The concert to celebrate late DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Jon Lord's life and music will be held on April 4, 2014 at London, England's Royal Albert Hall. Artists confirmed so far include DEEP PURPLE members Ian Paice, Roger Glover, Don Airey and Steve Morse. IRON MAIDEN frontman and longtime The Sunflower Jam supporter Bruce Dickinson will also perform, along with Rick Wakeman, Joe Brown and Alfie Boe.
The evening will also be compered by the great Bob Harris.
Jon Lord died on July 16, 2012 at age 71 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Lord, who was known for his keyboard virtuosity and his reinvention of the Hammond B-3 organ sound, co-wrote such PURPLE classics as "Smoke On The Water" and "Child In Time", among others. Lord and drummer Ian Paice
were the only original members to last through the band's initial run
from 1968 to 1976. He was on board for their 1984 reunion and stayed on
through to his 2002 retirement from the band, after which he's worked
primarily in the classical field.
Over the course of his career, Lord also worked with the ARTWOODS, FLOWER POT MEN, PAICE, ASHTON AND LORD, WHITESNAKE and good friend and neighbor, George Harrison.
In a recent interview with Peter Makowski, METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich stated about Jon Lord:
"I'm not sure that the people in today's hard rock world really truly
understand how innovative this guy was. He wasn't just another keyboard
player on the side of the stage. In '66/'67, when Hendrix, Townshend and Ritchie Blackmore were taking the electric guitar to a new level, by using banks of Marshall stacks beefing up the sound, Jon Lord
was one of the first guys in hard rock to take the keyboards through
the same process. He took a fairly standard instrument like a Hammond organ put it through amplifiers and Leslie cabinets and introduced a whole new way of forcing the sound out of the keyboards.
"Ritchie Blackmore said the other day that Jon formed DEEP PURPLE; he was certainly the instigator that made things happen. If not the musical leader, Jon
was the spiritual leader of the band. He was a pioneer, and I think
that somehow that's gotten a little lost in the last few [months].
People are talking about, obviously, what a gentleman he was and what a
fantastic band member but he really did something nobody had done before
with the sound of the keyboards and I think that's probably the biggest
thing to remember him for."
