By Steve Newton
I remember when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover quit Deep Purple after 1973’s Who Do We Think We Are album. I was pretty devastated because, after spending countless hours gorging on LPs like Fireball and the double-live colossus Made in Japan–Purple was one of my favourite bands.
I couldn’t quite imagine them without Gillan on the mike.
But then 1974 came around, Gillan and Glover were replaced by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, and the band released Burn. Although it took me a while to wrap my head around Coverdale’s vocals–I actually thought Hughes was a much better singer–it was clear from the opening title track that the Deep Purple legacy was in good hands.
Some 50 or so years later I still get a major buzz from hearing “Burn”, and as I mentioned in a blog post a couple years back, a lot of that has to do with the wicked drumming of Ian Paice.
And now it looks like it’s not only old farts like myself who get psyched up by that song. I recently came across a video of a band composed of five Japanese teenagers who really know how to “Burn” up the stage. These kids–ranging in age from 10 to 18–prove once and for all that, as Triumph’s Gil Moore sang back in ’84, “rock and roll lives and breathes in the hearts of the young”.
Check it out: