ARTICLE ABOUT Deep Purple FROM New Musical Express, December 12, 1970

For a little while, it seemed that the guys in Deep Purple couldn`t avoid trouble on their European tours. This article tells us about the hardship they suffered in Germany. Be aware of German frauleins! 😉
Read on!

Commie Fraulien incites ruinous concert riots

Richard Green in Germany with Deep Purple

THERE’S a very mysterious Fraulein X going the rounds of German concert halls that quite a few bands would like to get their hands on at the moment. Deep Purple encountered her and her devious activities twice during the first half of their current German tour when she organised riots of a very frightening nature in Hanover and Heidelburg.
Purple are the latest group to suffer from the deplorable antics of “fans” who want all concerts to be free. At the slightest suggestion of an entrance fee, upwards of a thousand troublemakers gather at the hall and provoke everyone in sight into damaging property.
“They had battering rams in Heidelburg and they were trying to get at the band,” Ian Paice told me when I joined them in Hamburg. “I was really frightened. They had us cornered in the dressing room… if they had got to us I hate to think what would have happened.”
Purple were due to move back to south Germany after the two Hamburg gigs and each member of the group was very worried about the impending trouble.
“We saw a girl driving round in a car with a loudspeaker on top organising the riots. She was telling them what to do and where to go,” Ian revealed. “She was in Heidelburg and again in Hanover. At Hanover, we were about four storeys up and they were throwing lumps of rock up at the windows. It was all very organised, there’s nowhere round there they could have got the rocks from.”
Bootleggers have been out in force and in Hanover again, one of Purple’s roadies applied a successful method of dealing with the pirate — he simply hit the bloke over the head with a tape recorder!
Ian Gillan is particularly upset about the riots, not only for the obvious reason that people’s lives are in danger, but because he doesn’t want the group being associated with such scenes. Unfortunately, the link becomes that little bit stronger every time trouble occurs.
“The audiences inside, you couldn’t wish for better, it’s the people outside who are causing all the trouble,” he explained. Just prior to a Press reception in our luxury hotel, Ian took time out to have a beer with me and talk about the current spate of riots.

“They seem to think that all concerts should be free, which is a ridiculous suggestion,” he began. “A lot of them are breaking in and spoiling it for the people who do pay to come in. They smash things up so tickets become more expensive. We’re just earning a living the same as, say, bank clerks, we don’t dictate the prices.
“It’s not fair that kids at school who save their money for two or three weeks to come to a show should have to pay more and have their evening spoilt. A lot of students claim they have no money but if that’s so how do they get hold of tear gas cannisters to let off at concerts?
“They can hear groups at the universities, it’s laid on for them. We try to give a good show for people who pay to come and hear us, we don’t like it being spoiled. I think it’s basically Communist agitation that causes all this trouble. People are goaded into causing riots. We get a lot of people at our concerts so it’s a good opportunity for these people to cause trouble.
“Every night we get at least two thousand people inside and there are about a thousand outside and those outside are pushed into causing trouble. They’re being manipulated. In Germany it can happen more than anywhere else because German people like being organised in crowds.”
When I arrived at the hotel after a flight which included a thorough frisking by a policeman (do I look that much of criminal?), I found the evergreen Tony Ashton nursing a clutch of lager bottles in the lounge. On the way to the hotel I’d noticed his group billed as Ashton, Gardner, Dyke and Lieber. Who was this Lieber I asked him?
“That’s him, there,” he laughed pointing at the chap sitting opposite me. “Mick Lieber — meet the Beast. Mick joined us just before the American tour.”
Mick has been working in Australia for a few years and he met Tony on sessions back in London. Eventually, Tony asked him to join the group as lead guitarist.
“Mick joining has made us a lot looser, there’s more room to expand the music,” Tony explained. “The American tour helped us to find ourselves, we made some mistakes and learned where we were going wrong. We’re probably going to add trumpet, sax and trombone to the line-up back in London.”

Tony and Eric Clapton play together on a track from the new George Harrison triple album and in return George produced a track on the AGD&L-LP. Tony also wrote a song dedicated to Patti Harrison and put that on his album.
Next day Ian Gillan was up early for an interview with Pathe News, so we resumed our previous chat, this time on a more pleasant note. We talked about the “Jesus Christ Superstar” album on which Ian sings the title part.
“It sold two million straight away in America and they think it will do about four million in all there,” he said. “Lennon was going to do it but they thought it would get out of hand if he got involved. They wanted Plant but I don’t know what happened there.
“I think they heard ‘Child In Time` on the rock album and phoned my manager. I didn’t get too involved, I just did two sessions and went away. The next thing I heard, it had become a big thing. They wanted me to do the premiere at the Albert Hall originally but I wasn’t really interested — we’ve been working so hard, putting pressure on ourselves, that there isn’t the time. We’re exhausted.”
The concert that evening was a huge success. No sign of trouble — meaning that the 200 police, 100 security guards, 20 police dogs, two water cannons, mobile police station and four meat wagons weren’t needed. Purple did a storm, their act being aptly described later as an “earschplittenloudenboomer” by a certain English journalist who shall remain nameless because of my modesty.
The group now puts a bit of mock yodelling at the beginning of the act for a laugh, then gets into the serious part and ends up with a rearing version of “Lucille,” “Child In Time” and “Wring That Neck” seemed to go down best prior to the Little Richard number and there were several outbursts of clapping after solos.
Purple have already completed two tracks for the next album and, according to Jon Lord, are taking time off in January to complete it. Again, it will be all originals, with the accent on rock but with more variety.
Later that night, we all went to a party given by a millionaire’s daughter and later still — three a.m. to be precise, little Ian Paice and I went for a late dinner/early breakfast in a music hall restaurant near the hotel.
“I better eat as much as I can now,” he half joked, “we’re going south again tomorrow and it might be all over.”
When groups have to make jokes about situations like those occurring in Germany right now and make them partly out of nervousness, isn’t it about time someone with a bit of say put a stop to the bloody-minded minority who are on the verge of having pop concerts in Germany banned altogether?

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