Deep Purple– 13th March 1976 – Empire Pool, Wembley, London
A few years ago I was talking with a group of hard core Deep Purple fans and they were discussing what their favourite line up was, for some it was Deep Purple Mark 2 which featured Ian Gillan for others it was Mark 3 with David Coverdale, when they asked me and I said Mark 4 you could see that they looked at me suspiciously and very quickly the conversation finished.
Deep Purple Mark 4 featured David Coverdale, Ian Paice, Jon Lord, Glen Hughes and Tommy Bolin who replaced Ritchie Blackmore on guitar and I went to see them with my sister at the Empire Pool, Wembley on 13th March 1976, tickets were £2.00, support band on the tour was Strapps who were a British hard rock band who made four albums but didn’t gain much success.
One of things I have noticed whilst writing these blogs is that it is the first album I brought by an artist that becomes my favourite and not necessary the classics, with David Bowie it was Diamond Dogs as that was my very first album , with Thin Lizzy it was Johnny the Fox (which hardly anyone ever mentions now) and for Deep Purple it is Come and Taste the Band although I loved their earlier albums. I think I wore out my copy of Deep Purple in Rock and would spend hours in my bedroom screaming along to Child in Time, God knows what my parents were thinking!! I also wore out my version of Burn which featured David Coverdale although I had that on cassette tape so it was not hard to do. There was a different energy to Come and Taste the Band to previous Deep Purple albums as well as some serious funky moments as featured in Getting Tighter and throughout the album there is Tommy Bolin’s distinctive guitar style which I loved.
I was as much a fan on Tommy Bolin as I was Deep Purple possibly even a bit more and had all the albums he featured on. I first came across him when a friend played me Billy Cobham’s Spectrum album which Tommy plays guitar on and blew me away with the speed of his guitar solos, he was in a band called Zephyr which had a Big Brother and the Holding company feel to them although the singer wasn’t a patch on Janis Joplin, but then again who is. Tommy then went on to replace Joe Walsh in the James Gang before replacing Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple. He also made two excellent solo albums the first one features Phil Collins on drums.
My biggest memory from seeing Deep Purple perform live at the Empire Pool, Wembley was a section of the audience who were staunch Ritchie Blackmore fans who booed every time Tommy Bolin played a guitar solo in the same way a football supporter would boo a player who used to play for Manchester united and went on to play for Manchester City, it felt very strange to me at the time and I was unaware what was going on behind the scenes in the band, two days after this performance David Coverdale announced to some band members that he was leaving the band.
Tommy Bolin passed away in December that year with a drugs overdose and for me he is one the most under rated guitar players of all time and died far too young.
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