Who Says "DEEP PURPLE's Not Prog"?!

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:05]Deep Purple is often referred to as one of the big three bands of hard rock and heavy metal.

[00:00:13]The other two bands being Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

[00:00:18]And Deep Purple were not particularly keen in the early 1970s when their Mark II lineup featuring Ian Gillan and Roger Glover grew big on a worldwide scale in being associated with the progressive rock movement. They were much more happy being associated with Zeppelin and Sabbath and the other hard rock bands of that era.

[00:00:46]But make no mistake, Deep Purple had a progressive bent to their music.

[00:00:52]The hard rock band version of Deep Purple, that is the Mark II version, as well as the earlier Mark I version of the band fronted by Rod Evans and largely propelled by the songwriting of Jon Lord were very progressive in their style and structure.

[00:01:12]Deep Purple's career arc began in late 1967.

[00:01:17]Deep Purple wasn't initially envisioned as a conventional band.

[00:01:23]The band's managers, Tony Edwards and John Coletta, envisioned a project that they would title Roundabout in which Edwards and Coletta would employ a rotating group of musicians to allow them to employ different styles of music over the course of time with the different musicians, hence the name Roundabout.

[00:01:47]In order to get the project started, they enlisted the services of two experienced musicians.

[00:01:54]The first hire was the keyboardist Jon Lord, who at this point already had a fairly lengthy pedigree, having worked most recently at this time with the Flower Pot Men and with The Artwoods.

[00:02:07]They also employed the bassist, Nick Simper.

[00:02:11]Simper had for several years worked as the bassist with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates.

[00:02:17]Simper in turn suggested that Edwards and Coletta hire an acquaintance of his to play guitar, Ritchie Blackmore.

[00:02:26]A drummer was also secured for the project, and Edwards and Coletta, along with the band members, began looking for a compatible vocalist.

[00:02:37]They ultimately found one in Rod Evans, who was working with a band at the time called The Maze, which also included the drummer, Ian Paice.

[00:02:46]Evans signed on to be part of the project, and Paice was invited to join him, replacing the original drummer, and the Deep Purple Mark I lineup, as it was called, was established in late 1967.

[00:03:02]Edwards and Coletta were able to secure a record company contract for the band, now known as Deep Purple, in early 1968, with EMI Records in London.

[00:03:14]However, EMI's affiliate in the United States, Capitol Records, did not pick up the contract. EMI was at this point in the late '60s somewhat wary of taking on new British bands in the wake of psychedelia. They had already taken on Pink Floyd in particular, and hadn't been particularly impressed with the results at this early stage during Floyd's Syd Barrett era.

[00:03:39]Given this, Deep Purple secured an American record contract with a new label founded around this same time, in early 1968, Tetragrammaton Records.

[00:03:53]Tetragrammaton was owned by the Hollywood agent Roy Silver and was financed by Silver's largest client, the comedian Bill Cosby, who was signed with Warner Brothers Records and at the time due for a contract renewal.

[00:04:09]Silver would make the deal that Warner would distribute Tetragrammaton's records and that Cosby would, in turn, record for Tetragrammaton, therefore keeping Cosby within the Warner Brothers stable of artists.

[00:04:23]In the early days at Tetragrammaton, Roy Silver spared no expense on promotion or on recording costs.

[00:04:30]He wanted his artists to look good and he wanted to put Tetragrammaton on the map quickly.

[00:04:37]And he did with Deep Purple.

[00:04:39]Deep Purple quickly recorded their first album in early 1968.

[00:04:45]They recorded the entire album at De Lane Lee Studios with Derek Lawrence producing in just three days.

[00:04:54]Shades of Deep Purple would come out in July on both sides of the Atlantic.

[00:05:00]At the time Shades of Deep Purple was recorded, Deep Purple did not have very much in the way of original songs to their credit. Jon Lord was a budding songwriter but still relatively inexperienced.

[00:05:15]Ritchie Blackmore was at that time not much of a songwriter at all, although he would quickly improve in the early days of the band.

[00:05:25]In late 1967 and early 1968, one of the biggest hit bands on both sides of the Atlantic was Vanilla Fudge, who had made their mark with their debut album in 1967 by releasing a set of hard rock cover versions, notably different from the originals, with no original Vanilla Fudge songs present within the album's program.

[00:05:51]While Shades of Deep Purple did not completely exclude original material, there were a few original songs on the album.

[00:05:59]The album focused largely on cover versions as Vanilla Fudge's debut did.

[00:06:05]One of these covers, Deep Purple's version of Joe South's tune Hush, which had been a minor hit in the United States for South's protégé Billy Joe Royal about a year before, was a surprise hit in the United States, making the top 10.

[00:06:23]Shades of Deep Purple in the United States would be a relatively sizable hit for Tetragrammaton, reaching number 24 on the Billboard charts.

[00:06:33]Deep Purple were very quickly a hot commodity and Tetragrammaton wanted to capitalize on this.

[00:06:42]The band did not have a whole lot of chart action in the UK, but given that they were experiencing success in the United States, Roy Silver wanted the band to quickly record a second album in order that they had a full-length set to tour behind in the States in late 1968.

[00:07:02]Deep Purple's second album, The Book of Taliesyn, was released in December of 1968 and Deep Purple toured behind the album for much of late 1968 and early 1969.

[00:07:16]Upon completing the tour, Deep Purple returned to England and were tasked to create a follow-up album, album number three, which was the self-titled album Deep Purple.

[00:07:29]This album showed significant maturity on Deep Purple's part as songwriters.

[00:07:35]Blackmore, Lord, and Evans wrote some very interesting material for this album, including the song inspired by the film Rosemary's Baby, Why Didn't Rosemary, and the lengthy piece April, which in essence was the mashing together of a Jon Lord classically oriented piece inspired by the work of Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov on one hand along with a piece written largely by Blackmore as the back end of the song comprising the total length piece of about 12 minutes.

[00:08:13]The third album, however, did not receive a significant amount of attention in the United States.

[00:08:19]In part because Tetragrammaton was not in a position to promote it.

[00:08:24]They were losing money quickly.

[00:08:27]In the short time since Deep Purple had joined Tetragrammaton a year before, the label had released some 20 albums on various artists.

[00:08:37]Of those artists, the only ones that are still notable today are Deep Purple and Bill Cosby.

[00:08:45]So, a lot of money was spent on artists that did not make any money for the firm.

[00:08:51]Tetragrammaton also had gone out on a limb on a project that they would regret. This project was one that at least on the surface looked like it would be a great benefit to this startup company. It was the release of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's album Two Virgins.

[00:09:09]Two Virgins sported a cover photo of John and Yoko standing in the nude.

[00:09:15]The cover art was of a nature that EMI Records in the United States did not want to distribute the album. They were fearful that they might possibly face legal action for distributing pornography if they did.

[00:09:29]Tetragrammaton, however, decided to take the risk and took on distribution of the album.

[00:09:35]They financed the pressing of some 30,000 copies of the album, which were promptly seized by federal authorities at a warehouse in New Jersey where they were housed.

[00:09:47]The label was unable to sell the album as a result. Only very few copies of two versions on the Tetragrammaton label came out when the album was first pressed.

[00:09:59]And this, along with the significant amount of promotional dollars that Tetragrammaton had spent on artists that hadn't gone anywhere in 1968 and 1969, came back to haunt Roy Silver. He wasn't in a position to promote Deep Purple's third album, and while it was a strong album, it received virtually no radio airplay.

[00:10:23]Deep Purple had yet to find significant success in the UK at this point as well.

[00:10:29]They were reasonably well known in the United States.

[00:10:32]Their first album had reached number 24 on the Billboard charts, as I said.

[00:10:37]Their second album, The Book of Taliesyn, wasn't as successful, but it reached number 54 on Billboard, which again was a respectable showing.

[00:10:47]However, the third album, not reaching the charts at all, due to Tetragrammaton's lack of promotion, was a setback for the band.

[00:10:57]At this time, in order to get back on track in the States and to establish itself in the UK, Blackmore, Lord, and Paice, who essentially were driving the musical direction of the band, agreed that they would attempt to put a harder edge on some of their music. In thinking about taking a more hard rock approach with the band, Blackmore, Lord, and Paice reached the conclusion that Rod Evans probably wouldn't be a suitable singer for some of the new material that they were envisioning. And they moved to replace him and ultimately did with the singer from arrival band, episode six, Ian Gillan.

[00:11:38]Gillan would join Deep Purple in late 1969, replacing Rod Evans.

[00:11:43]And he would bring the bass player from episode six, Roger Glover, along with him, replacing Nick Simper.

[00:11:51]The legendary Deep Purple Mark II lineup that would dominate the charts from 1970 through 1973 was now established.

[00:12:03]The first recording by Deep Purple's Mark II lineup was something of a departure from the direction that Blackmore, Lord, and Paice had agreed to go.

[00:12:13]The album featured an orchestral suite of music written by Jon Lord, Deep Purple's Concerto for Group and Orchestra. Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan were not particularly delighted with this release, but Lord was very keen to get it out.

[00:12:30]And a compromise was struck between Blackmore and Lord, where Blackmore said, "I'll do this with you, and if it's successful, we'll continue down this route.

[00:12:39]However, if it's not, I want the band to pursue the heavier route that we had discussed."

[00:12:45]Lord agreed.

[00:12:47]As it turned out, the Concerto for Group and Orchestra was not very much of a success.

[00:12:53]The music that Lord wrote, while compelling, was not tightly integrated between the orchestra and the rock band, and the performance suffered as a result of it.

[00:13:05]What Blackmore and Gillan were much more interested in were the songs that they were writing in parallel.

[00:13:12]In performances of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, one of the new songs, Child in Time, was previewed along with the orchestral suite.

[00:13:22]Child in Time was indicative, in a large way, of the new direction that Deep Purple would take.

[00:13:29]And it turned people's heads, to be sure.

[00:13:33]Two listeners who heard Child in Time and were impressed by it were the composers Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who would in turn hire Ian Gillan to work with them on their Jesus Christ Superstar project in the role of Jesus Christ.

[00:13:53]While Ritchie Blackmore has always been reluctant to give significant credit to the Jesus Christ Superstar project and Gillan's participation in it as having relaunched Deep Purple on a worldwide basis, it certainly did have an impact to the degree where Deep Purple ultimately, when the band reformed in the 1980s, would incorporate pieces of one of the songs from the Superstar project, Gethsemane, in their performances of the Deep Purple song Perfect Strangers.

[00:14:26]Deep Purple would, in their follow-up album released in the summer of 1970, Deep Purple in Rock, include Child in Time along with another song, Black Night, largely written by Blackmore, that would be Deep Purple's first top 10 record in the UK.

[00:14:46]Deep Purple had at last cracked their home country and were again getting good traction in the United States.

[00:14:55]By this point, Tetragrammaton Records had declared bankruptcy and their assets were acquired by their US distributor, Warner Brothers Records.

[00:15:06]Warner Brothers would continue to work with Deep Purple as the Mark II version of the band reached prominence and Deep Purple would continue with Warners until the band's initial breakup in 1976.

[00:15:20]Obviously, as I mentioned, the Mark 1 version of Deep Purple with John Lord doing much of the songwriting was definitely progressive flavored with a lot of classical music influence in the compositions that the band were creating.

[00:15:37]As I said, Ritchie Blackmore never really wanted to label Deep Purple as a progressive act in the early 1970s. But there were definitely influences from other types of music in what Deep Purple were doing in the early 70s beyond just hard rock.

[00:15:57]Black Night, Ritchie Blackmore's song from Deep Purple in Rock, incorporated parts of an arrangement that Rick Nelson had done with the Wrecking Crew some years before of George Gershwin's song Summertime.

[00:16:11]Blackmore would indeed, several years later, raid the Gershwin songbook yet again to create the opening riff for the great song Burn.

[00:16:22]And Blackmore would not be shy to steal ideas from classical music as well where he thought he could make them work within the Deep Purple repertoire.

[00:16:31]The sequence of arpeggios that Blackmore utilizes during his solo in Highway Star are a case in point where these are very clearly influenced by the work of J.S.

[00:16:42]Bach.

[00:16:44]In later years, various artists would make the comment that they were not just influenced by Deep Purple when they decided to pursue a musical path of their own, but influenced by the fact that Ritchie Blackmore in particular was so classically informed in his approach.

[00:17:03]Very notably, Yngwie Malmsteen, when he arrived on the music scene in the 1980s, would comment that Deep Purple's album Fireball was a tremendous inspiration to him in becoming a musician because of Blackmore's classical tendencies on that album, particularly in the solo that Blackmore pursued on that album's long-form piece Fools.

[00:17:30]Contemporaries of Deep Purple's would also comment that they pursued a similar path because of the progressive nature of Purple's music.

[00:17:40]The band Uriah Heep in particular was often referred to back in the early '70s as a Deep Purple clone because of their reliance on heavy keyboards from their keyboardist Ken Hensley and the operatic style vocals of their vocalist David Byron.

[00:18:00]I personally suspect that Deep Purple wasn't Uriah Heep's only influence though.

[00:18:06]And that is because Ken Hensley, some years before, was in an earlier band called The Gods, a bandmate of Greg Lake prior to Greg Lake's joining King Crimson.

[00:18:18]In fact, one of Uriah Heep's most notable songs from the album that would be their breakthrough in the United States, Demons and Wizards in 1972, was Circle of Hands, which bears, at least in my opinion, something of a debt to a rather famous King Crimson song.

[00:18:39]But that's perhaps a story for another day.

[00:18:43]Anyway, that is it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed this as always.

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