Almost exactly twenty-nine years since I first saw them, Deep Purple played to a packed Sheffield City Hall, February 2002. The one major omission from the band's 1973 line-up was guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, however the Deep Purple project has been used to major changes in personnel over the years.

I have seen the band on numerous occasions over the years once with David Coverdale on vocals circa 1974 and again when the band's most famous MK11 line-up (Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord and Paice) reformed in the mid-eighties to perform at The Knebworth Festival. This was an extraordinary occasion when a the crowd of over 100,000 people stood all day in the pouring rain standing in the cold and mud, many like us, wearing plastic sacks to keep the rain off. When Purple were finally due to play it was found that all the equipment on stage had become electrified by the wet and it took what seemed forever for the band to eventually take to the stage.

The band continued touring during the late eighties and I saw them on tour at the NEC Birmingham. From this tour came the bands first major live album in years titled Nobody's Perfect. Deep Purple's turbulent history it seems was mainly due to bad feeling between Blackmore and Gillan.

About six or seven years ago I saw then at the City Hall in Sheffield, by this time though Blackmore had left the band again to be replaced by Steve Morse. The same line up appeared in February 2002, playing a variety of old material such as Child in Time, Hush, No-One Came, Fools, Mary Long, Never Before, Lazy, Speed king, mixed with more recent material.

Purple were very much at the forefront of the progressive rock scene in the seventies and the band sounds as good as ever today. Although time may have caught up a little on the these ageing rockers physically, Roger Glover wearing a head scarf to hide him receding hairline, Jon Lord with an air of a middle-aged, slightly eccentric pub landlord and Ian Gillan probably looking the fittest with a tan and relatively short hair doing his best to look like Bobby Ewing.

Morse, Paice and Lord each played brief solo pieces. Morse, including some classic guitar riffs from other bands. Lord with his unique keyboard sounds and Ian Paice playing a drum solo that included an impressive one hand drum roll. Purple finished the set with the inevitable Smoke On The Water to bring to a close a memorable night.