Stealing Deep Purple

There’s very little footage or audio in circulation of The New Deep Purple. One clip exists from Mexico where the band play Smoke of the Water.

The audio on the clip seems to have Rod Evans singing a little flat, this was explained by Tony Flynn as the generator for the analogue organ was running slow so it meant the keyboard was out of key. The rest of the band down tuned to match the organ. I don’t know enough about the mechanics of this to know if it’s true but it would make sense. Rod was a good singer albeit a natural crooner than a rock singer .

Another clip his recently emerged, one of the band playing Highway Star at the same show. Well it’s actually an audio file that has been posted as a video. The sound quality is very poor (although if you’re a bootleg fan, you might not think it’s that bad). Again Rod’s voice seems out of place singing hard rock and it does feel a little flat, but it dispels the myth that the band couldn’t play very well. They seem a little sloppy but with a groove. The crowd are certainly enjoying it judging by the cheers…..(listen below)

https://www.facebook.com/RockomotionMX/videos/1067635488142242

The same site that posted the audio clip also had a poster from the Mexico show and a ticket stub. It’s interesting to see that the poster is taking care to advertise Jim Dandy above Black Oak Arkansas but Deep Purple have no prefixes. It should be noted thought that Rod Evans was highly publicised in the press before the show. I think to the people of Mexico in 1980, it didn’t really matter, they were just glad that there was a massive rock concert since there hadn’t been one on that size before.

The ticket shows the price was MX$220 which was around $10 in 1980. In 2026 value that’s around $40.

One of my hopes for Stealing Deep Purple was that it would bring more information and memories to the surface. I think that’s happening.