In May 1965, a band called Episode Six
became popular on the British music scene and became particularly popular in
the mid-sixties. It featured Ian Gillan on vocals, Graham Dimmock on guitar, Roger
Glover on bass, Tony Lander on guitar, Sheila Carter on keyboards,
and Harvey Shields on the drums.
Two years later, a band called
The
Flowerpot Men and their Garden was formed, formerly known as
The Ivy
League. It was concentrated on a trio of singers. The new name was clearly
derived from the children's show, The
Flowerpot Men, with the obvious psychedelic-era
puns on flower
power and “pot.” The band’s most popular song was “Let’s Go To San Francisco." Some
listeners assumed that the song was a parody of Scott
McKenzie's “If You're Going to San Francisco,”
but the band have denied this. It featured Tony
Burrows, Neil Landon, Robin Shaw, and Pete Nelson on vocals, Ged Stone on guitar.
In 1968, the group Roundabout
formed, consisting of Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on Hammond
organ, Chris Curtis on vocals, and others.
After only a month of
rehearsals, Blackmore and Lord split from the group. The two joined forces with
vocalist Rod
Evans, bassist Nick Simper and drummer Ian Paice.
The new band was named Deep Purple.
In October 1968, the group had
tremendous success in the US with its cover of Joe South’s
“Hush,” taken from their acclaimed debut album Shades of Deep Purple. In 1969, two more
successful albums followed: The Book of Taliesyn and Deep Purple,
the latter of which contained a symphony orchestra on some tracks. After three
albums and extensive touring in the States, it was the inclusion of vocalist Ian Gillan
(who replaced Evans) and bassist Roger
Glover (who replaced Simper) that created the essential Deep Purple
line-up. Initially, this line-up released a landmark album in Concerto for Group and Orchestra
a three-part movement written by Lord and performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Malcolm Arnold. It is widely known as the first
successful collaboration between a rock band and an orchestra.
Shortly after the orchestral release, the band shocked the music world by
creating extremely heavy, hard rock music, and thus becoming a pioneer in the
world of heavy metal. Their heaviness was only rivaled by newcomers Black
Sabbath. During this period, Deep Purple became one of the most
popular hard rock acts in the world, releasing the highly influential and
successful albums Deep Purple in Rock, Fireball,
and Machine
Head (the latter featuring their most famous song, “Smoke on the Water”), and the live album Made in Japan.
The classic line-up continued
up through the album Who Do We Think We Are (1973) at which point
both Gillan and Glover left. They were replaced by an unknown singer named David
Coverdale and Glenn Hughes on bass and vocals. This new line-up
continued seamlessly into 1974 with the album Burn,
another highly successful Purple album. Hughes and Coverdale added a funky R&B/soul
sound to the band’s heavy metal elements, a sound that was even more apparent
on the 1975 release Stormbringer. Blackmore was not happy with
the results, and as a result he left to form his own band Rainbow.
With Blackmore's departure, Deep
Purple was left to fill one of the biggest vacancies in rock. The gap was
filled by the prodigiously talented Tommy Bolin
who had established himself as a vivid imaginative guitarist with acts, such as
Zephyr,
James Gang
and Billy
Cobham. On the face of it Bolin was just what the doctor ordered. However,
the subsequent album, 1976's Come Taste the Band, for all its quality,
proved unpopular with die-hard fans and didn't attract any new ones. Bolin
himself turned out not to be ready for the job of filling Blackmore's shoes,
suffering hostility from some crowds while turning in performances of highly
variable quality. He had a drug habit, which made matters all the worse. After
a particularly traumatic tour to promote Come Taste the Band, the band
broke up. Later Tommy Bolin died of a drug overdose whilst on tour supporting
Jeff Beck.
Subsequently, most of the past
members of Deep Purple would go on to have considerable success in a
number of other bands including Rainbow,
Whitesnake
and Gillan, while there were a number of promoter-led attempts
to get the band to reform especially with the revival of the hard rock market
in the late 70s/early 80s.
In April 1984,
eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, it happened. It was
announced on BBC radio's The Friday Rock Show that the “classic” early
70s line-up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, and Paice was reforming and
recording new material. The band signed a deal with Polydor in
Europe and Mercury in North America. The album Perfect Strangers was released in
October 1984 and the tour followed, starting in New Zealand
and winding its way across the world into Europe by the following summer. It
was a tremendous success. The UK homecoming proved mixed as they elected to
play just a single festival show (with main support from The
Scorpions).
The line-up recorded and toured
The House of Blue Light in 1987 though to lower
sales; a live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) was culled from
US shows on this tour. While in the UK a new version of “Hush” was released to
mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Ian Gillan quit the band again, as his
relations with Blackmore soured. His replacement was former Rainbow
vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. This line up recorded just one
album, Slaves and Masters (1990), and toured in
support of it.
With the tour done, Turner was
forced to go as Jon Lord and Ian Paice realized they needed Gillan back in the
fold. Blackmore relented and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On in 1993. During the
support tour in mid-1994,
tensions between Gillan and Blackmore came to a head yet again. Blackmore
walked out, never to return and leaving the band in a fix. Joe
Satriani was drafted in, so the live dates (in Japan) could be
completed. Satriani was asked to join full time, but declined. The band
auditioned guitarists, and Steve Morse of Dixie Dregs
impressed them enough to get the gig.
The revitalized band
enjoyed success throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the critically
acclaimed Purpendicular in 1996, and Abandon in 1998. Most of this
period was spent on the road via constant touring. The group continued forward
until 2002, when
founding member Jon Lord (who, along with Ian Paice, was the only member to be
in all incarnations of the band) announced he was leaving the band to pursue
personal projects (especially orchestral work). Rock keyboard veteran Don Airey
(Rainbow/Whitesnake, etc.), who had helped Purple out when Lord was injured in 2001, joined the band.
In 2003, Deep
Purple released their first studio album in five years, the highly praised Bananas,
and began touring in support of the album immediately.
Despite their association with the sub-genre, Deep
Purple has never been purely a heavy metal band, though many later heavy
metal bands cite their influence. The group has frequently changed styles and
line-ups over the years, but has always included virtuoso players in its ranks
and placed a high priority on musicianship. Some incarnations of Deep Purple
have brought aspects of jazz to a rock context due to their frequent use of
their songs as vehicles for extended and sophisticated solos.
