purple fans who aren’t afraid to color outside of the lines, you might find something here to like.

Bonus views: