Deep Purple Keyboardist Jon Lord Dies; created one of rock’s signature sounds

Who was Jon Lord?

The name might ring familiar to early 70’s stoners and bluesy brit prog-rocker fans.  Lord was the keyboardist who enveloped Deep Purple (and later Whitesnake) with a deep, muscular over-driven organ sound.

He died Monday. He was 71. A statement on Lord’s official website says he died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Here’s what I know of Lord, and why he mattered in rock: Lord co-wrote “Smoke on the Water.”

Isn’t that enough?

Deep Purple was Lord, singer Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and bassist Roger Glover. And it was Lord who wielded a Hammond organ that drove “Smoke on the Water” “Hush,”and “Lazy” and ”Highway Star.”

A signature sound. Wrote one of the iconic rock songs of the past 50 years.

RIP Mr. Lord.

Plug pulled on Springsteen in London

On a night that began with Bruce Springsteen jumping in during John Fogerty’s set to sing “Rockin’ All Over the World”, and ended with Paul McCartney on stage doing Beatles rave-ups, the show was killed a bit early for Springsteen, as someone with access to the on/off switch shut down his show at Hard Rock Calling Festival in Hyde Park in London.

Bruce had pushed well past the three-hour mark during his show with the E Street Band, headlining the Saturday night schedule in front of about 80,000.  Curfew was 10:30pm and he was more than 10 minutes past the cutoff.

Up to that point, reports on the web say Fogerty had returned to duet on “Promised Land” and Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello had joined for a trio of songs, supplying incendiary guitar solos.  But the big surprise was when McCartney ran on to do “I Saw Her Standing There’ and a raucous “Twist and Shout”.

And here’s where it gets ugly.

After “Twist and Shout,”, as McCartney was leaving the stage, Bruce motioned the band back to their positions after a bow.  They wanted to play one of the signature songs of the tour, the Clarence-remembrance  “10th Avenue Freeze Out”.  According to witnesses, Bruce tried to count off the song, but the PA had been shut down. Backstreets.com reported that “Bruce’s monitor engineer had to come on stage to advise that the PA had been cut off, though the stage monitors were on. Unwilling to just walk off without doing something else, Bruce sang a few lines of the folk standard ‘Goodnight Irene,’ audible only to those near the stage, before leaving.”