Three numbers pulled from ‘On Stage’ and issued as album sales fall off . My suggestion was for a different version of ‘Kill The King’ plus ‘Do You Close Your Eyes’ on the flip, complete with the guitar demolition noises! They couldn’t care less though, so we get already available numbers instead.

European tour dates were released on August 24th. They kick off on September 23rd in Helsinki, and finish in Cardiff on November 22nd. We can only wait and see what this latest line-up is like. Events have happened so quickly that a quick resume is in order:

Dec.76 The World Tour ends, and Blackmore decides that Carey and Bain are no longer needed. Mark Clarke is hired to play bass. They rehire Tony Carey, but after Ritchie gets up to his usual ‘tricks’ he walks out this time for good. Then Ritchie fires Clarke. Hasty searching around provides two new replacements, both relatively unknown. Bob Daisley on bass, an Australian who has played with Chicken Shack and Widowmaker. On keyboards is Canadian David Stone, from Symphonic Slam.

David has been over arranging a tour with a band called Whitesnake. He did a lot of radio interviews whilst here, and interesting facts emerged. One was that Ritchie asked David to do the vocals on his Rainbow album sometime in early 1975. What’s more, Coverdale agreed! Then Ritchie dug out the demos he’d already done for Coverdale to listen to. Coverdale didn’t think a great deal of the stuff, feeling it was a move back to ‘Machine Head’ days rather than a step forward, so he backed down.