When you talk about the big heavy rock bands of the early 1970s, there is one that is often forgotten about. You hear talk of the Led Zeppelins and Black Sabbaths but never about Deep Purple. The band was equally important as the other two but were never considered in the same sentences when fans reminisced.
Of the three bands mentioned, they are the only ones still on the road today. For over 50 years the band has been touring with most of the original members of their heyday. The tours have their good and bad moments as most do. There is one stop however in Indonesia that was a disaster. One that ended in tragedy, manipulation and fraud. This week The Beat Marches On to the 4th December 1975, when Deep Purple performed at the Jakarta Theatre.
This wasn’t the classic Mark Three line-up of the band, consisting of singer Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, Organist Jon Lord, Drummer Ian Paice, and Bass player Roger Glover. In this version of the band (Mark Four) only Glover and Lord remained the others were replaced by a pre-Whitesnake David Coverdale on vocals, Glenn Hughes on bass, and Tommy Bolin on guitar.
The band was promoting the album Come Taste the Band and started a world tour in Australia and heading on to Japan for the next stop. While in Australia, the band’s tour manager, Rob Cooksey, was approached by a promoter from Indonesia going by the name of Danny Sabri.
Sabri convinced Cooksey for the band to play in Jakarta in what he was told was a 7,000-seat theatre and gave him $11,000 as a deposit (£51,226 in today’s money) Having a spare couple of days before the next leg of the tour, he thought it was a quick way to make a few extra pounds, which would help with Christmas around the corner. It turns out that he was very wrong when they landed in Jakarta.
In the mid-1970s Indonesia was ruled by the country’s military. This was the first time a band from the Western world had played in the country. Cooksey and the band were about to realise how difficult they were to deal with.
When the band landed in Jakarta, Cooksey and a couple of the road crew went to check out the venue while the rest went to the hotel. When they got there, they were shocked at what they saw. The venue wasn’t a theatre at all. It was a stadium with a hastily built stage built from orange boxes. The new venue held 125,000 people, more than 17 times the original venue amount.
Knowing something fishy was going on, Cooksey went straight back to Sabri and wanted to pull the band from performing, however, the promoter had said they could renegotiate the fee but had also planned to have them play a second night without anyone agreeing to it.
Cooksey worked out how much the band should be paid by basing it on what they charge the venues in the US, as they did stadium tours over there. The total was $750,000 (£3.5 million in today’s money) having only been paid $11,000, two per cent of what they thought they were owed, the manager demanded a meeting with the organisers.
The meeting started pleasantly at the start, but the promoters stormed out after quite a heated exchange. No details have ever been released about what was said, but it was most likely a disagreement on the fee for the band.
It wasn’t long after the meeting when one of the band’s bodyguards, Patsy Collins fell down an elevator shaft. He fell six floors and through pipes and central heating. Despite the fall, Collins didn’t die straight away, managing to crawl to a waiting minibus and whisper ‘Hospital’ to the driver before succumbing to his injuries.
No one knew how Collins ended up in the elevator shaft, but it does seem suspicious that after an argument between the band’s representation and the promoters, someone on the band’s side ends up dead. The official ruling was an accident, but Jon Lord doesn’t think it was. He told Guitar World ‘It had appeared that he had fallen down an elevator shaft, but we all knew he was murdered’
Later on that night at 4 am, the military police knocked on the door of the hotel where the band were staying and arrested Cooksey, Glenn Hughes, and another bodyguard ‘Paddy the Plank’. They took them to the police station by gunpoint, charging them to be implicated in Collins’ murder.
The trio was in prison for the next day and a half, the only exception was Hughes and Paddy being let out for the second show. The reason why they were arrested, according to Cooksey, was to make sure that the second gig went ahead in the first place.
The second gig in contrast to the first one which went off without any other problems, only lasted twenty minutes until a riot started. The military, who were security because they were the law at the time, armed with machine guns and attack dogs lashed out at the riotous fans. Lord witnessed one of the fans get dragged away by a dog biting on their arm. Overall, 200 fans were injured in the riots.
The trio were in court the next day for a hearing on the death of their crew member. The judge who according to reports looked like a military general, conceded that the fall was an accident and let them go. Although they did have to pay a fine of $2,000 to get their passports back. They were just happy to get out of the place.
It wasn’t that simple though, as when the trio joined the rest of the band and crew on the plane, it was discovered that one of the aircraft tyres had a puncture. This wasn’t as simple as changing the tyre on your car, you need specialist equipment for this type of transportation. You can expect the equipment to be at a busy airport like Heathrow or JFK, but in a place like Jakarta in the mid-1970s where there is less air traffic, maybe not.
Luckily, they did have the right equipment to change the tyre, but not the personnel, allegedly. They did have to pay $10,000 to use it and Cooksey with a couple of roadies and the plane’s engineer had to change it themselves. This meant that they hadn’t made any money from this at all. They lost $1,000.
When they got to the next stop in Japan, they all agreed to never visit Indonesia again. Cooksey phoned the band’s lawyers to try and recoup any losses. After meeting Indonesian officials, the attorney said to write it off as he was chased out of the meeting with men wielding machetes. Deep Purple did visit Indonesia again, in 2023, however, the only member who was part of the band in 1975 was drummer Ian Paice, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover were back in the band with Guitarist Simon McBride and Don Airey on Keyboard who replaced the late John Lord. They used the same band who supported them almost 50 years ago, Indonesia’s biggest band, God Bless. This time, however, the gig went off without any issues and was a night enjoyed by all.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for eight years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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The websites used for research were:
Just Backdated: DEEP PURPLE – Trouble In Jakarta
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