Deep Purple Mk I
I always say that the Who and Yardbirds were the first two bands I went apeshit over, but that isn't really true. Back in 6th and 7th grade, I sometimes forget, there was Deep Purple, whose debut single "Hush" (on Bill Cosby's Tetragrammaton label here, Harvest at home in the UK) was the first rekkid I actually bought with my own money.
DP were, of course, one of the first three "heavy" Brit bands, the other two being Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but they emerged first, at a time when Jimmy Page was still sorting out the detritus of the Yardbirds, when Ozzy was still digging graves and Tony Iommi was briefly the transitional guitarist in Jethro Tull.
The cynicism with which it was done was amazing. They were put together by management from Brit musos who'd been working their asses off on US military bases and the same Reeperbahn toilets the Beatles used to play in Germany. Fellas who'd probably appreciate a good regular payday.
Organist Jon Lord was a classically-trained blues fanatic who'd tickled the ivories on the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and subsequently played R&B in the Artwoods and recorded three tracks (released on those oft-repackaged Immediate Records anthologies of Brit blues) with a proto-DP outfit called Santa Barbara Machine Head that also included Ron Wood (in between the Birds and the Jeff Beck Group).
Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had taken lessons from Page's mentor Big Jim Sullivan, done sessions for Joe Meek, and toured with Brit rockers like Neil Christian and Screaming Lord Sutch. In early DP photos and clips (like the YT-infamous Playboy After Dark segment below), you can see his rockabilly quiff mutating into '68 long hair, kind of like Page's in his Yardbirds daze.
Like Led Zep, the early Deep Purple took their cues from the Vanilla Fudge, that most crass of Lawn Guyland bar bands, who'd played to London's rock elite at the Speakeasy and gone down the proverbial storm. Da Fudge taught the Brits a lot about the value of bombast and moderate-to-slow tempos, which served their acolytes well as venues ballooned from the intimacy to clubs and ballrooms to theaters, arenas, and stadiums -- spaces better suited to the Grand Gesture. The Guylanders subsequently got their heads handed to them when they toured America with Zeppelin, who not only wiped the proverbial floor with them, but had to play their entire first album twice because they didn't have any other material and the crowds wouldn't let them offstage otherwise.
The first DP album, Shades of Deep Purple, was recorded in a weekend after they'd been a band for just a couple of months -- that's how pro and efficient they were. Besides the hit ("Hush," by the Nashville songwriter Joe South) and its throwaway B-side (the original "One More Rainy Day"), the album included covers of songs associated with the Beatles ("Help"), Cream ("I'm So Glad") and Hendrix ("Hey Joe") in slowed-down versions with classical and flamenco flourishes.
Of the hastily-composed originals, "Mandrake Root" contained an epic freakout that was retained into the "Mk II" lineup. Blackmore was a skillful and flashy player with classical technique who also learned from Hendrix. He had a highly distinctive touch and attack with a strong vibrato (as noticeable when he used a semi-hollow Gibson as when he played a whammy bar-equipped Strat), a penchant for incorporating Eastern and Spanish-sounding scales and Bach progressions into what was basically a blues-based approach, and a love of chance and chaos that delivered everything that Jeff Beck promised.
Second album The Book of Taliesyn relied less on covers and more on Lord's classical pastiche. The hit, "Kentucky Woman," was essayed more in the manner of Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels than Neil Diamond's original, while the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" got fully Blackmore-ized and Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep Mountain High" got crossbred with Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathusra." The bona fide classic here, however, was "Wring That Neck" (inexplicably retitled "Hard Road" on the US release), a bluesy instrumental that gave Lord and Blackmore ample room to stretch out. Ritchie's solo on this live versh from the 1969 Bilzen Jazz Festival is pert damn amazing.
After that, they released my fave double-sided flop single of all time, "The Bird Has Flown"/"Emmaretta." The A-side, later re-recorded much less effectively for their eponymous third LP, is my fave DP song of all, with a nasty groove and warped blues melody. The flip is the only example I can recall of Blackmore using a wah-wah pedal and boasts a groove of nearly Funkadelic proportions.
The single tanked and lead singer Rod Evans and bassist Nicky Simper were on their way out. The first single by the Mk II lineup, "Hallelujah," was actually recorded while the Mk I unit was still gigging. Evans went on to front Captain Beyond before screwing himself out of whatever residuals he was due from his DP tenure by touring with a fake DP put together by an unscrupulous American promoter in 1980. As for Purple, they momentarily indulged Lord's classical bent, recording Concerto for Group and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra before getting down to business with Deep Purple In Rock in 1970 and becoming the juggernaut of the big-outdoor-festival-and-rock-on-network-TV era.
DP were, of course, one of the first three "heavy" Brit bands, the other two being Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, but they emerged first, at a time when Jimmy Page was still sorting out the detritus of the Yardbirds, when Ozzy was still digging graves and Tony Iommi was briefly the transitional guitarist in Jethro Tull.
The cynicism with which it was done was amazing. They were put together by management from Brit musos who'd been working their asses off on US military bases and the same Reeperbahn toilets the Beatles used to play in Germany. Fellas who'd probably appreciate a good regular payday.
Organist Jon Lord was a classically-trained blues fanatic who'd tickled the ivories on the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and subsequently played R&B in the Artwoods and recorded three tracks (released on those oft-repackaged Immediate Records anthologies of Brit blues) with a proto-DP outfit called Santa Barbara Machine Head that also included Ron Wood (in between the Birds and the Jeff Beck Group).
Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had taken lessons from Page's mentor Big Jim Sullivan, done sessions for Joe Meek, and toured with Brit rockers like Neil Christian and Screaming Lord Sutch. In early DP photos and clips (like the YT-infamous Playboy After Dark segment below), you can see his rockabilly quiff mutating into '68 long hair, kind of like Page's in his Yardbirds daze.
Like Led Zep, the early Deep Purple took their cues from the Vanilla Fudge, that most crass of Lawn Guyland bar bands, who'd played to London's rock elite at the Speakeasy and gone down the proverbial storm. Da Fudge taught the Brits a lot about the value of bombast and moderate-to-slow tempos, which served their acolytes well as venues ballooned from the intimacy to clubs and ballrooms to theaters, arenas, and stadiums -- spaces better suited to the Grand Gesture. The Guylanders subsequently got their heads handed to them when they toured America with Zeppelin, who not only wiped the proverbial floor with them, but had to play their entire first album twice because they didn't have any other material and the crowds wouldn't let them offstage otherwise.
The first DP album, Shades of Deep Purple, was recorded in a weekend after they'd been a band for just a couple of months -- that's how pro and efficient they were. Besides the hit ("Hush," by the Nashville songwriter Joe South) and its throwaway B-side (the original "One More Rainy Day"), the album included covers of songs associated with the Beatles ("Help"), Cream ("I'm So Glad") and Hendrix ("Hey Joe") in slowed-down versions with classical and flamenco flourishes.
Of the hastily-composed originals, "Mandrake Root" contained an epic freakout that was retained into the "Mk II" lineup. Blackmore was a skillful and flashy player with classical technique who also learned from Hendrix. He had a highly distinctive touch and attack with a strong vibrato (as noticeable when he used a semi-hollow Gibson as when he played a whammy bar-equipped Strat), a penchant for incorporating Eastern and Spanish-sounding scales and Bach progressions into what was basically a blues-based approach, and a love of chance and chaos that delivered everything that Jeff Beck promised.
Second album The Book of Taliesyn relied less on covers and more on Lord's classical pastiche. The hit, "Kentucky Woman," was essayed more in the manner of Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels than Neil Diamond's original, while the Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" got fully Blackmore-ized and Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep Mountain High" got crossbred with Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathusra." The bona fide classic here, however, was "Wring That Neck" (inexplicably retitled "Hard Road" on the US release), a bluesy instrumental that gave Lord and Blackmore ample room to stretch out. Ritchie's solo on this live versh from the 1969 Bilzen Jazz Festival is pert damn amazing.
After that, they released my fave double-sided flop single of all time, "The Bird Has Flown"/"Emmaretta." The A-side, later re-recorded much less effectively for their eponymous third LP, is my fave DP song of all, with a nasty groove and warped blues melody. The flip is the only example I can recall of Blackmore using a wah-wah pedal and boasts a groove of nearly Funkadelic proportions.
The single tanked and lead singer Rod Evans and bassist Nicky Simper were on their way out. The first single by the Mk II lineup, "Hallelujah," was actually recorded while the Mk I unit was still gigging. Evans went on to front Captain Beyond before screwing himself out of whatever residuals he was due from his DP tenure by touring with a fake DP put together by an unscrupulous American promoter in 1980. As for Purple, they momentarily indulged Lord's classical bent, recording Concerto for Group and Orchestra with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra before getting down to business with Deep Purple In Rock in 1970 and becoming the juggernaut of the big-outdoor-festival-and-rock-on-network-TV era.
posted by The Stash Dauber at 6:19 AM
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