Happy New Year to all of you and thank you so much for your wonderful, kind and inspirational messages over these last few difficult months.
I have been mightily sustained by reading them and will continue to be so. You are a very special lot indeed.
I am doing well and I will be back with more news and updates in the next week or so. In the meantime, party hearty but look after yourselves.
I wish you success and happiness, and above all I wish you health.
God bless
Jon
When Classic Rock Awards recently honoured Deep Purple with The Innovator Award, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover and Ian Paice were there to accept the award.
Ian Paice read out this message from Jon:
I very much wanted to be there this evening to stand with these fine chaps - my musical companions of more than forty years and indeed my friends for a lifetime – but, although my progress is really good, I am finding that the treatment I am undergoing often leads me more towards a cup of cocoa and an early night than to a bottle of red wine with it’s accompanying table-full of wonderfully scurrilous gossipmongers and joke-tellers.
May I add my heartfelt thanks for this award and for recognising that what we did - when we were just five brave lads with no regard for boundaries but with an abiding love of writing and playing music – was indeed innovative. It was also loud, down and dirty, subversive and dangerous, intricate and yet often blindingly simple, very exciting to play and above all else it was astonishingly good fun - and yes we did “dance and sing and stand on a mountaintop.” Didn’t we just.
My heartfelt thanks too to the gentlemen on the stage for being part of changing my life and for playing like heroes. Oh, and please don’t forget who first bullied them into playing with an orchestra!
I’ll see you down the road somewhere.
God bless.
Jon Lord
Photo: Ian Gillan, Ian Paice and Roger Glover at the Classic Rock Awards, © Foruli Publications
A personal message to you from Jon:
Just a quick line or two from an absolutely overwhelmed, gratified and humbled musician.
Your responses to the news of my condition have touched my heart in a way that has truly helped to make my life a better place to be than it had occasionally threatened to become these last few weeks.
Your wonderful messages wishing me strength and courage have given me even more strength and courage – and so much more than you can ever know.
I read many of them with tears in my eyes, grateful for this cast-iron proof of the innate goodness of the human being, and grateful to every single one of you for your invaluable support.
This message goes out too to all the similarly wonderful folk on other websites whose support has been equally warm and strong and I want you all to know how greatly heartened and comforted I am by all this.
The treatment continues and I am confident and being supported by my glorious family and an amazing group of friends.
See you soon.
God bless
Jon
Photo: Florida, March 1994 by Ram Samudrala
I would like all my friends, followers, fans and fellow travelers to know that I am fighting cancer and will therefore be taking a break from performing while getting the treatment and cure.
I shall of course be continuing to write music – in my world it just has to be part of the therapy – and I fully expect to be back in good shape next year.
God bless and see you soon
Jon
May we also, at Jon’s request, ask if everyone could please respect his need for privacy so that he can spend time with his family (and his music).
Thank you.
Jon Lord writes:
“A few days ago – fittingly, on Remembrance Day – I lost a friend. He was my manager from 1968 to 1976, my daughter Sara’s Godfather and the man who was instrumental in helping me to realise, in 1969, the dream which defined my musical life – that of a Concerto for Group and Orchestra.
Tony Edwards was a good man and a man also of deep-seated enthusiasms. He had a passion for, and a great interest in, Deep Purple and its various member’s careers, as well as a genuine enjoyment of the band’s music.
He was the reason that Richie and I were able to get together at the end of 1967 and the sole reason too for our being able to form the band that changed our lives. Without him and this early financial and emotional support, there would have been no Deep Purple.
He was a rock and a firm foundation on which we could build our musical house. It still stands, and it stands as a monument to him.
Thank you Tony.”
Jon Lord
Jon Lord writes:
I would like, along with my wife and daughters, to express my sadness at the passing of Ronnie Dio.
A friend of many years standing and a truly delightful man. His voice was an instrument of power and of beauty, and was a seminal influence in rock music. His loss is even more devastating when considering how much more he would have had to offer us.
My heart goes out to dear Wendy, and my thoughts are also with Roger and Richie, who were so close to him for so long.
I will always cherish the memories of those remarkable nights at The Royal Albert Hall in September 1999 when, sitting on the stage with all the massed musicians of Deep Purple, The London Symphony Orchestra et al, Ronnie sang Roger’s lovely song “Sitting in a Dream” and brought us smiles and tears, and goosebumps as big as they come.
I shall forever connect that song with that moment and with Ronnie.
Rest in peace my friend.
With love
Jon
In preparation for Jon Lord’s upcoming concert in Liverpool on June 16, one of our readers, Richard Archer-Jones posted a message to Jon Lord on this website. Here is Jon’s reply:
Jon Lord comments on press rumours that Deep Purple Mark 3 will reunite and tour with Metallica’s Lars Ulrich on drums:
It all seems like a lot of hot air and wild speculation to me.
I like Lars and what he has achieved with Metallica. He’s obviously always been very complementary in his comments about DP, and I love the story of his famous nine-years-old “baptism of fire” at our ’73 concert in The KB Halle in Copenhagen, but if I was asked to be involved in a “Mark III” reunion – (which, by the way, I haven’t. All I ever said was that the idea had a few good points and a few not-so-good points.) – and I indeed considered that offer, I would not be able to even imagine it without the presence of Ian Paice.
By the way – I have NOT retired!
Love, and as peaceful a new year as possible, to all of you.
Jon
On a side note Deep Purple’s Stormbringer album has been remastered and will be released with bonus tracks in February. Available in the new Jon Lord Music Shop.
Just to clear up what appears to be a bit of confusion about what I am playing at these three UK “Summer Proms” gigs I´m doing, on next Saturday the 26th July at Weston Park in Staffordshire, then on 16th August at Castle Howard in Yorkshire and on 23rd August at Marble Hill near Twickenham.
Hi everyone
Just a quick couple of things.
First and foremost, thank you all so much for the questions and the very kind and sometimes moving comments you have posted on the website. From people who have seen me play lately, from people who’ve not seen me for a while and from those who’ve never seen me at all – they are all gratefully recieved.
I’m happy that you are enjoying Durham Concerto, Boom of the Tingling Strings and Disguises. They, amongst other works, have occupied my time pretty much from the year in which I left the Purps.
Although I am still writing like a man possessed, I am now moving towards doing more live work – both with orchestras and also with a ‘Jon Lord Band’ project which will include more Hammond (+ second keys, guitar, bass, drums, percussion and a sing-ist), some new stuff, and one or two carefully selected songs from the past that I had a small part in writing!
I hope too that I will soon be able to answer some of your questions specifically – such as “When are you coming to such-and-such a place?” and so on. I will try to make my comments to the site a more regular thing too.
In the meantime, stay well and keep the music with you.
God bless
Jon
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