When Europe supported Deep Purple recently at the Birmingham Arena, photographer Grace Chapman-Duke was there to document the performance, training her lens on the band backstage as they prepared to perform, and onstage during their set.
Below, Europe frontman Joey Tempest provides his own captions for Grace’s shots.
Tickets for Europe’s 2018 headline UK tour are on sale now.
Always try and have a few words with my “brother” John before every show. He usually warms up in a separate room. However, just before we go on stage we all hook up and walk together, always.
Leven warming up his fingers, me looking at some fan mail that made it into our dressing room. Mic putting on his in- ear system in the background.
Oh dear, how did this bottle get into my drawer! Well, you can still find beer and wine in a Europe dressing room but we all agreed to “ban” hard liquor about ten years ago. It was getting a bit out of hand there for a while. I never drink before a show these days. It kind of helps preserving the old vocal chords.
A quick last minute check through the setlist. Since we are special guests on the arena tour we play around eleven songs. It’s kind of hard dwindling eleven albums worth of songs down to a sixty minute set. But it usually makes for a more explosive and intense set which can be a good thing!
Bumped into Ian Gillan and Don Airey outside the dressing rooms. What an honour it is to be touring with these guys. They led the way with Made in Japan, the led the way when they returned with Perfect Stranger they are still leading the way with their live shows and new album!
It’s getting closer to the show. Meeting up outside the dressing room getting ready to walk to the stage.
Just before we go out there! Ian warming up his muscles and me checking how my voice is holding up. It’s about to get really physical out there on the stage. Always 100% Nothing less!
Mr Norum’s Guitar lab. He is totally into everything to do with guitars, amps, tubes, chords and the rest. On top of that he is in my view the best guitar player of his generation! Amen!
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And onstage…
