Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Newest member of Deep Purple talks

T.S. Last News-Bulletin Staff Writer; tlast@news-bulletin.com

Steve Morse must have still been a teenager in Georgia when the British band Deep Purple released its classic album Machine Head in 1972.

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As an aspiring young rock guitarist, Morse would play the same threads as Purple's guitar-great, Ritchie Blackmore, who, along with his bandmates, helped invent hard rock.

Thirty years later, Morse is doing it again, this time as Deep Purple's lead guitar player on its 2004 tour that brings the band to Albuquerque's Kiva Auditorium on Tuesday, Feb. 17.

Initial plans for the tour, which began Sunday in Vancouver, B.C., have Deep Purple playing Machine Head in its entirety. The album, which included hits "Highway Star," "Space Truckin'" and "Smoke on the Water," was a monster hit around the globe and established Deep Purple as one of the world's premier rock bands.

The concert will also feature some of the band's other hits, as well as selected songs from the 2003 release, Bananas.

In a recent phone interview, Morse said he remembers replicating Blackmore's guitar parts while playing Deep Purple songs in cover bands. "He was one of the really good guitarists," said Morse, who added that he found Deep Purple's music "intriguing." "They worked out lines with organ and guitars together. I hadn't heard that before. Yes did some things like that, but these guys kind of went for it — fast guitars with organ solos. The guitar solos appealed to me a lot."

Morse said he remembers trying to emulate Blackmore's guitar solos on Burn, which came out two years after Machine Head. Deep Purple songs became part of his repertoire as he developed his skills as a future guitar god.

"To make money, I had to play their songs. That's the way it was," he said.

By age 21, Morse got his big break in the music business when he became a member of the Dixie Dregs, an instrumental jam band that mixed Southern rock with electric fiddles and was popular on the underground music scene in the 1970's and early '80s.

When the Dregs broke up, Morse drifted a bit but continued to build his own reputation as one of rock's best guitarists — first with his own band then contributing on recordings for Joe Walsh, Kansas, Lynard Skynard and even Liza Minelli. He was voted the Best Overall Guitar Player five times in the 1980s by the readers of Guitar Player magazine.

Morse hooked up with Deep Purple after Blackmore left the band in 1993.

"They were talking about getting a full-time replacement and (bass player) Roger Glover had heard me play live," Morse explained. "Some of the others had heard the Dixie Dregs, and they said that they'd like to give me a try."

The agreement was that they'd try Morse at lead guitar for four performances, "but, really, by the end of the first rehearsal, we all smiled and knew that it would work."

Though Blackmore was a tough act to follow, Morse has proven to be a more-than-adequate replacement and is contributing his own tint to Deep Purple. The group shares song-writing credits on all songs on Bananas except one, a short instrumental by Morse that ends the album called "Contact Lost."

The song was written on Feb. 1, 2003 — the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere after a successful 16-day mission. The accident claimed the lives of the seven crew members, including Kalpana Chawla, a native of India, where Deep Purple is extremely popular.

A huge fan of the band, Chawla exchanged e-mails with the band from outer space. She took three Deep Purple CD's (Machine Head, Purpendicular and Down to Earth) with her into space and liked to wake up to "Space Truckin."

The CDs were later found among the Columbia debris and were made into commemorative plaques to honor the seven astronauts. The plaques were presented to the band by Chawla's widower, Jean-Pierre Harrison, at a concert in Mexico City last September.

The band plans to donate two of the plaques to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Morse will keep the other one — the plaque for Purpendicular, the album on which he made his Deep Purple debut in 1996. He had autographed it and given it to Chawla before she left on her mission.

"I could still see my signature on it," he said. "It's really faded and melted around the edges. It's really eerie."

While Columbia was on its mission, the Deep Purple was in the process of recording Bananas. Morse was about to go into the studio to lay down some tracks when the accident occurred. "I was sitting in front of the TV with my guitar in my hand and it happened," he said. "I freaked out."

In a state of shock and sorrow for what he had just witnessed, Morse expressed his feelings through his guitar. "When I went in to record my parts, I told the producer that I had an idea that came upon me, and I wanted to record it. We had something down in just a few minutes. By the end of the session, we had it. I never thought that it would really be on the album."

Morse said the group has included "Contact Lost" in its concert set. "We've been doing it live, and it has come off really well," he said. "It doesn't last very long, but it's definitely an emotional moment."

After concluding its U.S. tour, Deep Purple will tour Asia in April, including several concert dates in China. Purple will tour Europe next summer.

Thin Lizzy, famous for such hits as "Jailbreak" and "The Boys are Back in Town" from the mid-1970s, opens Tuesday's show, which begins at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are priced from $34 to $54 and are available through Ticketmaster outlets.

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