Post by Admin on Jan 3, 2024 4:49:50 GMT
Date: September 19, 2023
Venue: The Palladium
Location: Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Reviewer: Tim Boutin
The Yngwie Malmsteen and Glenn Hughes U.S. tour has wrapped, with a stop at the Worcester Palladium on the tail end of their 2023 run.
Glenn Hughes
Time marches on — Glenn Hughes last appeared at The Palladium with his California Breed project back in 2013, with that band featuring now mega-producer Andrew Watt on guitar. They pushed the California Breed record hard that night, only playing “Burn” from the Hughes‘ Deep Purple catalog.
This show was another story, with the 50th anniversary (!) of Deep Purple‘s Burn record the motivation behind the tour. Rather than doing a track-by-track run through Burn‘s eight songs, Hughes plucked five, rounding out the set with Stormbringer‘s title track, “Gettin’ Tighter” from Deep Purple‘s Come Taste The Band, and finally, a non-Hughes Purple track, “Highway Star.”
As Hughes shared with a nearly full house, the veteran singer and bassist is the “last man standing” in terms of playing songs from the MK 3/4 Hughes / Coverdale / Bolin eras of Deep Purple, as the band initially moved on from Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, and finally, Ritchie Blackmore, into a looser, funk-driven hard rock vibe. Hughes‘ mid-set proclamation seemed spot-on. Since the end of that Deep Purple line-up in 1976, Hughes has performed songs from these three records more consistently than anyone else in Purple, sans David Coverdale taking Whitesnake into The Purple Album phase some years back. Having heard Hughes perform some of these tracks live across other solo tour stops, there’s a propensity on this writer’s end to more closely link the songs to his vocals rather than the combo platter of Coverdale/Hughes.
This inside baseball lead-up aside, for a man aged 72, it is astonishing that Hughes‘ voice, frontman persona, and bass chops are nearly the same as 50 years ago. Leading with “Stormbringer” and touring with familiar players like keyboardist Ed Roth and guitarist Soren Andersen, this was a funk-rock throwback to the mid-’70s, with extended renditions of the Deep Purple (and later, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow) blues track “Mistreated” paired with seldom-played Burn mid-tempo jams like “Sail Away.”
I think it’s definitely worth Sleaze Roxx fans checking out Glenn Hughes on his early-2024 U.S. tour with Enuff Z’Nuff and Bad Marriage.
Glenn Hughes’ setlist on Sept. 19, 2023 (as per setlist.fm):
01. Stormbringer
02. Might Just Take Your Life
03. Sail Away
04. Mistreated
05. Gettin’ Tighter
06. You Keep On Moving
07. Highway Star
08. Burn
Glenn Hughes performing “Gettin’ Tighter” live at The Palladium in Worcester, MA, USA on September 19, 2023 (video from Michael Pellegrini‘s YouTube page):
Venue: The Palladium
Location: Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Reviewer: Tim Boutin
The Yngwie Malmsteen and Glenn Hughes U.S. tour has wrapped, with a stop at the Worcester Palladium on the tail end of their 2023 run.
Glenn Hughes
Time marches on — Glenn Hughes last appeared at The Palladium with his California Breed project back in 2013, with that band featuring now mega-producer Andrew Watt on guitar. They pushed the California Breed record hard that night, only playing “Burn” from the Hughes‘ Deep Purple catalog.
This show was another story, with the 50th anniversary (!) of Deep Purple‘s Burn record the motivation behind the tour. Rather than doing a track-by-track run through Burn‘s eight songs, Hughes plucked five, rounding out the set with Stormbringer‘s title track, “Gettin’ Tighter” from Deep Purple‘s Come Taste The Band, and finally, a non-Hughes Purple track, “Highway Star.”
As Hughes shared with a nearly full house, the veteran singer and bassist is the “last man standing” in terms of playing songs from the MK 3/4 Hughes / Coverdale / Bolin eras of Deep Purple, as the band initially moved on from Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, and finally, Ritchie Blackmore, into a looser, funk-driven hard rock vibe. Hughes‘ mid-set proclamation seemed spot-on. Since the end of that Deep Purple line-up in 1976, Hughes has performed songs from these three records more consistently than anyone else in Purple, sans David Coverdale taking Whitesnake into The Purple Album phase some years back. Having heard Hughes perform some of these tracks live across other solo tour stops, there’s a propensity on this writer’s end to more closely link the songs to his vocals rather than the combo platter of Coverdale/Hughes.
This inside baseball lead-up aside, for a man aged 72, it is astonishing that Hughes‘ voice, frontman persona, and bass chops are nearly the same as 50 years ago. Leading with “Stormbringer” and touring with familiar players like keyboardist Ed Roth and guitarist Soren Andersen, this was a funk-rock throwback to the mid-’70s, with extended renditions of the Deep Purple (and later, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow) blues track “Mistreated” paired with seldom-played Burn mid-tempo jams like “Sail Away.”
I think it’s definitely worth Sleaze Roxx fans checking out Glenn Hughes on his early-2024 U.S. tour with Enuff Z’Nuff and Bad Marriage.
Glenn Hughes’ setlist on Sept. 19, 2023 (as per setlist.fm):
01. Stormbringer
02. Might Just Take Your Life
03. Sail Away
04. Mistreated
05. Gettin’ Tighter
06. You Keep On Moving
07. Highway Star
08. Burn
Glenn Hughes performing “Gettin’ Tighter” live at The Palladium in Worcester, MA, USA on September 19, 2023 (video from Michael Pellegrini‘s YouTube page):