Road Report by Martin Popoff
"It's pretty good, impact stuff," notes Ian, virtually unrecognizable in short grey hair, pink shirt, tan slacks, bare feet, sunburned like a French fry, looking exactly the way he would take the stage half an hour later. "You think of festival bills, summer bills and all that stuff. You don't want people to be playing two and half hours. It's a pain in the neck. Obviously everything brings a problem. If you haven't got any money, that's a problem. As soon as you start earning money, you've got to pay tax, that's a problem. And when you headline the show, you get to do two and half hours, that's a problem. And when you have to cut it down to 75 minutes, that's a problem. Altogether, they're good problems to have, not difficult. Cutting the show down to two and half hours is even very difficult with the kind of catalog we have and the kind of new stuff we like to bring in. But because of the nature of the band in terms of improvisation, it's not. It's not too easy to work the discipline in terms of exact timing, that's the most difficult thing, to cut down some of the improvisation. So what we've got is a little expanse and contraction point, so we can feel free to break loose in the middle of the show and then we can shorten it in the end if it's gone on too long in the middle, or something like that."
DEEP PURPLE - Deep In Thought Amongst Other Things Page 3