DEEP PURPLE … LONG BEACH 1976 (TRINKELBONKER 2016/2022)

Text and Photos down below is from the excellent blog Trinkelbonker. It contains two of his posts about Long Beach 1976.

The Deep Purple Podcast has just highlighted a classic 1976 live recording of Purple in episode 156, and I figured I would add a few words about it here. Released in 1977, the Deep Purple bootleg with the rather weird name “On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat” single-handedly helped restore the reputation of Deep Purple with Tommy Bolin on guitar. Having disbanded a few weeks after the final shows in the UK in March 1976, the band had lost a lot of credibility during the ill fated tour for “Come Taste The Band”. However, a show in Los Angeles at Long Beach Arena (February 27 1976) had been recorded and broadcasted on the radio Stateside and it was part of this show (and a MK3 version of “Mistreated”) that popped up in 1977 as “On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat”. 

The cover of the bootleg had a shot of some Chinese soldiers on it, to confuse matters even more. However, this image was actually nicked from a Deep Purple ad from the 1976 Record World Deep Purple Special magazine so it had a connection, even if it was not exactly known by every fan in the world. As for the title, a Russian “Foxbat” fighter had landed on a Japanese airfield as a pilot defected to the West, and this was headline news at the time. 

By 1995, when the full show saw release for the first time on CD, the original title was still there (with the addition of “Live In California, Long Beach Arena 1976”). At this time, only hardcore fans would have understood where the hell that title came from, and on later releases (and there has been plenty of them) the “Russian Foxbat” part has been deleted. The bootleg had made an enormous impact among Purple fans back in 1977 though, and as copies of “Last Concert In Japan” started to appear (in 1977-1978 on different markets), fans could certainly point at the Long Beach recording and say “Hey, the band rocked, just listen to this”. I gave David Coverdale cassettes of the bootleg in 1981 and I was also in contact with Glenn Hughes in the hope that somebody would react to the quality and chase down the original tapes. This did not happen (no surprise there I guess), but in 1994 when contact was made it was a great time to finally see this being worked on for an official product. Since then, MK4 has achieved a lot of love and “Come Taste The Band” is considered a classic by now, in its own right. Read more about the Long Beach releases on February 27 2016 on this blog.

Deep Purple performed at the Long Beach Arena in Los Angeles on February 27 1976, and in retrospect you could argue that this was their most important show as MK4, simply because it was a good night and it was in fact recorded by a radio station for later airing Stateside as part of the King Biscuit Flower Hour series. There had been an earlier attempt to catch a full show as early as January 26 in Springfield, but there had been problems with Tommy Bolin´s equipment. Since the tour was to go on for some time yet it was eventually decided to have another go and Long Beach was picked.

Now this is interesting because Los Angeles was home turf in some way, certainly for the American operation. Jon Lord and Ian Paice owned a house there, Glenn Hughes lived there, everybody was based in the Los Angeles area for tax reasons and for easy access to the all important US market. It was in Los Angeles that the band had picked up the pieces in the previous year and it was here that they first met Tommy Bolin and started to work with him. Ritchie Blackmore also used Los Angeles as his headquarters at this time and when the new version of Deep Purple landed in town for the Long Beach show he was in fact in the process of getting the “Rising” version of Rainbow together, and they were all invited to see Purple on this night. Blackmore has been quiet about this, perhaps he didn´t want to talk endlessly about the fact that he actually did see Deep Purple with Tommy Bolin perform, but it has been confirmed by other members of Rainbow that they were there on the night (and Blackmore actually did confirm that he had seen Purple in an interview he made in Australia in 1976). It was still very much a family kind of thing. We also know from interviews made in 1974 and 1975, prior to Blackmore leaving Purple, that he liked Bolin.

For some reason or another, and we will never know why, this turned out to be one of these brilliant nights when everything worked for the band. On top of this, the radio recording turned out great but the band did not get further involved since they were soon to head over to Britain and as we all know that was the end of not only this tour but of the band itself. I don´t have the exact date for when this aired on US radio, or exactly how much of it, but it must have been in 1976, and most likely way after the split.

A bootleg titled “Deep Purple – On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat” did pop up in 1977 with a few tracks (“Burn”, “Smoke On The Water”, “This Time Around/”Owed To G”, “Highway Star/”Not Fade Away”), and this alerted fans all over the world to the fact that a good source existed. People started to work in various ways to locate it since it was clearly lost. I gave a tape of the “Foxbat” bootleg to David Coverdale in 1981 in the hope for a reaction but nothing came out of that. I also wrote a letter to Glenn Hughes (still have a copy) in 1988. When the tapes were finally located it was Simon Robinson of the UK Deep Purple Appreciation Society that finally got permission from the old management (Deep Purple Overseas) to release it on the Connoisseur label. This was in 1995 so it was released as a double CD, and not in LP format (everybody thought vinyl was dead back then). It was quite a moment for me (I was credited, which was nice). At this point, most diehards knew about the “Foxbat” bootleg so the title was used on the 1995 release – “On The Wings Of A Russian Foxbat – Live In California – Long Beach Arena 1976”. The “Foxbat” bootleg had sported a photograph of some Chinese soldiers on the cover (printed in pinkish red), which seemed a bit strange back in the day. But the picture was actually ripped from a 1976 ad for Deep Purple, so the connection was there.