Purple in excess

September 2, 2008 - 4:03 PM by Harry

Deep Purple Watching too many episodes of Red Band has got me wondering to what extent Israelis are aware of the great potential for tongue-in-cheek fun that rock and roll excesses provide.

Sure, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny airs pretty regularly here on cable, and nowadays it’s impossible for anyone in the world to think about 70s guitar rock reunions without certain sequences from of This is Spinal Tap creeping into one’s consciousness. But maybe a certain telescopic approach to cultural literacy – especially among Israel’s formerly Soviet segments – has meant that Israelis have faulty radars when it comes to rock and roll irony? How else can we explain the nation’s unabashedly burgeoning love for all-out metal, a love which is apparently spreading to overseas? And how else can we explain four upcoming Deep Purple shows at huge venues which kick off next week?

A washed-up nostalgia act in the West, Deep Purple represents the all time rock greats to Russians: “Three biggest bands in the Soviet union were The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple,” promoter Yuri Laschov recently told Haaretz.

Or, as drummer Ian Paice told The Jerusalem Post, “We’re not the most fashionable unit touring out there in the world. We’re not spring chickens, but the shows we’re putting on are among the best we’ve ever done.”

To many, the distinction between Spinal Tap and Deep Purple is fuzzy at best, and a recent piece in Haaretz recalls many of Deep Purple’s greatest Spinal Tap moments on Israeli stages over the years:

The performance by Deep Purple at Tzemach at the start of the 1990s was, by most accounts, one of the most pathetic rock ‘n’ roll jokes ever seen here. The soloist, Joe Lynn Turner, (who at that time was replacing Ian Gillan, the singer in the ‘classic’ makeup of the band), struck ridiculous poses of a rock star, even though his renditions were very feeble. In the breaks between numbers, according to a soundman who was there, Turner hastened backstage where his girlfriend was waiting with a hot hairdryer to refresh and style his hair.

That was only the beginning. An even more embarrassing incident occurred when Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple’s legendary guitarist, left the stage in the middle of the show and refused to come back. Why? There are two versions, both of them so funny one could weep. According to one version, Blackmore was frightened by the green sticklights that many in the audience were holding in their hands and screamed at Zeev Isaac, the show’s producer, “They’re throwing fire at me! I’m not going back until they stop throwing fire at me!”

According to the second version, some people in the audiences threw teddy bears onto the stage, and this is what frightened Blackmore. Teddy bears? Eyal Ortal, a lawyer from Netanya and a fan of Deep Purple who was at the performance, explains: “Ian Gillan was into animal rights and at one Deep Purple performance in the 1980s he spoke about the killing of bears in Canada. After that, fans of the band started throwing teddy bears onto the stage as a sign of solidarity with Gillan’s agenda, and that’s what happened in Israel, even though Gillan was no longer in the band.”

With such a strong demand for repeat performances along these lines, perhaps it’s impossible that the Deep Purple anticipation is devoid of irony after all.

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