DEEP PURPLE: "Who Do You Think We Are"

Original released on LP Purple TPSA 7508

(UK, February 1973)

Deep Purple had kicked off the '70s with a new lineup and a string of brilliant albums that quickly established them (along with fellow British giants Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath) as a major force in the popularization of hard rock and heavy metal. All the while, their reputation as one of the decade's fiercest live units complemented this body of work and earned them almost instant legendary status. But with 1973's disappointing "Who Do We Think We Are" - the fourth and final studio outing by the original run of Purple's classic Mark II lineup - all the fire and inspiration that had made the previous year's "Machine Head" their greatest triumph mysteriously vanished from sight. Vastly inferior to all three of its famous predecessors, the album revealed an exhausted band clearly splintering at the seams. Except for opener "Woman From Tokyo," which hinted at glories past with its signature Ritchie Blackmore riff, the album's remaining cuts are wildly inconsistent and find the band simply going through the motions. In fact, many of these don't so much resemble songs as loose jam sessions quickly thrown together in the studio with varying degrees of enthusiasm. "Mary Long" and "Super Trouper" are prime examples, featuring generic solos from Blackmore and organist Jon Lord, and uncharacteristically inane lyrics from soon-to-be former singer Ian Gillan. With its start-stop rhythm and Gillan's fine scat singing, the energetic "Rat Bat Blue" is a memorable exception to the rule, but the yawn-inducing blues of "Place in the Line" and the gospel mediocrity of "Our Lady" bring the album to a close with a whimper rather than a shout. [A painfully revealing display of a legendary band grinding to a halt, "Who Do We Think We Are" was reissued in 2000 with the added incentive of seven bonus tracks and new liner notes by bassist Roger Glover]. (Eduardo Rivadavia in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE: "Concerto For Group And Orchestra" (Live at the Royal Albert Hall)

Original released on LP Tetragrammaton T-131

(US, December 1969)

Back in 1970, it seemed as though any British group that could was starting to utilize classical elements in their work - for some, like ELP, that meant quoting from the classics as often and loudly as possible, while for others, like Yes, it meant incorporating classical structures into their albums and songs. Deep Purple, at the behest of keyboardman Jon Lord, fell briefly into the camp of this offshoot of early progressive rock with the "Concerto for Group and Orchestra". For most fans, the album represented the nadir of the classic (i.e., post-Rod Evans) group: minutes of orchestral meandering lead into some perfectly good hard rock jamming by the band, but the trip is almost not worth the effort. Ritchie Blackmore sounds great and plays his heart out, and you can tell this band is going to go somewhere, just by virtue of the energy that they put into these extended pieces. The classical influences mostly seem drawn from movie music composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Franz Waxman (and Elmer Bernstein), with some nods to Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, and Mahler, and they rather just lay there. Buried in the middle of the second movement is a perfectly good song, but you've got to get to it through eight minutes of orchestral noodling on either side. The third movement is almost bracing enough to make up for the flaws of the other two, though by itself, it wouldn't make the album worthwhile - Pink Floyd proved far more adept at mixing group and orchestra, and making long, slow, lugubrious pieces interesting. As a bonus, however, the producers have added three hard rock numbers by the group alone, "Hush", "Child in Time," and "Wring That Neck" and  that were played at the same concert. They and the third movement of the established piece make this worth a listen. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

How can I see

When the light is gone out

How can I hear

When you speak so silently

More than enough

Is never too much

Hold out a hand

I'm so out of touch

Do unto me

As your heart would have you do

Looks on my head

Cannot get the message through

Sword in my hand

Can cut through the wood

Peace in my heart

Can summon the mood

What shall I do

When they stand smiling at me

Look at the floor

And be oh so cool

Oh so cool

How shall I know

When to start singing my song

What shall I do

If they all go wrong

What shall I do

DEEP PURPLE: "Made In Japan" + Encores

Original released on Double LP Purple TPSP 351

(UK 1972, December 1)

Recorded over three nights in August 1972, Deep Purple's "Made in Japan" was the record that brought the band to headliner status in the U.S. and elsewhere, and it remains a landmark in the history of heavy metal music. Since reorganizing with singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover in 1969, Deep Purple had recorded three important albums - "Deep Purple in Rock", "Fireball", and "Machine Head" - and used the material to build a fierce live show. "Made in Japan", its selections drawn from those albums, documented that show, in which songs were drawn out to ten and even nearly 20 minutes with no less intensity, as guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord soloed extensively and Gillan sang in a screech that became the envy of all metal bands to follow. The signature song, of course, was "Smoke on the Water," with its memorable riff, which went on to become an American hit single. But those extended workouts, particularly the moody "Child in Time," with Gillan's haunting falsetto wail and Blackmore's amazingly fast playing, and "Space Truckin'," with Lord's organ effects, maintained the onslaught, making this a definitive treatment of the band's catalog and its most impressive album. By stretching out and going to extremes, Deep Purple pushed its music into the kind of deliberate excess that made heavy metal what it became, and their audience recognized the breakthrough, propelling the original double LP into the U.S. Top Ten and sales over a million copies. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE: "Machine Head"

Original released on LP Purple TPSA 7504

(UK 1972, March 25)

Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", and Deep Purple's "Machine Head" have stood the test of time as the Holy Trinity of English hard rock and heavy metal, serving as the fundamental blueprints followed by virtually every heavy rock & roll band since the early '70s. And, though it is probably the least celebrated of the three, "Machine Head" contains the "mother of all guitar riffs" - and one of the first learned by every beginning guitarist - in "Smoke on the Water." Inspired by real-life events in Montreux, Switzerland, where Deep Purple were recording the album when the Montreux Casino was burned to the ground during a Frank Zappa concert, neither the song, nor its timeless riff, should need any further description. However, "Machine Head" was anything but a one-trick pony, introducing the bona fide classic opener "Highway Star," which epitomized all of Deep Purple's intensity and versatility while featuring perhaps the greatest soloing duel ever between guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord. Also in top form was singer Ian Gillan, who crooned and exploded with amazing power and range throughout to establish himself once and for all as one of the finest voices of his generation, bar none. Yes, the plodding shuffle of "Maybe I'm a Leo" shows some signs of age, but punchy singles "Pictures of Home" and "Never Before" remain as vital as ever, displaying Purple at their melodic best. And finally, the spectacular "Space Truckin'" drove "Machine Head" home with yet another tremendous Blackmore riff, providing a fitting conclusion to one of the essential hard rock albums of all time. (Eduardo Rivadavia in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE: "Infinite" + Live CD Bonus

Original released on CD Ear 0211848EMU

(EU, 2017, April 7) 
 

No one, least of all Deep Purple themselves, expected the success of 2013's "Now What?!" It placed at number one on four European album charts and in the Top Ten of six other countries. It also sold exceptionally well: It was certified Gold in Poland, Germany (where it sold over 100,000), the Czech Republic, and Russia - it was the band's first album to crack the U.K.'s Top 40 charts in 20 years. For "InFinite", Deep Purple re-enlisted producer Bob Ezrin. At this point, he is almost a sixth member. This the longest running lineup in their history. "InFinite" is a heavier and more expansive record than its predecessor, but it's not as consistent. Ian Gillan is in excellent form - still possessing intense expressive power and range, his falsetto remains intact four decades on. Don Airey's organ and keys - so elemental in DP's musical architecture - is physical, atmospheric, and dynamic. He and guitarist Steve Morse combine brute force with imagination and finesse. Ian Paice, who had a mini-stroke last year, seems to have recovered fully. Roger Glover remains a bassist whose musical signature is so dominant it is only rivaled by Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler.

Things get off to a great start with "Time for Bedlam." Despite its slightly corny sci-fi spoken intro with Gillian's voice put through a processor, it acquits itself with a massive swirling charge worthy of the band's glory years. It also features Gillan's best lyrics - he tends to go over the top elsewhere. It's followed by the commanding blues-rock boogie of "Hip Boots," where Gillan's swagger rises above a biting mix of snare, kick drum, and dual leads from organ and guitar; but it's actually Glover who drives the tune. On tracks such as "All I Got Is You" and "The Surprising," this outfit doesn't let the listener forget they're the same band who delivered "Child in Time" and "When a Blind Man Cries." The latter is downright prog as it melds power ballad to metal in a gorgeous mix that includes wonderfully layered backing vocals and Airey's neo-classical keys that evoke the memory of Jon Lord. While the musical attack in "One Night in Vegas" offers a pumping barrelhouse blues piano woven into the hard rock bombast. "On Top of the World" has the craziest Gillan lyrics ever, but again, DP's crunchy choogle carries them to the finish line. The evocation of vintage psychedelia and Led Zeppelin in "Birds of Prey" makes it one of the more compelling tunes here. Unfortunately, there are two clunkers that sound like filler: the terribly clichéd "Johnny's Band" and a perfunctory read of the Doors' "Roadhouse Blues." Otherwise, "InFinite" is a winner; it proves not only that "Now What?!" was no fluke, but that Deep Purple, even at this stage, still have plenty left to offer musically and creatively. (Thom Jurek in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE - The Third Album (+ 11 Bonus)

Original released on LP Tetragrammaton T 119

(US, June 1969)

This is a record that even those who aren't Deep Purple fans can listen to two or three times in one sitting - but then, this wasn't much like any other album that the group ever issued. Actually, Deep Purple was highly prized for many years by fans of progressive rock, and for good reason. The group was going through a transition - original lead singer Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper would be voted out of the lineup soon after the album was finished (although they weren't told about it until three months later), organist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore having perceived limitations in their work in terms of where each wanted to take the band. And between Lord's ever-greater ambitions toward fusing classical and rock and Blackmore's ever-bolder guitar attack, both of which began to coalesce with the session for "Deep Purple" in early 1969, the group managed to create an LP that combined heavy metal's early, raw excitement, intensity, and boldness with progressive rock's complexity and intellectual scope, and virtuosity on both levels. On "The Painter," "Why Didn't Rosemary?," and, especially, "Bird Has Flown," they strike a spellbinding balance between all of those elements, and Evans' work on the latter is one of the landmark vocal performances in progressive rock. "April," a three-part suite with orchestral accompaniment, is overall a match for such similar efforts by the Nice as the "Five Bridges Suite," and gets extra points for crediting its audience with the patience for a relatively long, moody developmental section and for including a serious orchestral interlude that does more than feature a pretty tune, exploiting the timbre of various instruments as well as the characteristics of the full ensemble. Additionally, the band turns in a very successful stripped-down, hard rock version of Donovan's "Lalena," with an organ break that shows Lord's debt to modern jazz as well as classical training. In all, amid all of those elements - the orchestral accompaniment, harpsichord embellishments, and backward organ and drum tracks - "Deep Purple" holds together astonishingly well as a great body of music. This is one of the most bracing progressive rock albums ever, and a successful vision of a musical path that the group might have taken but didn't. Ironically, the group's American label, Tetragrammaton Records, which was rapidly approaching bankruptcy, released this album a lot sooner than EMI did in England, but ran into trouble over the use of the Hieronymus Bosch painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" on the cover; although it has been on display at the Vatican, the work was wrongly perceived as containing profane images and never stocked as widely in stores as it might've been. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE: "The Book Of Taliesyn" (mono & stereo versions + 8 Bonus Tracks)

Original released on LP Harvest SHVL 751

(UK, October 1969)

Several months after the innovative remake of "You Keep Me Hanging On," England's answer to Vanilla Fudge was this early version of Deep Purple, which featured vocalist Rod Evans, and bassist Nick Simper, along with mainstays Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice. This, their second album, followed on the heels of "Hush," a dynamic arrangement of a Joe South tune, far removed from the flavor of one of his own hits, "Walk a Mile in My Shoes." Four months later, this album's cover of Neil Diamond's Top 25, 1967 gem "Kentucky Woman," went Top 40 for Deep Purple. Also like Vanilla Fudge, the group's own originals were creative, thought-provoking, but not nearly as interesting as their take on cover tunes. Vanilla Fudge did "Eleanor Rigby," and Deep Purple respond by going inside "We Can Work It Out" - it falls out of nowhere after the progressive rock jam "Exposition," Ritchie Blackmore's leads zipping in between Rod Evans smooth and precise vocals. As Vanilla Fudge was progressively leaning more towards psychedelia, here Deep Purple are the opposite. The boys claim to be inspired by the Bard of King Arthur's court in Camelot, Taliesyn. John Vernon Lord, under the art direction of Les Weisbrich, paints a superb wonderland on the album jacket, equal to the madness of Hieronymous Bosch's cover painting used for the third album. 

Originals "Shield" and "Anthem" make early Syd Barrett Pink Floyd appear punk in comparison. Novel sounds are aided by Lord's dominating keyboards, a signature of this group. Though "The Anthem" is more intriguing than the heavy metal thunder of "Machine Head", it is overwhelmed by the majesty of their "River Deep, Mountain High" cover, definitely not the inspiration for the Supremes and Four Tops 1971 hit version. By the time 1972 came around, Deep Purple immersed themselves in dumb lyrics, unforgettable riffs, and a huge presence, much like Black Sabbath. The evolution from progressive to hard rock was complete, but a combination of what they did here - words that mattered matched by innovative musical passages - would have been a more pleasing combination. Vanilla Fudge would cut Donovan's "Season of the Witch," Deep Purple followed this album by covering his "Lalena"; both bands abandoned the rewrites their fans found so fascinating. Rod Evans' voice was subtle enough to take "River Deep, Mountain High" to places Ian Gillam might have demolished. (Joe Viglione in AllMusic)

DEEP PURPLE FIRST ALBUM (Mono & Stereo versions + 9 Bonus Tracks)

Original released on LP Tetragrammaton T 102
(US, July 1968) 
and on LP EMI Parlophone 
PMC 7055 (mono) / PCS 7055 (stereo)

(UK, September 1968)

The usual perception of early Deep Purple is that it was a band with a lot of potential in search of a direction. And that might be true of their debut LP, put together in three days of sessions in May of 1968, but it's still a hell of an album. From the opening bars of "And the Address," it's clear that they'd gotten down the fundamentals of heavy metal from day one, and at various points the electricity and the beat just surge forth in ways that were startlingly new in the summer of 1968. Ritchie Blackmore never sounded less at ease as a guitarist than he does on this album, and the sound mix doesn't exactly favor the heavier side of his playing, but the rhythm section of Nick Simper and Ian Paice rumble forward, and Jon Lord's organ flourishes, weaving classical riffs, and unexpected arabesques into "I'm So Glad," which sounds rather majestic here. 

"Hush" was the number that most people knew at the time (it was a hit single in America), and it is a smooth, crunchy interpretation of the Joe South song. But nobody could have been disappointed with the rest of this record - one can even hear the very distant origins of "Smoke on the Water" in "Mandrake Root," once one gets past the similarities to Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady"; by the song's extended finale, they sound more like the Nice. Their version of "Help" is one of the more interesting reinterpretations of a Beatles song, as a slow, rough-textured dirge. "Hey Joe" is a bit overblown, and the group clearly had to work a bit at both songwriting and their presentation, but one key attribute that runs through most of this record - even more so than the very pronounced heaviness of the playing - is a spirit of fun; these guys are obviously having the time of their lives rushing through their limited repertoire, and it's infectious to the listener; it gives this record much more of a '60s feel than we're accustomed to hearing from this band.

DEEP PURPLE: "Fireball"

Original released on LP EMI Harvest SHVL 793

(UK 1971, September 15)

One of Deep Purple's four indispensable albums (the others being "In Rock", 2Machine Head2, and "Burn"), 1971's "Fireball" saw the band broadening out from the no-holds-barred hard rock direction of the previous year's cacophonous "In Rock". Metal machine noises introduced the sizzling title track - an unusually compact but explosively tight group effort on which Jon Lord's organ truly shined. The somewhat tiring repetitions of "No No No" actually threatened to drop the ball next, but the fantastic single "Strange Kind of Woman" nimbly caught and set it rolling again, just in time for the innuendo-encrusted hilarity of "Anyone's Daughter," featuring one of singer Ian Gillan's first (and still best) humorous storylines to go with one of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's most uncharacteristic, bluesiest performances ever. 

"The Mule" opened the vinyl album's second side with what is perhaps Purple's finest instrumental, and on the hyper-extended "Fools," the bandmembers proved they could flirt with progressive rock without plunging off its cliff (although the song could probably have done without its drawn-out middle section). And closing the album was the exceptional "No One Came," where intertwining instrumental lines locked together beautifully, Gillan wove another entertaining yarn that was part autobiography and part Monty Python, and the often underrated skills of drummer Ian Paice helped the song sound so unreservedly fresh and intuitive that one could almost be convinced the band had winged it on the spot. Sure, the following year's "Machine Head" would provide Deep Purple with their commercial peak, but on "Fireball", the formidable quintet was already firing on all cylinders. (Eduardo Rivadavia in AllMusic)