Today, Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillan celebrates his 81st birthday, but last night, Gillan and his bandmates spent his last evening as an 80-year-old playing to a crowd of fans young and old (though mostly old) at RBC Amphitheatre.
Fittingly, Gillan was wearing a t-shirt that read, “TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG.” A humorous phrase poking fun at the trope of the rockstar who lives fast, dies young, and leaves a beautiful corpse, sure, but it also got me thinking seriously about the whole idea of aging in rock music. Is there a cutoff point for rocking? Can one be too old to rock and roll?
Deep Purple first got their start way back in 1968, with three of the current members (Gillan, drummer Ian Paice, and bassist Roger Glover) having been in the band since the late 1960s. Keyboardist Don Airey, a few years younger than the others, has been in the band for over 20 years. Meanwhile, “new guy” Simon McBride, a relatively young 47 years old, has been playing in bands since the ’90s before taking on his current role as Deep Purple’s guitarist in 2022. So, no, none of them are new to the game. And though the band did call their 2017 tour “The Long Goodbye,” the fact that they’re still touring and putting out new records nearly a decade later suggests that Deep Purple has no interest in saying goodbye any time too soon.
And really, why should they? If they’re still enjoying it, and the fans still want to see them do it, why not keep it going? And truly, Deep Purple still puts on a solid show. Opening with “Highway Star,” one of the more hard-driving songs in their repertoire, Gillan and co. started things off strong, proving that these old-timers still have plenty of gas left in the tank.
Touring behind their latest release, the questionably named SPLAT!, the band of course played a few numbers off the new album. And while it’s true that no one goes to see a legacy classic rock band live in order to hear the new stuff, the new stuff is better than it needs to be, with “Arrogant Boy” and the instrumental “Guinnesis” standing out as some of the highlights alongside classics like “Space Truckin'” and their signature tune, “Smoke on the Water.”
Sure, Ian Gillan may not quite be belting it out like he did back in 1970 when Deep Purple recorded “Child in Time,” but for a man in his 80s, he’s sounding pretty good. The same can’t be said for every aging rock vocalist. And the band still sounds great, with McBride and Airey in particular getting the chance to show off their chops as each got a chance to take a solo turn during the set. McBride’s integration of a snippet of Rush’s “Spirit of Radio” into his solo was especially appreciated.
While rock music has traditionally been seen as a young person’s game, there is also something to be said for experience and after decades on the road, Deep Purple have plenty of that. Too late to die young? OK, but not too old to rock.
