Virgil Donati

Well, okay, there's two hours, but I'd best get on with it.

We started tonight with Aisha, who have been reinvigorated with the new lineup of John Mitchell, Virgil Donati and Harry Whitley joining Jeff Downes.

And from the new album Indigo, due for release on the 6th of November and which features guests Mike Portnoy and Steve Howe, you heard the track Arcadia.

And then you heard Rick Wakeman, and from his new album, Return to the Red Planet, due for release this week, the track The Jezero Crater, and which, to these ears, features so many trademark Rick Wakeman flourishes.

Oh, yeah, killing.

Yeah, Bill Stewart, like Virgil Donati, Jack DeJohnette.

Yes.

Um, he plays solo on like a, a four-piece.

You know, it was almost like it was a, it was a rebirth.

So I figured, you know, "We've gotta take this out on the road," and people kept saying, "You've gotta take it out on the road." So I contacted Virgil Donati, who is another monstrous, uh, musician, um, who played with John in UK, uh, the, in fact the last, um, incarnation of UK.

So I contacted Virgil and, uh, who Mike Portnoy claims is the greatest drummer of all time, you know?

[laughs]

It really is terrific.

And I first came across Carl when he was featured on an album by the drummer Virgil Donati.

Do you know him? And then that got me thinking about Virgil Donati.

And you think I just put this together.

Bye.

Yeah, that's Virgil Donati from an album from 2013 called In This Life and the track you heard there called Red Air.

So exploring the music of some of the solo works by some of the members of Deep Purple.

I live in Andes I live in your house I am a bad reflection I am a bad reflection I am your secret shadow She take me to religion She take me to religion She take me to religion She make me poor man She make me poor man She gives salvation.

He's all right.

But, I mean, the other guys are – Virgil is – Virgil Donati is arguably – if you list top fives, he's on it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, always

And before that, played you the Japan bonus track from the most recent brand new Lalu album, as in Vivian Lalu.

This track is called Eco, featuring Virgil Donati on drums.

The brand new album is called A Mythmaker's Demise, which also features Simon Phillips on drums.

And then we go back 45 years to 1981 Genesis from the album Abacab.

A couple of songs out now.

Talk about putting that album together and working with the new band, Harry Whitley and John Mitchell and Virgil Donati and how that album sort of came together.

It's fantastic.

I think people are really going to be excited.

i think i think people are going to like it i mean it's i mean thankfully we've got a couple of tracks that i wrote with chris on there so uh so that's a a nice sort of follow-through on that uh but yeah i mean it's um we started out doing some stuff a couple of years ago and and it felt really good you know particularly harry is such a great singer um and he's a fantastic musician and so working with John Mitchell and Virgil Donati as well, they were all really guys at the top of their tree.

It was really nice to be able to put that band together again and play that music that was, you know, we was 40 years old or whatever it was then, 1982, 44 years old, you know.

The thing is, when we lost John in 2017, I think he would have appreciated the fact that that music just didn't get put in a cupboard and no one ever heard Asia again.