Photos/Review: Deep Purple + Alice Cooper @ BB&T Pavilion

Words & Photos by Rod Snyder

Together in Concert, the aptly named tour featuring Deep Purple, Alice Cooper & Edgar Winter, came to town to play together at Camden’s BB & T Pavilion. A beautiful summer evening brought out a well-attended concert on a Thursday night.

With Edgar Winter in the opening slot, he welcomed the crowd and went right into “Free Ride” and rode right through his quick five-song set. The band’s energy more than made up for the short time slot. Closing with an epic version of “Frankenstein”, the crowd was ready for the rest of the night ahead.

Alice Cooper was up next. School is still out, but a special summer session was on tap for tonight. Cooper took to the stage with a grand entrance. After the backdrop was let down to reveal the band, he made his way up to his platform, stood there for a second and whipped off his cape. A shower of sparks immediately fell upon the stage, and it was just the beginning of what would be a great visual stage show. Lights, fog, pyrotechnics, monsters, dancers, and of course, a guillotine all shared the stage. Great for fans as well as photographers, this set had it all! They played all their hits and ended the show with “School’s Out”, which included a tease of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”.

Deep Purple was in the headlining spot. The backdrop showed the band on the face of Mount Rushmore before fading into black as the band took to the stage. They went right into “Highway Star” and kept the momentum of the crowd going for the remainder of the night. There was plenty of jamming throughout the 90 minute set that included “Space Truckin’”, “Hush”, and “Smoke on the water”, a song I had a personal closeness with.

I was in Montreux for the Montreal Jazz Festival earlier this year and walked by the current Montreux Casino – which is where the idea for the song came to from. It was on this spot that the old casino used to stand, until it was burned down in December, 1971 by “some stupid with a flare gun”. It was cool to see where the concept of the song originated from. Read more about it here.

Billed as ‘The Long Goodbye Tour’ due to health concerns for drummer Ian Paice, the band noted that this “may be the last big tour”. Deep Purple is touring in support of their latest album Infinite, with was released in April, 2017. The tour wraps up in Glasgow in November.

Setlists:

DEEP PURPLE

Highway Star
Fireball
Strange kind of woman
Uncommon man
Lazy
The Surprising
Keyboard solo
Perfect strangers
Space truckin’
Smoke on the water
Time for bedlam
Hush

ALICE COOPER

Brutal planet
No more Mr. Nice Guy
Under my wheels
Billion dollar babies
Paranoiac personality
Woman of mass destruction
Guitar solo by Nita Strauss
Poison
Halo of flames
Feed my Frankenstein
Cold Ethyl
Only woman bleed
Killer (Partial)
I love the dead
I’m eighteen
School’s out

EDGAR WINTER

Free ride
Jumping’ jack flash
Tobacco road
Rock n’ roll hoochie koo
Frankenstein

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