MADE IN EUROPE

The use of the "Made in.. " title is no coincidence, and is clearly intended to associate this live album with the critically acclaimed "Made in Japan". "Made in Europe" however does not feature the classic Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord /Paice line up. Instead we have the band which recorded the "Burn" and "Stormbringer" albums with David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes in for Gillan and Glover.

The performances captured here took place in 1975 in Austria, Germany and France. The last of these, in Paris in April 1975 marked Ritchie Blackmore's final gig with the band (for the time being as it turned out). Interestingly the sleeve notes talk of this album as an "Epitaph, a final testimony" to Deep Purple, saying that it is unlikely that this line up will ever appear on stage again.

There are just five tracks in total, all taken from the two Deep Purple albums which feature Coverdale and Hughes. The line up did play older material at these gigs, including "Highway star", "Smoke on the water" and "Space truckin'" but these are omitted. Recordings of these from the same gigs have however subsequently been made available on the "Archive live" album.

The opening title track from "Burn" stands proudly alongside any of the band's greatest songs, this rendition being completely faithful to the studio original. "Mistreated", another magnificent song, was the only track on the "Burn" album which featured Coverdale singing alone. He and Blackmore jointly composed this masterpiece of blues rock which contains one of Ritchie's finest guitar solos ever. Notably the song was also included on Rainbow's first live album. The rendition here includes a superfluous "interpolation" of the blues song "Rock me baby".

"Lady double dealer" is one of two tracks from the sub-standard "Stormbringer" album. This song and the following "You fool no one" from "Burn" illustrate all too clearly the funky direction the band adopted while Hughes and Coverdale were part of the line up. Performed live they sound worse even than they did on the studio albums. "You fool no one" is extended to almost 17 minutes through some guitar pyrotechnics by Ritchie. While his playing is of course technically impressive, here it is unfocused and rambling. Unfortunately we also have the band comfort break here, otherwise known as the drum solo. The length of the track may simply be symptomatic of a lack of rehearsed material.

The title track from "Stormbringer" stands virtually alone on that album in terms of representing what the name Deep Purple really means. The rendition here is relatively brief and faithful to the album version.

In all, while "Made in Europe" captures the essence of the Mark III line up well, it only goes to show that without Gillan and Glover they were an inferior product.

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