Deep Purple (aka Deep Purple 111) closes the first chapter as they move into the ever-heavier territory and establish a foothold in America. Meanwhile, Blackmore was winning a reputation as one of the slickest, fastest and loudest axe men on the planet – check his work on “Wring That Neck”. Metallic as they wanted to be there are also similarities with the prog leaning acts of the era like King Crimson and early Yes.
More progressive now, they still found room for a second Beatles number in “We Can Work It Out” and a lengthy assault on the Barry, Greenwich, Spector Wall-of-Sound masterpiece “River Deep, Mountain High” which includes a segment from Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, familiar to all at the time since it’s inclusion in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Second album The Book of Taliesyn became a greatcoat student’s must-have item. Producer Derek Lawrence, like Blackmore an old associate of the legendary Joe Meek, did the console honours and brought out superb performances on the opening instrumental “And the Address”, the garage anthem “Hey Joe”, a souped-up take on The Beatles’ “Help!” and the band penned “Prelude: Happiness/I’m So Glad”. Months of rehearsal at rented farmhouse Deeves Hall paid dividends.
Their debut album Shades of Deep Purple (1968) featured classical passages and magnificently assured acid rock with a hard edge. Despite a strong following in the south of England Deep Purple, named after a 1930s swing era standard, actually hit first in North America with a cover of Joe South’s “Hush” and a radio favourite, another cover, Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman”. Singer Rod Evans, his mate Paice, and original bassist Nick Simper completed a heady quintet. It’s 1967 and a new rock project is mooted featuring classically trained Hammond organist Jon Lord and soon to arrive from the Hamburg scene, the guitar wizard Blackmore.
Other significant members guitarist Tommy Bolin, singer David Coverdale, bassist and vocalist Glenn Hughes, current guitarist Steve Morse, keyboards man Don Airey and company have become a part of this tradition so that when you listen to them or go to see them play you know they have as much respect for their profession as they did when they started out playing psychedelia and blues and even folk-rock in British clubs back in the sixties. Their forte has been to maintain a standard and integrity that is shown by the care and attention to detail on their albums. By 1972 they were about as big as you can get. Progressive in the best sense, Deep Purple have also enjoyed single hit success with the definitive anthems “Black Night”, “Smoke on The Water”, “Strange Kind of Woman” and the epic “Fireball” ensuring the band’s name buzzed from the underground to the school playground to the sixth form common rooms of the land.