On December 1, 2019, Deep Purple brought their Long Goodbye Tour — released to support the album "Infinite" and read by many fans as a possible farewell to large-scale touring — to the Kärntenhalle in Klagenfurt. For our documentary "Heart and Soul", we got to go behind the scenes that night: interview, backstage material and a full concert shoot. The contact came through tour manager Lothar Strunk, who had been connected to the Lahr-based band Scaramouche since the late 1990s.
At a Glance
- punchline studio's role
- Camera, interview, backstage documentation
- Team
- Pirmin & Maik Styrnol, Lukas Karl (camera), Angelika Kovalenko (make-up)
- Tour
- The Long Goodbye Tour (album "Infinite")
- Location
- Kärntenhalle, Messe Klagenfurt, Austria
- Date
- December 1, 2019
Background: A Tour With Extra Weight
The Long Goodbye Tour carried Deep Purple's 20th studio album "Infinite" through Europe, North and South America, Japan and Mexico from 2017 to late 2019. The name was no coincidence: after drummer Ian Paice suffered a mild stroke in 2016 that affected his right hand, the band itself hinted this could be their last major world tour. That gave shows like this one an added charge – even though Deep Purple has toured several times since.
The connection to the band ran through Lothar Strunk. He'd seen Scaramouche live in 1997, gone backstage right after, and supported the Lahr band with contacts and equipment ever since. Alongside that, he spent decades in the music business himself – as tour manager for Deep Purple and the Scorpions, and as a live technician for a-ha and Westernhagen's stadium tour. In June 2019, director Pirmin Styrnol discussed the possibility of a Deep Purple shoot with him in Kyiv. The green light came half a year later, right in time for the Klagenfurt tour stop.
Load-In Day at the Kärntenhalle
The schedule was set to the minute: call time just before seven in the morning, stage build from eight, soundcheck in the afternoon, doors around 9 p.m. To rule out any risk of running late, we arrived a day early. When we walked into the hall, only the bare stage rigging stood there, surrounded by roughly 70 roadies waiting for their cue.
The Deep Purple crew gave us a room built from four partition walls right next to the tour management office – our workspace for the rest of the day. At eight, camera operator Lukas Karl mounted the Blackmagic camera on the gimbal, then three semi-trucks rolled in with the full stage rig. Within four hours, the empty floor had become a finished concert hall complete with lighting, sound and LED systems.
Improvising: A Studio With No Blueprint
There was no suitable room for the planned interview with Roger Glover – the exhibition hall simply didn't have one. So our partition-wall office became an impromptu TV studio. The real challenge was the light: harsh work lights hanging from the hall ceiling, no proper ceiling over our makeshift office. The fix turned out to be a single reflector positioned right above the interview seat, which caught the worst of the overhead glare and gave us enough control over the light to shoot cleanly.
The Conversation With Roger Glover
About two hours before showtime, Lothar brought his bassist by: Roger Glover, formerly of Rainbow, producer for bands like Nazareth, Judas Priest and Status Quo, co-writer of "Smoke on the Water". He gave our small film project over half an hour of his time to talk about Scaramouche – unprepared, as he put it himself: "That way the answers are more honest." And they were: whether asked about what still drives him after decades on stage or what he sees young bands lacking, every answer came without hesitation.
On Stage: The Long Goodbye in Klagenfurt
Support act The Weight opened the night, then Deep Purple took the stage. Ian Gillan, Steve Morse, Don Airey, Roger Glover and Ian Paice tore through "Highway Star", "Perfect Strangers" and "Space Truckin'" among others, before "Smoke on the Water" got the whole crowd singing along. During the encore, guest violinist Lidia Baich added an extra highlight the sold-out crowd of over 4,000 wasn't likely to forget. Our cameras moved between the stage edge and the audience throughout, with the band's live sound engineer feeding us a clean audio signal.
Frontman Ian Gillan closed out the night by telling the crowd, "You've been amazing, marvellous, superb!" We weren't back at our accommodation until around 3 a.m. – wrung out after eleven hours on the road the day before, a short night with very little sleep, and 21 hours of shooting on show day itself, but too wired to fall asleep right away.
Side Note: Footage for the Band Itself
Our actual assignment that night was the documentary "Heart and Soul". But partway through the shoot, a second one came up: Deep Purple asked for additional footage for the band's own internal use. We can't share details for confidentiality reasons – what's worth noting, though, is that our work on site convinced them to bring us on for more than the reason we were originally there.
It was Lothar Strunk again, a year later, who brought us in for another international live production: the "Music & Stories" tour with Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash and Nazareth.
What This Means for Your Project
The Kärntenhalle was a day with no safety net: no fixed interview room, a schedule down to the minute, decisions made on the spot. That same ability to deliver a professional result under pressure is what we bring to every concert film production and every documentary shoot where the details only come together on site.
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