When this was released I was very excited to hear how his planned album would come out. To celebrate his 40 years in the music industry, Gillan had compiled a list of songs from every corner of his career, and instead of just slapping them together in a compilation, he re-recorded them all. Some of them he used the artists he originally performed the songs with, and with others he had some famous friends drop by to lend a hand. I though the concept rocked.
For the most part this works well. Songs like “Unchain Your Brain” with Joe Satriani and “Bluesy Blue Sea” with original guitarist Jannick Gers are excellently updated, with a modern feel to their original tempo. So too for “A Day Late and a Dollar Short”, where contributions from Uli Jon Roth and Ronnie James Dio are valuable. Satriani again appears on “Hang Me Out To Dry”. These songs are the ones for me which benefit greatly from this release, to be exposed to fans who may never have actually experienced them. Another great track is Black Sabbath’s “Trashed”, with Tony Iommi contributing guitars. This is a, shall we say, ‘mature’ version of the song, without the wonderful Gillan soaring vocals of the original, but still a great performance of the song.
I guess the trickiest stuff was what to do with the Deep Purple material, as most of the songs that are here are still played almost every night on tour by the band and man in question. I must say that two of the songs that I would consider to be his signature tunes with Deep Purple, “Child in Time” and “Highway Star”, are not included here. Could he not improve on the originals? That is probably a pertinent point.
“When A Blind Man Cries” with Jeff Healey does the song justice, as does Joe Satriani on the wonderful “Speed King”. “Smoke On The Water” was always going to be the most difficult to pull off, I believe. No matter how you approached it, you were going to have people suggesting it should have been different. For the record – how could you ever improve on the original? I think either getting Ritchie in to play it could have been the go, or use a live performance of the song in the current day, with Steve Morse really ripping on guitar in that atmosphere.
This is pretty close to top shelf stuff. There are a couple of the versions of songs on here that I may be a bit ambivalent about, but overall it is a great triumph in recording the wonderful career of one of the greatest voices in the industry.
Rating: As a compilation that features old songs in a new environment, this is just fantastic. 4.5/5.
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