Live Review: Deep Purple & Journey

Phew! Technical proficiency hey? Not often you get to see a band bursting into extended instrumental breaks in a packed and enthralled stadium, but then it's not often you see a line-up like this. Journey's early set (nothing says 'old men at work' like a 7.15pm start), is packed with spiralling lights, colossal riffs and massive drum fills from the opening blast of Separate Ways, and there's no let up. Boasting just one original member, guitarist Neal Schon (who is far more taken with noodling around on the pentatonic scale than actually playing a song), every sound is gigantic; every cymbal kept swinging, every available plectrum flung into the crowd, every song boasting a Superbowl guitar solo. Any Way You Want It, Faithfully and Wheel In The Sky are all epic, but none touch the crowd response to THAT song. Don't Stop Believin' is everything the crowd want and before the opening riff finishes, the arena is lit by phones – the opening lines sung as one.

Against a smaller, less illuminated backdrop, the titans of heavy metal that are Deep Purple launch into the sprawling behemoth of Fireball, all caterwauling organ solos, thudding bass and Ian Gillan's screeched vocals. Easing into Hard Lovin' Man then Maybe I'm A Leo, guitarist Steve Morse proves himself a fiery replacement for Ritchie Blackmore. His solos – and there are a lot of them – are so compressed and busy that they stand at odds with the big valve crunch of Blackmore and the 'sound' of early Deep Purple, but they're a different band now. Whether that's the band the punter is paying for is another question, but Gillan's vocals are enough to keep the audience spellbound and the entertainment level never drops.

No One Came boasts an organ solo that sees the rotating Leslie speakers nearly taking off with the intensity of Don Airey's playing. Displays of technical virtuosity lead us into Perfect Strangers and Space Truckin', both of which bring the audience to their feet, fists in the air, but fists become phones for Smoke On The Water. Howled back for an encore of their first big hit, Hush, the band leave us with a titanic, skull-rattling version of Black Night, ending our short trip back to the days when being a musician meant being able to play an instrument well – no bad thing at all.