Cannock rock legend Glenn Hughes set to play Steelhouse Festival

The former Deep Purple ace, who hails from Cannock, will be top of the bill on the Saturday night at the eighth Steelhouse Festival which runs from July 27-29.

Vocalist and bassist Glenn will be performing ‘Classic Deep Purple – Live’. Hughes was part of the classic MK III and MK IV line-ups of the band who released the albums Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band.

He said: "I'm incredibly excited to get out there and play tracks like Burn, Mistreated, Stormbringer and Getting Tighter, as well as some of those older songs that helped define the genre. With this band, I can assure you of a concert that’ll blow your mind.”

Festival organisers say it will be the first time that fans in the UK will have an opportunity to see ‘The Voice of Rock’ perform an entire set of Purple classics.

The festival takes place high in the mountains on the edge of Brecon Beacons at Ebbw Vale.

Hughes added, ‘I’m really looking forward to this…Come see me up the Mountain…Peace, love and remember, music is The Healer’.

Promoters Mikey Evans and Max Rhead said, “When we were growing up in Ebbw Vale, absorbing all the rock music we could, listening to records handed down by older siblings and saving up our own pennies for a Saturday afternoon binge at the local ‘Record Centre’, a game-changing piece of hi-tech entertainment hardware started to appear in houses all across the land - the video recorder had arrived and brought with it the possibility of seeing our heroes in glorious moving technicolour as well as hearing them. Our local video rental outlet had a copy of Deep Purple’s filmed appearance at Cal-Jam, 1974, a live concert so legendary and so exotic that it may as well have taken place on Mars.

"We marvelled at the sheer scale, the virtuosity, the riffs, the vocals and a certain white suit. It was worn of course by one Glenn Hughes, who not only laid down the foundation of that live wall of sound but was also in possession of one of those extraordinary voices.

"Thirty-five years after seeing that concert on Betamax and 43 years after that concert took place we literally cannot believe that we can announce that Glenn Hughes will make his Steelhouse Festival debut playing the classic songs of Deep Purple. This is a truly mind-blowing announcement for us - the catalogue has helped define a genre, and the voice is still truly incredible... Glenn Hughes in Ebbw Vale - no video recorder or television required, just a Steelhouse Festival 2018 ticket.”

Also lined up for the festival so far are Black Star Riders, The Wildhearts, Dan Reed Network and The Quireboys. For more details visit www.steelhousefestival.com