Deep Purple: Who Do We Think We Are?/Burn

Alright, let's finish up this Deep Purple section today...I'm just gonna bust through them really quick...Deep Purple had a million more albums after these two, but I don't have them, so I'm not covering them...I have owned a few of them in the past, though ("Perfect Strangers," "The Battle Rages On..." and maybe a live album or greatest hits release here and there)...But I've enjoyed this week spent spinning Purp, so I might dig in a little deeper at a later time...





Deep Purple: Who Do We Think We Are?

1973

Warner Bros Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Woman from Tokayo  2.Mary Long  3.Super Trouper  4. Smooth Dancer  5. Rat Bat Blue  6. Place in Line  7. Our Lady



This is often remembered as being the disappointing follow-up to "Machine Head," which I can understand how someone could walk away with that impression...It rarely ever hits that previous album's many high-points, but I find this album's "I don't give a damn-ness" much more interesting...

Album opener "Woman From Tokayo" (their spelling,. not mine...Although, I guess it's exactly how Ian Gillan sings it...) is probably a good indication of what they should have done. A perfectly crunchy pop-rock single that sounds like "Machine Head's" most accessible moments sweetened for extra radio sheen...Despite it being a classic rock radio staple, I actually hadn't heard this song in a long time...Anyway, here it is, if you haven't heard it lately....

 

So far, so good, right? But things turn weird on track two, "Mary Long"...A fairly standard DP rocker, but check out these lyrics:

"Mary Long is a hypocrite
She does all the things that she tells us not to do
Selling filth from a corner shop
And knitting patterns to the high street queue
She paints roses, even makes them smell good
And then she draws titties on the khazy wall
Drowns kittens just to get a thrill
And writes sermons in the Sunday Chronicle
How did you lose your virginity, Mary Long ?
When will you lose your stupidity, Mary Long ?"

Drawing titties?! Drowning kittens?! What the hell? Who could this Mary Long possibly be? Is she me? I draw titties sometimes, but on the other hand, I love kittens, so...

Turns out it's not any specific person, but a couple of people combined...

 Mary Whitehouse, whom I actually suspected it might be about when I first heard it...I only know who that is through the extra features on old Doctor Who DVD's...She was some old prude who was offended by everything...I think she might have also been one of the Golden Girls, but I'm not sure...

..and Lord Longford, whom I have never heard of...Apparently he was some sort of anti-porn crusader who tried to free convicted murderers in his free time...So yea, these guys probably deserve the verbal abuse...

And then after "Mary Long" we get "Super Trouper" which sounds like a psychedelic boogie getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner..."Smooth Dancer" finishes off side one with more boogie, this time with rollicking piano, a funkier feel and more bizarre lyrics, this time about black suede and false pregnancies...Who knows...This track flew right by on first listen, but I like it more every time I play it....

Side two begins with the album's runner-up for best track, "Rat Bat Blue." It's a cool heavy blues, similar to something Led Zeppelin would have done around the same time, but the song really hits its stride during the keyboard solo which is truly head-spinning and the nonsense lyrics work in a "scat-singing" way for Gillan... "Place in Line" is this album's "Lazy." The overlong blues that is usually pointed out as the weak-link, but I really like this one...Gillan's vocals are interesting and inventive...He starts out sounding like some 80 year old blues guy, mumbling in a low register, then he takes a kind of Bob Dylanesque approach for the chorus, and then onto his usual power-wailing...The band's approach varies too...Beginning as slow-blues before subtly morphing into hard rock...The extended solos by Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore might test the attention-span of some folks, but it wasn't nothing I couldn't handle...

 

Hey! I sat through the 16 minute drum solos on Cream's "Wheels of Fire Live!" Three minutes of guitar and organ solos are a walk in the park at this point....

The album ends with "Our Lady" which is psychedelicized gospel rock?! You could almost picture Joe Cocker or somebody singing this...Not my favorite track or anything, but it's surprising that they can pull all this stuff off at this point...I remember a few days ago, listening to "Fireball" where every detour seemed to end in Nowheres-ville, but all of this works...

Ultimately, I don't know how this ended up with the reputation it has...Some of it might be a bit adventurous for your average Deep Purple fan, and it's probably too macho and Camaro-y for fans of "out-there" music...But it hits just the right balance for me, and at this moment it probably follows "In Rock" as my personal favorite album by the band right now...It's definitely one of those albums you'll have to give a couple of spins before it sinks in, though...

 

Deep Purple: Burn

1974

Warner Bros. Records

Format I own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Burn  2. Might Just Take Your Life  3. Lay Down, Stay Down  4. Sail Away  5. You Fool No One  6. What's Goin' On Here  7. Mistreated  8. A' 200


WHITESNAKE ALERT!! This album is the start of Mark III Deep Purple, where Glenn Hughes replaces Roger Glover on bass and David Coverdale replaces Ian Gillan on vocals...Come to think of it 3/5ths of this line-up would end up in the Whitesnake...

 But don't worry! There's no Tawny Kitaen or Jaguars here (which may or may not be a good thing based on your tolerance for Aqua-Net)...

David Coverdale sounds just fine, falling somewhere between Robert Plant and a gust of wind...Glenn Hughes also acts as a co-vocalist, with a much more plain, white-bluesman style that's an occasional respite from David's vocals, although I don't think the album would have suffered in any way from just having David do them all...Anyway, any reservations you may have get washed away as soon as the title-track comes on...This band has always had a knack for opening tracks....The fastest, meanest, most-rocking song on any Deep Purple album is invariably the first one, and this one holds its own against "Speed King" and "Highway Star"....Jon and Ritchie's classically-influenced solos on this song are the greatest moments in the band's discography, in my opinion, and my God, that drummer is a muzzafuzza...Great song....

I don't think anything else on the album comes close to matching the title track, however it's all fine slightly-funky, heavy-blues rock...Maybe a bit more bluesy/soulful and a little less heavy than Mark II. Jon Lord's use of the Moog sets it apart from the previous albums also...Listen to all those boinging sounds on the instrumental "A' 200"...And then those 70's sci-fi tones that come in over that marching beat....I can see how people could hate this song and the cheesy sounds, but damn, I love it...

I have to be really honest here...The track that usually gets singled out as the album's finest moment, "Mistreated," doesn't do anything for me...It's not bad or anything, but it's fairly dull...I can see how someone who's more attuned to slow, smouldering blues jams might get something out of this, but I usually find myself nodding off...Maybe if they cut it down to three minutes it might hold my interest more...I will say it comes off as something that would kill at a live show, though...I can imagine the whole house coming down when Ritchie does the faster, heavier solo at the song's climax...But I'm not at a bad-ass stadium show, I'm sitting on the floor at home listening to a record, so Zzzzzzz....

But that's a minor hiccup...Like I said the rest of the album is good, 70's fun...Aside from a few choice moments, this line-up didn't have the appeal of the Mark II albums (although, I probably like it more than "Fireball"), but it's a good listen when you feel like digging a little deeper into the depths of 70's hard rock...If you have any affection for the era, I can't imagine not digging this a little....

Here's "Burn" by Deep Purple...Enjoy...

Deep Purple: Machine Head

Deep Purple: Machine Head

1972

Warner Bros Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Highway Star  2. Maybe I'm a Leo  3.  Pictures of Home   4. Never Before  5. Smoke on the Water  6. Lazy  7. Space Truckin'


I think I need to pick up some new strings...Might as well go to Guitar Center...

 (Hop into my car...)

Might as well listen to some radio...

 ♫ "SMOOO-O-O-O-OKE ON THE WAAAATER..." ♫

Ugh...Tired of this song...

(switches station to 92.1 FM)...

♫ "FIRE IN THE SKIE-IE..." ♫

 No!

(switches station to 104.2 FM)

♫"HUMO-O-O-O  EN EL AGUAAA...FUEGO  EN EL CIELO... ♫" (Tejano version of "Smoke on the Water"...)

 (pulls into Guitar Center parking lot...Walks Inside...)

The sound of a hundred inept guitarists simultaneously  bungling the "Smoke on the Water riff:  DAHHH DAHHH DAHHHHH...DAHHH DAHHH DAH DAHHHHH...DAHHH DAHHH DAHHH DAH NAHHHHH....

This is how I feel about "Smoke on the Water." I've heard it 10,000,000 times and at this point I am completely incapable of enjoying it...If I never hear it again it'll be too soon...I'm beyond sick of it...I'm "Stairway to Heaven" sick of it...Whenever I hear it (always against my will) my mind and soul melts away, my jaw goes slack, and an all-encompassing boredom sinks in...But oddly enough I can remember back when it wasn't that way...

I believe I originally got this album from my Brother Troy...He was getting rid of his vinyl, which was a pretty common practice back in the day...CD's were still new and shiny and people were purging their homes of their dusty old records, which was great for me!  I loved records! The covers were so much bigger, the sound seemed to have more dimension, it was fun to watch them spin around, and best of all everybody was getting rid of them, so records were ridiculously cheap (if not free)! Anyway, I scored a huge collection...

 I remember getting some Twisted Sister records...



...various albums by the Nuge...



Black Sabbath...



Emerson, Lake and Powell?...

 

...and Deep Purple's "Machine Head"...

I was probably age 12 or so, and boy did I love this album...I loved everything about it, from the blurry cover photo...

...to the huge  poster with the sweet purple trim that functioned as the lyric sheet (I remember every panel of this eventually tore away and I ended up with about three or four standard sized sheets of paper)...

...to that photo-filled inside gatefold...In particular I was intrigued how every photo of Ian Paice was taken about an inch from his face and the picture of Claude Nobs (third from the right on the top row) that looked like 70's Dan Aykroyd...I remember being so fascinated by Claude's photo...This was the late 80's/early 90's and I couldn't process someone actually looking like that...He was such a distinctly 70's-looking person...I couldn't imagine what he would look like in real life....

...and I especially loved "Smoke on the Water"...It sounded like the riff was discovered from some ancient tablet or something...It had such power...It was the perfect riff...So I played it, and played it, and played it, until one day I had heard it enough and moved onto other things...

But shortly after that, classic rock playlists started to settle into place and one of the songs that every  station on Planet Earth (or maybe Clear Channel had something to do with it...) played "Smoke on the Water," "Iron Man," "Stairway to Heaven" and "You Shook Me All Night Long" every ten minutes for all eternity... Then you'd always have the one friend or family member who would come over with their guitar and butcher the "Smoke on the Water" riff for hours on end ...Then Guitar Centers popped up on every corner, and everybody's 'one friend or family member who butchered the "Smoke on the Water" riff for hours on end'  all convened in one place and bungled their way through the riff...And my resentment for the song just grew and grew....

Now I guess I can kind of see it as the modern version of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb." The simple little ditty for beginners to learn and drive everybody nuts with...And then those people get all nostalgic and crank it up on the radio, telling their spouse, "See, Honey? This is the song that started it all for me..."  So I guess I can make peace with it in that light...On the other hand, I'm never in the mood to hear "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb" either...

Bet let's pretend for a moment that the record flopped. Nobody noticed it and "Smoke on the Water," "Highway Star" and "Space Truckin'" were never played on the radio (however hard that is to imagine)...I think one would still deduce that this was a special Deep Purple record. I think you would still get the impression that everything fell into place for them...Although I've heard it a hundred times too many, I still have to acknowledge that "Highway Star" is the pinnacle of the hard charging Deep Purple opening track...Compare it to "Speed King" or "Fireball" and you realize what they've achieved...As it chugs along you can clearly see the lines on the highway and marvel when they finally become a blur somewhere during the dual keyboard/guitar solo section...

(Remember when you could release a 9 minute single and radio was alright with it? In a way I'm glad that's over...Can you imagine a 9 minute Justin Beiber single? (shudders)).

Of the three overplayed songs on the radio, I think "Space Truckin"holds up the best for me...First off I love that spiraling riff...And additionally, I think it's the only Deep Purple radio track to convey how weird Ian Gillan's lyrics are...They're usually either misogynistic "WOMAN!!" lyrics or they're the most oddball shit ever, but you usually only pick that up from checking out the full albums...

As for the tracks that rarely (if ever) make it to radio, they're all just as good..."Lazy" has a stomping riff that served as the template for a billion Clutch songs..."Pictures of Home" has the same soaring. melodic power that heavy metal bands would start picking up on at the tail end of the late 70's and early 80's..."Never Before" has always been my favorite track on the album. It's a great catchy hard-rock/pop single that would sound great on the radio...."Lazy" always gets a bad rap for being the worst song on the album, but I don't think it's that bad...It certainly slows things down with its extended atmospheric keyboards and epic length, but I've always enjoyed revisiting its bluesy haziness...

I highly recommend taking the approach I did...Stop listening to the album for a good 10 years, avoid radio and Guitar Centers the best you can, and then give "Machine Head" another spin...I think it deserves its place as one of the sacred texts of the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal era...

Here's "Never Before" by Deep Purple...Enjoy...

Deep Purple: In Rock/Fireball

Deep Purple: In Rock

1970

Warner Bros

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Speed King  2. Bloodsucker  3. Child in Time  4. Flight of the Rat  5. Into the Fire  6. Living Wreck  7. Hard Lovin' Man


Alright, throw this one on the top of the pile...One of my all-time favorite album covers! When you're thumbing through the used records bin, you can't not buy it... It's so awe-inspiring and majestic...I think my favorite thing about it is the supremely stoned and serene look on Roger Glover's face...

 I'm pretty confident in saying that if you only pick one Deep Purple album, this is a pretty solid pick....I know "Machine Head" is the obvious choice, but I think classic rock radio has already beaten that particular horse, and I also feel that "In Rock" is more pure...This is the point where Deep Purple really comes together...Technically,  "Concerto for Blah Blah Blah" was the premier of Mark II Purple, but that album was a lark...This is where they get down to business...

I wasn't around then, but I'm betting that when this came out, this was just the most hard-rocking shit out there...When "Speed King" peels out at the start of this record, with its heavy hot-rod guitar and souped-up rhythm section it's hard not to get caught up in the rush...

And it never really lets up (except for one exception, which we'll get to later)...I don't know if I talked about Ritchie's guitar style on the last post, so I'll do it here....He's much less bluesy than the other players of his era...He had a more composed, classical soloing style that eventually became synonymous with heavy metal guitar playing, but as far as I know he invented this style...I'm having a hard time thinking of someone else who did it first (send me a comment if you can think of one)...The only time it feels like he's cutting loose is on the guitar meltdown at the end of "Hard Lovin' Man" (oh my god, they have a song called "Hard Lovin' Man...)...

Now for the big exception...There is exactly one song on that album that does not do everything in its power to rock your ugly face off...Taking up half of side one, we have the 10-minute monster "Child in Time" (and I can totally picture them stretching this out for a good half hour in a live setting, although there's no historical data to back up that suspicion)...It's a long, atmospheric, organ driven mood-piece that periodically erupts into a towering mountain of rock...Two points of interest here...

1. The slow guitar solo that eventually builds into a frenzy and then eventually joins forces with Jon Lord's organ to lay down a glorious harmonized lead...

2.  Ian Gillam's "ahhh ahh ahhh's" that gradually get a little louder and more wailing until you're convinced that his full-lunged screaming is going to destroy your cheapo Best Buy speakers...It's simultaneously  ridiculous and  mind-blowing...

So next time you're thumbing through the bargain bins and you inevitably run across a copy of "In Rock," I say give it a try if you're into hairy-chested, 70's proto-metal...

Here's "Speed King" by Deep Purple...Enjoy...

 

 

Deep Purple:Fireball

1971

Warner Bros Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. Fireball  2. No No No  3. Strange Kind of Woman  4. Anyone's Daughter  5. The Mule  6. Fools  7. No One Came

Another great album cover!  My favorite thing about this particular cover is how big and bulging they had to make Ritchie's neck in order to give the fireball a rounded appearance...

I like "Fireball" alright...No doubt about it, it's a step down from "In Rock," but I get what they were trying to do....They were trying to diversify, stretch out their sound, making sure no two songs sounded the same, but Deep Purple is one of those bands that are at their best when they stick to their signature sound...

The title track is the perfect example of this...It's possibly their coolest, most ass-kicking song they'd ever recorded...Faster, heavier and more fire-breathing than anything on "In Rock," sporting the coolest organ solo I've ever heard...They basically took the standard Deep Purple sound and shined it up and put a cape on it and that approach suits them perfectly...

"No No No" slows things down, taking a more anthemic Who-like approach, and it rules too, despite being a bit repetitive...But the blues vamp "Strange Kind of Woman" comes on with its chest-pounding "woman" lyrics and it's just kind of bleh...But even that song is a masterpiece compared to "Anyone's Daughter" which is a...gulp...country song?! And trust me, Deep Purple doing a country song is just as bizarre as you're imagining it...It's kind of like one of those weird galloping western things where a ghost cowboy is riding his invisible horse across a lone prairie or whatever...

...and maybe if the lyrics dealt with that theme I'd have a different opinion of it, but instead they go for the macho "laying the farmer's daughter" trope that makes the whole thing embarrassing...You can't skip this song fast enough...Don't even put yourself through it...When you see track four coming on, just lift the needle, flip over the record and dig into side two...There's some cool stuff there...

Now, "The Mule" is where they get the whole experimental thing down cold...They go for a sort of middle Eastern psychedelia thing but add their trademark 70's heaviness to it and it works like crazy...Haters of studio drum solos might have a bone to pick, however, but no bone-picking here! I like studio drum solos! 

Ba-dum, ba-dum...siss..siss...siss..Boom boom ba-boom ba-boom ba=boom boom boom...siss..siss...siss...

(that was my onomatopoeia solo....)

"Fools" is a good heavy number too, but again, it's a case where their experimental streak works against them somewhat...The song is pretty bangin' up until the violin comes in and then it just kind of drones on forever...However, I think a non-masterpiece or two is a necessity in any great band's discography...It keeps you interested, and I can tell you, when I got to the Deep Purple section of the blog, I was more excited to revisit this than, say, "Machine Head" which I could basically recite in my sleep...

So here's to Deep Purple, who as soon as they figured out what they were good at, took a sharp left turn into the unknown before reaching their highest height (which we'll get to in a day or so)...Wait, what do you drink when you're listening to Deep Purple? 

I know!...

...Purple Drank!!

So let's sip on some sizzurp and listnen to "Fireball" by Deep Purple...I think I'm gonna be sick...

 

Deep Purple: Shades of Deep Purple

Deep Purple: Shades of Deep Purple

1978


Tetragammatron Records  (Man, I hate typing out Tetragammatron...It always looks wrong to me and spell-check doesn't like it either, making me doubt myself, so I inevitably fall into this loop of checking and rechecking...)

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

Track Listing: 1. And the Address  2. Hush  3. One More Rainy Day  4. Prelude: Happiness / I'm So Glad   5. Mandrake Root  6. Help!  7. Love Help Me  8. Hey Joe    

To be totally honest with you, outside of the obligatory pre-adolescent love affair with "Machine Head," I've never totally fallen head-over-heels in love with Deep Purple...There's always a faint ridiculousness about them that keeps me at arm's distance from fully embracing them...I've never run out to buy a Deep Purple record...I usually just pull them out of the dollar bin here and there. so this won't be the comprehensive overview of the band that you might be hoping for (although, folks who read this blog probably know better than to hope for such a thing). Still, I've had a long-time fascination with the band...

I think the mystique comes down to three things...

 
1. Their incredibly deep discography...Sure everyone I knew back in the day owned copies of "Machine Head" or maybe "Perfect Strangers," but whenever you'd go through the cheap tapes at the Drug Store, you'd run across exotic titles like "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" or "The Book of Taliesyn"...How many releases did they have? How long had they been around? It was hard to tell back then, so delving into their back catalog was both exciting and intimidating ...

 2.  Their endless line-up changes...Oh yea, if you wanna sound legit, you've got to refer to the Deep Purple line-up changes as "Marks" or eve better "Mk's"....It was interesting to me that the band would completely change their entire line-up and sound every few albums...When you bought a Deep Purple tape from that cut-out cassette bin, what were you getting? Who knows?

 3. Their complete immersion in a sound that no longer exists...No matter what era a Deep Purple album is from, it's a deep reflection of that era...Their 60's albums are the 60's-iest albums out there...Their early 70's albums are the most meat-and-potatoes dinosaur rock you can buy....Their late 70's albums are quintessentially bland 70's cocaine rock,  and so forth...It also seems that no matter what, nobody seems to be able to put together a band or do a recording that sounds like Deep Purple...You just can't...The technology is all wrong, the tones are all wrong, you'll never get that organ sound...etc...If you're going for that whole early 70's rock vibe, Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin seem to be much easier targets to hit, for some reason...

"Shades of Deep Purple" is their debut album, and different from the Deep Purple sound you're probably expecting (which I assume is the Ian Gillan-lead Mark II version)...I mean, it's still heavy rock, but there's a very strong psychedelic 60's jamming quality to it...Sort of like a mix of Vanilla Fudge, the Hollies and Cream, even if some of those band's don't necessarily fit together...Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, organist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice are already in place, but the bassist and vocalist are different than the famous Mark II line-up...Singer Rod Evans is kind of dull, to be honest...He doesn't ruin anything, but he's just kind of there...During the instrumentals I hardly notice he's gone...

 The only time he ever really comes alive and sounds like he should be there is on their popular cover of "Hush"...

  You suddenly realize he should be in a much groovier, hip-shakin' band than Deep Purple...For example, think back on the song "Mandrake Root"...I honestly can never remember the lyrics or how the vocal melody goes...All I ever remember is the epic showdown between Ritchie's guitar and Jon's Hammond organ...

Speaking of Jon Lord, his organ-playing is the main draw for me...Holy shit, what an amazing sound! It's always that nice, warm, classic Hammond sound with the Leslie effect, but he distorts it like a guitar and it's just the best, juiciest sound I can think of...I want to sink my teeth into it, whenever I hear it...Yes, you read it right, I want to bite down on Jon Lord's juicy organ...Have I creeped you out yet?

You get the impression this album was a bit of a rush job...Like it was just their live set or something...A bunch of instrumental jamming, a ton of cover songs and a couple 60's pop originals ("One More Rainy Day" and "Love Help Me").  The covers are hit and miss for me...The aforementioned "Hush" is classic...I don't even know if I've ever even heard the original Joe South version...Their stamp on it is that indelible...I also like "I'm So Glad," which shows their indebtedness to Cream and rocks good enough...However, I can't stand their cover of "Help." Why is it sooooooo sloooooooooooooowwwwww? Time just stops for me on this one...I think they're shooting for the whole Vanilla Fudge slo-mo cover thing, but man...even Vanilla Fudge is more interesting than this...

Their cover of Hendrix's cover of "Hey Joe" is also pretty pointless...Their only contribution is a ridiculously bombastic bolero intro that sounds like a cross between a bullfight and a ballgame...

Then it goes into the song proper, and it sounds so much like the Hendrix cover that you almost can't believe it...Why even put yourself through that? At best you're saying, "Look, we're so good we can almost sound exactly like Hendrix, but don't get too excited...We would never be able to come up with his radical interpretation ourselves...." Yea, I think they hadn't fully stumbled upon their sound yet...I'll give them a break, it was their first record and I'm saying this album sounds like a weekend job...
I mostly just dig this album out when I feel like some heavy 60's rock but I'm burned out on all the classics...It's nothing great, but it's definitely good... Pretty much a perfect $2.99 record....If you're into that type of late 60's heavy jamming thing and haven't heard it, I'd say go for it...Just don't pay too much for it...

Here's "Mandrake Root" by Deep Purple...Enjoy...