YEREVAN (Combined Sources)–Legendary ’70s rock band Deep Purple returned to the Armenian capital after 20 years to play a charity concert to help build a music school in Gyumri.
Fronted by vocalist Ian Gillan, the band first held a benefit concert in 1990 to help victims of the Spitak earthquake, which struck northern Armenia two years earlier.
“The feeling of being home never left me, since I visited Armenia for the first time,” Gillan told reporters in Yerevan.
Fans, including several hundred who traveled from Iran and Georgia, packed the 10,000-seat concert hall in Yerevan to once again cheer on the band performing some of its biggest hits.
Gillan calls Armenia his “spiritual home,” where “the spirit of adventure is always in the air” and where Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan is a big fan of rock music and the band as well.
I remember listening to these guys when I was like 12 years old,still have a couple of vinyl records hanging around here.Yeah I’m that old.I didn’t think classic American Rock was that big in Armenia,much less Georgia or Iran.Just goes to show that music is universal.
Dear John, DPurple is an English Rock band with an American lead guitarist, / and a Scot lead singer / and yes, they were and still are big in eastern Europe and the middle east.Most 70`s and 80`s super-groups draw bigger crowds here than in their mother countries.I have all DP records and cds bought at black market prices -a Purple LP cost a week`s wages here in the 70`s and their music was forbidden until the late 80`s.The sad thing is Russian president Red-bear Medwedev is also their fan and he paid the band some 20 000$$$ – taxpayers money of course – to play an exclusive concert for him in the Kremlin.
I guess being a Russian big shot has it’s perks.
We grew up totally with them, played the albums to death – literally!