Deep Purple Quebec 1980 photos

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES
Translations: Gerhard Koritnik

Le Journal de Quebec, August 1980
Article by André Leclair

"To relax, we shatter the walls of the hotel, with a chain saw"

“To relax between the shows, we shatter everything we get in hands in the hotels, ransack these impersonal corridors, breaking through the walls with a chain saw for new outlets in the open air.”

A strange feeling towards these semi-gods, semi-inventions of the show business industry, such as Rod Evans of Deep Purple, when we met yesterday, when he arrived in Quebec in company of this group that changed its members several times since the beginning. "We're living in demimonde, a half-world", he said calmly, "with a flight of 7,000 kilometers, a world straddling reality and madness."

Today in Quebec City, their first impressions were drowned in the sterile noise of the airport, in this tolerance near the turnstile luggage. See for the temperature, it's not worth the f***, the musicians declared, at the opening of the automatic doors, or waiting in line for the taxis. "Francophone audiences are very volatile, they are the most emotional, the most sensitive of all", the British adds, all to the honor of the city of Quebec. The headliners in jeans and t-shirt give off a powerful impression of the grandeur, the nobility, the glory to the Americans: "We do a show here and there in America, but we always come back to Los Angeles to refuel". Arrived yesterday in Quebec, they had a day off today, to hurry then to Anchorage in Alaska for another show, as like it was nothing.

"I like René Lévesque, and I’m sympathetic to the cause of independence of Quebec", says Rod Evans, who adds that he has read a lot about "the two stars of Canada, Trudeau and Lévesque". He willingly says a few words in French, a lot of "cul", many expressions out of Pigalle, just eccentric as it should be.

And before the show? "Before the show, we have to work like all the artists, and then we celebrate, a little alcohol, a little something else... me, I like to drink Cointreau and Grand Marnier", he precises. It smells of the British millionaire, the opulent bourgeois of Windsor, in the land of His Majesty. What works the most in music today? "The heavy electric guitar and rock'n roll, according to the promoters", he says, not without a certain amount of marketing. "Today, the success of a band is made up of 25% of the music, 25% of the record companies, 25% of our manager, and another 25% of luck."

Le Journal de Quebec, August 1980
Article by Sylvie Lampron

The organizers of the "Murs" explain

"We cannot say anything for the moment except that the show given by the band Deep Purple took place, that the band started on stage, but people refused their music and booed them out. They felt that the public was hostile towards them and decided to withdraw."

This is the official and rigorous version issued by the organizers of the "Festival of Sound Walls", via their spokesman, Jacques Coté. Yesterday, many people tried to get the price of their ticket back, but without success. Apparently, it can’t be used for the reasons mentioned above. "Many people consider that they were scammed, that the show was rotten because the musicians played only 40 minutes and, still, by distorting constantly", explains Jacques Coté. And yet, the members of the group were already paid before the show began Tuesday night.

According to another organizer, Robert Boulay: "The buyers were expecting to see the famous guitarist who was part of the band, Ritchie Blackmore. The tickets sold too fast and people did not consider the advertising that had been done before their arrival. We had specified that it was the "New Deep Purple" group, through the media, but, apparently, it was not enough. I also noticed that there was a very cold atmosphere in the audience when the band was announced, he said.
Jacques Conte, meanwhile, noticed that the organizers of the show Deep Purple played a few days ago in Edmundston, New Brunswick, confessed to having experienced the same problems with the group. "We even think of associating with them to run after them", he said. "For the moment, no one dares to speak. We’re waiting for some confirmations and then we will say everything we have to say. And believe me, we may have a lot to tell", Jacques Coté explains.

Organisator Jacques Coté (Photo: Serge Lapointe)

Le Journal de Quebec, August 1980
Article by André Leclair

Four ex-Deep Purple members run after them from one end to the other of the USA

The alleged Deep Purple group, which was in Quebec City Tuesday night, is being sued in California on charges of misrepresentation by four ex-members of this group, the famed Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Paice, Ian Gillan and Jon Lord.
The same scenario, to which the 1,500 people who were at the Capitol Theater were subjected, has been breeding in El Paso, Texas, San Bernardino, California, Mexico City, and various other parts of the continent. Show business circles in Los Angeles do not hesitate to bet behind the scenes of piracy, even if, until now, plaintiffs have failed in their attempt to obtain an injunction to put a stop to this tour.

According to information obtained by the newspaper, from the prosecutor John Gold in New York, the five musicians, who appeared on scene in Quebec, would have appropriated the name of Deep Purple legally, invoking the fact that one of their members, Rod Evans, once an obscure bassist (?), was also a founding member of the "real" Deep Purple.
"Our customers, who were at the origin of all the big successes of the group, as much in scene as on record, see their reputation scorned with impunity, while their records continue to sell very well on the market, under the Warner Brothers label", explained one of the lawyers who took this case in hand. The four founding members of Deep Purple, who are now doing a career apart, incidentally have the intention of meeting one day on stage.
"As long as these strangers continue to resurface sporadically in America, thousands of spectators will continue to be dragged," he said. The pseudo-stars, that Quebeckers have seen on the Capitol stage, would have amassed more than $ 250,000 in their ephemeral career so far, according to a reporter from the American magazine "Billboard" in Los Angeles, John Sippel.

Journalist André Leclair, who later was part of the lawsuit in October 1980 as
a witness for the "real" Deep Purple, remembers (via e-mail, December 2013):

In 1980, I was a reporter with le Journal de Québec in Québec City, a tabloid with same ownership as the parent Journal de Montreal. I was a young reporter assigned to local news stories/crime scene. I was about to finish my shift on August 12, 1980, when a photographer from our newspaper, assigned to cover the New Deep Purple show at the Capitol Theater, offered me to attend the concert backstage. There were no reporters assigned to cover this event so I was de facto the only witness from the print media although I was officially off work and only there as a guest.

The show started late, the band members were obviously drunk and soon after their opening number they started to encounter technical sound problems (big guitar feedbacks etc). So started a strange ballet of the musicians pausing and going off stage only to come back and try another song with unrelenting technical problems. This gradually wore the patience of the audience. It also seemed to me like they were probably having a sip of something when they went offstage, while their sound crew or whoever was trying to fix the problem(s). Anyhow, after a few attempts, they came back onstage to officially resume the show.

Whatever happened is now history: they sounded genuinely awful, this further compounded by their technical problems, the audience started to boo them having (likely) realized that they were faked. They had to stop and resume songs a few times, the lead singer (Rod Evans?) finally came one last time to the microphone and told the audience to go f. themselves (I believe this is about as accurate a wording recalling the incident). Soon, hell broke loose.

The Capitol was an old 20th century baroque theater with the front part of the orchestra section arranged with bistro tables and chairs. Soon members of the audience grabbed some of the chairs and threw them against the stage. The band disappeared and I left the theater by the fire exit. I went to a phone booth (way before cell phones) and called the newspaper desk and told them about the events. I was asked to write a front page story while the photographer assigned to the event had plenty of very dramatic shots of the incident.

Next morning this was front page of both Journal de Québec and Journal of Montréal, my story was turned into a newswire story translated and circulated across North America and abroad. A few days into these events, I got a phone call from a lawyer in the States who said he was an attorney working for the members of (the real) Deep Purple. He called me a second time in a conference call from New York and L.A. and asked me if I would accept to come to Los Angeles to testify in a US District Court against the New Deep Purple. I accepted.

I had to go on vacation because my employer would not pay me to go; the law firm paid for my transportation and meals, but only paid witness fees as it would have been illegal to pay me to be a witness, but they put me in the Century Plaza Hotel! The day before my appearance in Court (day of the trial in October 1980), I met with the lawyers and members of Deep Purple, Jon Lord, Ian Paice and Ritchie Blackmore (or was it Roger Glover?), in the lobby of the Century Plaza, whom had flown in from London to NYC and from NYC to LA by Concorde.

I will remember all my life how Jon Lord in particular was nice to me. He many times thanked me for traveling from Quebec City to be a witness in the trial and said how they felt sorry they could no take me for dinner, because (I remember his words) they had traveled from London and had many commitments while staying in L.A. for just a few days (or a few hours!!).

The next day I appeared at the trial in the US district court and was asked to tell the judge what I had witnessed as a journalist in Quebec City. I told them strait facts in my much French-accented English. When I exited the court room I came across the members of the bogus New Deep Purple and one of them (Rod Evans maybe) told, in a rather friendly way, they felt sorry I was not on their side!

I took many photos of my encounter with members of Deep Purple at the Century Plaza. Unfortunately, days after, while I was traveling to explore the Los Angeles area, I got my camera stolen in the trunk of a rental car so, miserably, I have no photos of this. However, I was the only witness from the media to appear in Court and I understand my testimonial was instrumental in the judge's decision to provide an injunction stopping the New Deep Purple". (André Leclair, via e-mail, 2013)

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