Deep Purple is one of the most important bands of all time. It is one of three bands of what’s called the Unholy Trinity of Hard Rock, the other two being Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. These three bands laid the foundations for an entirely new and hugely influential genre, hard rock, which over time became heavy metal.
Although there are many parallels between the three bands of the Unholy Trinity, there also are important differences. The music and lyrics of Black Sabbath were the darkest and heaviest of the three, as the band flirted with the occult. Led Zeppelin honored its blues and folk influences far more than the other two bands.
Deep Purple has its roots in psychedelic rock and classical music, and therefore also became an influence on prog rock. The classical elements in Deep Purple came mostly from one of its founding members, keyboardist Jon Lord. In contrast to the other two bands of the Unholy Trinity, Deep Purple has always been a quintet, with the additional member a permanent keyboardist.
Over the seven decades of Deep Purple’s existence, the band has gone through many personnel changes, with a total of 15 musicians who have been or are official members. Deep Purple has released 22 studio albums, and an amazing 43 live albums.
However, its reputation is for the most part based on five essential albums from the early days of its career, In Rock (1970), Fireball (1971), Machine Head (1972), Made in Japan (1972), and Burn (1974).
The importance of Deep Purple is illustrated by the fact that it has been named the 5th most influential band of all time, and by its induction in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. However, more so than Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple have always had a tense relationship with critics. This may be a reason why the band never received a Grammy Award or nomination.
The history of Deep Purple is incredibly varied with numerous twists and turns. In this blog we will look at what made the band so great, and their most ground-breaking albums.
BEGINNINGS
One of the stranger aspects of the story of Deep Purple is that the band began as a business venture, sponsored by Hire-Edwards-Coletta Enterprises, or HEC.
In 1967, Chris Curtis, a former member of The Searchers, a Liverpool Merseybeat group, proposed an idea to HEC for a supergroup called Roundabout, with Curtis as lead singer and drummer.
Curtis invited keyboardist Jon Lord to join his Roundabout project, who suggested bassist Nick Simper. Simper in turn suggested Richie Blackmore as a guitarist. Curtis was soon removed because of his drug use and unreliability, and Lord and Blackmore instead asked Bobby Woodman, known for his work with Vince Taylor and Johnny Halliday, to join as the drummer.
HEC rented an old Georgian farm house called Deeves Hall, in Ridge in Hertfordshire, and the band moved in and started rehearsing. By this point, finding a suitable vocalist had become a pressing concern. An ad was placed in Melody Maker, and the quartet settled on Rod Evans. The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle was that drummer Bobby Woodman did not like the musical direction the band had been taken. He was replaced by Ian Paice.
DEEP PURPLE MARK I
The line-up of Deep Purple Mark 1, Blackmore, Lord, Paice, Evans and Simper, was now in place, but there was still heated debate about the name. The band settled on Deep Purple, the title of a sentimental song from 1933 written by pianist Peter DeRose, which was a favourite of Blackmore’s grandmother.
In May 1968, the band signed a record deal with the new American Tetragrammaton label for the US, and EMI the rest of the world. The band went to Pye Recording studios in London, to record its first album. The producer was Derek Lawrence, who had worked with famous pop producer Joe Meek and had produced The Pretty Things and Jethro Tull.
Recorded over just three days, 11-13 May, 1968, the band’s debut album, Shades of Deep Purple was released in July in the US and in September in the UK. The album contained a mixture of originals and covers, and the music was a blend of pop and psychedelic music, with the first strands of hard rock audible, particularly in the instrumentals “And The Address” and “Mandrake Root.” The Yardbirds, Vanilla Fudge and Jimi Hendrix were clear inspirations. There also are classical music influences, from Rimsky-Korsakov in “Prelude: Happiness,” for example.
SUCCESS IN AMERICA
Shades of Deep Purple was badly received in the UK, which marked the beginning of the strained relationship between Deep Purple and the UK music press. However, pushed by the band’s American label, the first single “Hush” gained traction in the US, and it would eventually go to number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two in Canada. The album went to number 24 in the US and 19 in Canada.
Keen to capitalize on the album’s success, Tetragrammaton Records wanted the band to record a follow-up album before it went to the US to tour. Astonishingly, the band ended up recording its first three albums in less than 10 months. Shades of Deep Purple was recorded in May 1968, The Book of Taliesyn in August and September of that same year, and Deep Purple in February and March of 1969.
The Book of Taliesyn was released in the US in October 1968, with the first signs already apparent of the characteristic interplay between Blackmore’s spectacular, angular, in-your-face guitar playing and Lord’s muscular Hammond organ sound.
The recordings for the band’s third album once more took place at De Lane Lea Studios with Lawrence. Deep Purple was released in June 1969 in the US and September in the UK, and again featured a combination of psychedelic, progressive, and symphonic rock.
Deep Purple was the band’s most mature album to date, but there were dark clouds on the horizon. With Tetragrammaton on the edge of bankruptcy, there was no support in the US. There also were conflicts in the band. Blackmore and Lord wanted a harder sound, with the success of Led Zeppelin’s debut album in mind. Blackmore and Lord deemed Evan’s voice and Simper’s bass playing unsuitable for this harder direction, so the two were sacked in June, 1969.
THE BIRTH OF DEEP PURPLE MK II
With Deep Purple Mark I still in action, Blackmore, Lord, and Paice had already secretly enlisted Ian Gillan from Episode Six, and the singer brought in bassist Roger Glover who was a member of the same band.
The Mark II line-up worked on a song called “Speed King,” which reflected the harder direction Blackmore and Gillan in particular had in mind. However, Lord still had classical aspirations, and had been writing a concerto for group and orchestra, taking the symphonic rock genre to its limits.
In a rather odd career move, a rock band down on its luck commercially, and hated by British critics, decided to do something extremely costly that could easily turn into a catastrophe: play a concert at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
HEC booked the hall and orchestra for September 24, 1969. The recording of the Concerto was released as a live album in December 1969 in the US, as the band’s last release on Tetragrammaton, which went bankrupt soon afterwards, and in the UK in January 1970. It marked the fourth album Deep Purple had recorded in less than one and a half years, a staggering achievement.
The project finally gave Deep Purple the press attention, credibility, and commercial success in their home country that they had been craving. Concerto for Group and Orchestra went to number 26 in the UK, where the band’s first three albums failed to chart. By contrast, the Concerto album flopped in the US.
THE BIG BANG OF HARD ROCK
Quite separate from the Concerto concert, Deep Purple Mark II had been busy writing rock and roll of a far more aggressive and heavier nature than Mark 1 almost from the moment that Gillan and Glover joined in the middle of 1969.
During the summer of 1969, the band had been writing and rehearsing at Hanwell Community Centre in West London. Deep Purple started the recordings for what was to become one of the Big Bangs of hard rock, In Rock, at IBC studios in London in October 1969. They would continue recording intermittently until April 1970, also at De Lane Lea Studios, with Martin Birch as engineer, and at Abbey Road Studios, with engineer Philip McDonald.
Deep Purple in Rock was released on June 5th, 1970 on Harvest in the UK and Warners in the US. From the full-frontal opening onslaught of “Speed King” onwards, it is clear that the music on the album is a dramatic change from what Deep Purple had been doing in the past.
Deep Purple in Rock had a seismic impact, more than any other album by the band. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive, calling it “a stunningly good album,” and “one of the great albums, not just by Purple, but by anybody.” More than fifty years later these views have not changed.
The album is full of iconic tracks, like “Speed King,” “Flight of the Rat,” “Living Wreck,” and the epic “Child In Time,” which featured a chord sequence and organ intro based on “Bombay Calling” by It’s A Beautiful Day.
When the band’s management asked for a hit single immediately after the album was completed, the band came up with another iconic track, “Black Night,” with a guitar riff that was based on the bass riff of Ricky Nelson’s 1962 cover of “Summertime.”
Deep Purple in Rock became a big hit in the UK, remaining in the charts for a year and topping at number 4, and it went to number one in several European countries. “Black Night” also became a major hit in the UK and several other countries.
Both the Harvest label and the band’s management were keen to capitalize on the band’s success, and pushed for a quick follow-up to In Rock. Fireball was released in July 1971 in the US, and in September 1971 in the UK. It went to number one in the UK and several other European countries, and to number 34 in the US, finally giving Deep Purple Mark II some traction there.
TWO MORE BIG BANGS
In some respects Fireball was a lull between two storms, because after the seismic impact of In Rock, Deep Purple’s most famous and commercially successful album was just around the corner.
Deep Purple’s hectic touring schedule continued unabated, so the band decided to do things differently for their next album, and booked three weeks at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland.
Famously, on December 4, 1971, during a matinee Frank Zappa concert in the Casino’s theatre, an audience member shot a flare into the ceiling, which caught fire. It led to the entire Casino burning down. The Rolling Stones Mobile, which was parked right next to the Casino, barely survived.
The next day, when everyone had barely recovered from the shock, Claude Nobs, manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival, found another location for the band to record in, a theatre called the Pavillion. It was there that Purple started the song that was to become their biggest hit and one of the most famous songs of all time, “Smoke On The Water.”
The band continued recording at the Grand Hotel, and came up with more songs that became classics.
Machine Head was released in March 1972. The album reached to number one in the UK, but was only moderately successful in the US. It needed one extra spark to push Deep Purple into the stratosphere. The band had become very famous in Japan, and Warner Bros Japan asked them to do a live album.
Three concerts were recorded in August 1972, in Osaka and Tokyo. Warners released Made In Japan in the UK in December 1972 and in April 1973 in the US. Made In Japan became another classic, and continues to be recognized as one of the greatest live albums of all time.
Machine Head and Made In Japan, were arguably the apex of Deep Purple’s career. “Smoke On The Water” was released as a single in the US in May 1973, and went to number 4 in the US, and pushed Machine Head to number 7, after which it remained in the US charts for more than two years.
All this enormous success occurred simultaneously with the band falling apart. Their seventh studio album, Who Do We Think We Are, was released in the beginning of 1973. In the middle of 1973, the very year that Billboard declared the band the biggest-selling act in the US, Gillan quit the band. Soon afterwards Glover was sacked.
DEEP PURPLE MARK III
While at the peak of its commercial success, Deep Purple was back to its original three members: Blackmore, Lord, and Paice. The pressure for a new line-up to match the success of Mark II was enormous.
When the three remaining members saw bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes perform with the band Trapeze, they asked him to join Deep Purple. The band decided to hold auditions for a new singer, and settled on David Coverdale, an unknown singer from a tiny Yorkshire seaside village.
Within weeks, the new quintet was writing new material at Clearwell Castle in Gloustershire. In November, 1973, the band flew to Montreux, to record a new album. The Rolling Stones mobile and Martin Birch were again in action.
Called Burn, Purple’s eight studio was released in February 1974, and was a huge commercial success. The stunning title track immediately marked not only a change in direction, with Coverdale and Hughes’s soulful vocals taking center stage.
Deep Purple Mark III recorded its next album in August and September of 1974 in Musicland Studios in Munich, and mixed at The Record Plant in Los Angeles by Martin Birch and Ian Paice. The result, Stormbringer, was released in November, and again contained an outstanding title track.
THE REBIRTH OF MARK II, AND MARK IV TO MARK IX
Stormbringer was far less well-received than Burn, and also less of a commercial success. The band appeared to have run out of steam creatively, and Blackmore left in June 1975, expressing his dislike for the funk and soul influences. He went on to form Rainbow. However, he encouraged Deep Purple to carry on, and suggested guitarist Tommy Bolin, who had played jazz-fusion with Billy Cobham, and was working on his first solo album, Teaser [1975].
Deep Purple Mark IV released one album, Come Taste The Band, in November 1975. It was reasonably well-received and also sold decently, but many people shared the opinion expressed years later by Jon Lord: “it’s a surprisingly good album. The worst thing you can say about it is that it’s not a Deep Purple album.”
Deep Purple split up in March 1976. Sadly, Bolin died at the end of that year from a drugs overdose. It took until April 1984, for the five members of the classic Mark II line-up to get together again, and the resulting album, Perfect Strangers, was released in October 1984, and became Purple’s most commercially successful after Machine Head.
Although the reformed Mark II continued to be a formidable and enormously successful live act, tensions in the band had already come to a head by the time they recorded The House of Blue Light, which was released in January 1987.
Ian Gillan was fired from Mark II in 1989, and the band replaced him with singer Joe Lynn Turner, with who they made Slaves and Masters. Released in October 1990, the album was not well-received and sold far worse than its predecessors.
Under pressure from their record company, who secretly paid Blackmore a quarter of a million dollars to accept Gillan back in the band, Mark II re-united for a third time for the making of The Battle Rages On…
Released in July 1993, it sold better than its predecessor, and was better received, with some regarding it as a masterpiece. However, Blackmore left for a final time in November 1993. He was briefly replaced by Joe Satriani. In August 1994 Steve Morse joined the band as a permanent guitarist.
Deep Purple Mark VII, consisting of Gillan, Morse, Lord, Glover, and Paice, remained in action for eight years, and recorded two highly-rated albums, Purpendicular (1996) and Abandon (1998),
Jon Lord retired amicably from Deep Purple in 2002, and was replaced by Don Airey, who had worked with Gary Moore, Rainbow, Jethro Tull, Judas Priest, and many others. Mark VIII remained together for an amazing twenty years, and recorded five well-received studio albums, Rapture of the Deep (2005), Now What?! (2013), Infinite (2017), Whoosh! (2020), and Turning to Crime (2021). The latter is a collection of covers.
Jon Lord died of pancreatic cancer in 2012, and Steve Morse left the band in March 2022, to care for his wife. He was replaced by Simon McBride, who joined as a permanent member in September 2022, creating Deep Purple Mark IX, consisting of Gillan, McBridge, Airey, Glover and Paice.
More than 55 years after its foundation, and having been rocking in an astounding seven decades, Deep Purple is still going strong. What the future will bring for the band no-one knows. But its legacy as one of the greatest bands of all time, that helped lay the foundations for one of the most important and popular genres in the history of music, and created a hugely impressive oeuvre of music, is undeniable.
© 2024, Paul Tingen.