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Purple reigns
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A line-up that reads like the who's who of rock ensures Deep Purple a place in the stratosphere
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LISTED IN the Guinness Book of World Records as the loudest rock band, emerging as one of the longest-lived rock music outfits, shifting from hard-rock to metal, debuting with a fusion of rock and classical music, and having a star-studded line-up — all this and more, this is the Deep Purple.
Having adopted the name Deep Purple, following a brief Scandinavian tour and recording their debut album, patterned on a band called Vanilla Fudge, Shades of Deep Purple consisted of rearrangements of well-known songs such as, Hey Joe and Hush.
The Book of Taliesin, its second compilation, also featured cover versions — notably, Kentucky Woman and River deep-Mountain High.
Deep Purple's line-up may appear as an endless index of names, some of whom may have featured only in one album or song, but it will be an aberration if the appellation of a few of them is not mentioned. Rock aficionados consider the `classic' Deep Purple assemblage as Jon Lord (born Leicester, England, June 9, 1945) on keyboards, Ritchie Blackmore (born Weston-Super-Mare, Avon England, 14 April, 1945) guitar, Ian Paice (born Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, 29 June 1948) on drums, Roger Glover (born Brecon, Wales, 30 November, 1945) on bass and Ian Gillan (born Houston, Middlesex, England, 19 August 1945) on vocals.
The actual story of Deep Purple started in 1970, when an album to fuse rock and classical music was brought out called, Concerto For Group And Orchestra. This did not fare well and prompted Ritchie Blackmore to take control of the band. His simple repeated guitar riffs, backed by the powerful vocals of Ian Gillan, heralded the beginning of the group's most creatively successful period. Deep Purple in Rock was brought forth using this fantastic combination and the rest, they say, is history.
How and why Deep Purple succeeded, as a group is something of a mystery. The group has endured a flurry of albums, an influx of personalities, extensive touring and personality clashes. Each album would have a song or two, which would make it to the Top Ten on the charts. Their popularity even penetrated the shores of Japan, Europe and Australia.
An incident in the journey of Deep Purple is worth a mention. Smoke on the water was about the band's near-disastrous Montreaux concert with Frank Zappa.
The venue burned down during a live appearance, but the experience inspired Purple to its most popular hit. This song (Smoke on the water) was featured on the multi-platinum classic Machine Head, and positioned them among rock's elite.
To single out one special feature that made Deep Purple popular was being au courant. They would use incidents, or include a single — related to the place of their tour (Woman from Tokyo) to enhance their reputation.
A testimony of this quality can be had from the utilisation of astronaut Kalpana Chawla's admiration for the band. She carried three of Deep Purple's albums with her to space and this prompted the group to feature her in their latest offering called Bananas. A guitar instrumental called Contact lost was dedicated to her, thereby endearing them to millions of fans in India.
A. GEORGE ANTONY
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