Deep Purple - Shades Of Deep Purple (1968)

Deep Purple’s debut release in 1968, whilst not of the level of their early 70’s albums, contains some very strong material and good performance from all of the members and gets the band’s career off to a great start. Hard rock was in its infancy in 1968, with Cream and Hendrix at the forefront of the scene at that time, but the bands sound here is already pioneering with a strong emphasis on instrumental passages and the embryonic relationship between Jon Lord’s Hammond lines and Richie Blackmore’s riffs and melodic soloing. A 19 year-old Ian Paice also shows no fear, throwing himself into each track with great flair and technical ability – something that was lacking from many drummers of that era but was, largely because of Paice (and Led Zepellin’s John Bonham) to become a major ingredient of rock music during the 1970s.

Opening with the instrumental And The Address you can almost trick yourself into thinking you’re listening to one of the bands later albums as the track features a heavy guitar part from Blackmore interspersed with Hammond breaks and frantic drumming.

The Joe South cover, and ’surprise’ hit single, Hush is up next and is a very well known track from the group, again featuring some stunning playing from Paice and a chugging Hammond/guitar riff to underpin the track. If you’ve only heard Kula Shaker’s rather limp version in the 1990s – or indeed the version released by Purple in 1988 which was dreadful – you really should check this out.

One More Rainy Day follows which is mainstream semi-psychedelia 60’s fayre which is followed by the instrumental Prelude: Happiness, a Purple take on a Rimsky-Korsakov piece, which again displays the musical dexterity of the band’s members and signals an approach the band would take as they really got into their career. I’m So Glad follows the Prelude – a cover and not overly inspiring, albeit containing some nice flourishes from Lord.

Mandrake Root is a track that was to become a staple of Purple’s live set and really shows the direction in which the band would head with the latter part of the track being a lengthy Hammond solo and Blackmore piece, accompanied by frantic drumming from Paice.

The band then turn their attention to covering the Beatles’ Help! Never really a good move to cover a Beatles tune – and here the band really attempt to give it a strong reworking with the verse sung gently by Rod Evans to a picked acoustic guitar and organ backing. The charm, and urgency, of the Beatles’s number is lost here – and the Hammond histrionics from Lord are misplaced. Blackmore however, turns-in a decent solo towards the close of the song but this choice of cover was sadly misguided, but hey it’s Deep Purple so we can forgive them such a faux pas!

Love Help Me opens with a crashing set of chords from Blackmore/Lord and leads into a short wah-wah solo from Blackmore before a fairly traditional 60’s pop song ensues which is only rescued by Blackmore’s soloing later in the track.

Another no-no is up next, a cover of Hey Joe – and yes, Hey Joe wasn’t written by Hendrix but he recorded the definitive version. Here Purple manage to convert it into a lengthy bolero intro over which Lord solos! Rather clumsily this then switches to the familiar verse of Hey Joe which the band play fairly straight before returning to the bolero again briefly and then into a Blackmore solo . . . it nearly works too, nearly.

It’s a really interesting album is Shades Of Deep Purple. You get the impression the band really want to let rip with endless instrumental passages but hold back as it wasn’t really done at that time – they’d yet to ‘invent’ it – so what you get is a pleasant psychedelia-era pop album with numerous outbursts of ripping Hammond and guitar soloing with Paice frantically filling every conceivable gap throughout. Nicky Simper ably backs things up on bass and Rod Evans does what he does well enough . . . but if we’re honest, we all prefer Gillan don’t we?

For those interested in the development of the rock genre, and in Purple, pretty much a compulsory purchase.

• Rod Evans – Vocals
• Ritchie Blackmore – Guitar
• Nick Simper – Bass
• Jon Lord – Keyboards
• Ian Paice – Drums

Graham Bonnet - Line-Up (1981)

Following a rather swift exit from Rainbow after just one album, vocalist Graham Bonnet rounded-up some of his rock luminary friends to produce a solo album, Line-Up, his third and most successful solo release. Featuring the likes of Cozy Powell, Jon Lord and Micky Moody you’d expect quite a strong album and, to be fair, it’s not bad – albeit it’s not greater than the sum of its parts!

Opening with the hit single from the album, Night Games, Bonnet is in fine form with the track itself occupying Rainbow/Whitesnake territory, unsurprisingly, with a very catchy chorus: the single (written by Ed Hamilton – in fact Bonnet didn’t write any of the tracks here) reached number 6 in the UK chart.

SOS is up next, a powerful riff with a driving verse and Bonnet at full vocal stretch – up in the higher registers where he belongs. Micky Moody also puts in a good turn on guitar on this Russ Ballard-penned number (the man behind Rainbow’s Since You’ve Been Gone), a songwriter that was expert in melodic, powerful and catchy rock.

I’m A Lover slips into a slow, bluesy feel – still very much in a Rainbow tradition – with some good vocals and general instrumentation. However, things then go horribly wrong with Line-Up: a cover of the Ronettes’ Be My Baby! Suddenly the band sound like Showaddywaddy, complete with cheesy sax solo – quite what Bonnet was thinking here is anyone’s guess.

Fortunately, a dirty Moody opening riff to That’s The Way That It Is rescues the album for a fairly run of the mill rock plodder. The next track, Liar, is strong and runs around a keyboard/sequencer pattern and nice Joe Walsh-style guitar play from Moody.

Next-up is a reworking of a lesser-known Chuck Berry number, Anthony Boy. As with Be My Baby, this is not good . . . really, really not good at all and some of Bonnet’s band mates should have talked him out of his rock and roll preoccupation.

Dirty Hand is back on a rock footing but is not particularly dynamic and has an awful keyboard sound bursting through now and again. Fortunately, Night Games’ B-side Out On The Water is up next which is quite a belter, opening with a good Moody riff and an uptempo feel – not enough to make Cozy Powell break sweat, but enough to get the toe tapping! There’s also some trademark Micky Moody slide guitar soloing too, which is always good.

Don’t Stand In The Open moves to really bland late-70’s chart material territory and the closing track, Set Me Free does little to lift the sense of despair that slowly creeps in listening to this album at how such a decent bunch of rock musicians could produce such an inconsistent and, in the main, poor album.

You would think that mixing musicians from Rainbow, Deep Purple and Whitesnake together you’d get a real gem of an album but they seem here to be quite disinterested and merely going through the motions for their mate. Bonnet gives a reasonably strong performance throughout but struggles to lift both the backing band and some of the song choices – you can certainly tell which tracks the band enjoyed and which ones they rather wished they didn’t have to play.

For novelty value worth a listen but far from a classic in any way, shape or form! To be fair, Bonnet wasn’t best pleased with the album as he thought the ‘rock’ had been mixed-out of the tracks by the producer in his absence . . . he wasn’t wrong.

• Graham Bonnet – Vocals
• Micky Moody – Guitar
• Cozy Powell – Drums
• Gary Twigg – Bass
• Jon Lord – Keyboards

Whitesnake - Come And Get It (1981)

Whilst during the late 1980s David Coverdale may have stretched his musical credibility a little too far being at the forefront of the ‘cock rock’ minefield, back in the early 1980s Whitesnake were a hard rocking blues-tinged band producing unsurprisingly Deep Purple-esque rock numbers – albeit with largely one-dimensional lyrics courtesy of Mr Coverdale – as the band featured ex-Purple drummer Ian Paice, ex-Purple keyboardist Jon Lord and, of course, Coverdale himself.

Come An’ Get It is a prime example of this era of Whitesnake and is a very strong album. Coverdale is vocally in very good form, Ian Paice hadn’t descended into the plodding metronome that would blight his later career (checkout the drum breaks on Hot Stuff, for example) and Jon Lord had remembered where he kept his Hammond. The twin-guitar work of Bernie Marsden and Mick Moody also provided some great riffs and bluesy, soulful and harmonic soloing.

The title track kicks-off Whitesnake’s fifth studio album in style, followed by the up-tempo Hot Stuff and ‘hit’ single Don’t Break My Heart Again which reached number 17 in the UK charts with the album itself attaining the number 2 spot.

Other standout tracks are the Quo-esque rock and roll Wine, Women And Song (that’s Quo-esque when Quo were at their ‘Hello’ period), the powerful Child Of Babylon and the semi-acoustic ‘Til The Day I Die.

Quite what happened to Whitesnake a couple of albums later is a moot point but certainly for those of you who wish to hear them at their bluesy and most credible best, this album is essential listening.

• David Coverdale – Vocals
• Micky Moody – Guitar
• Bernie Marsden – Guitar
• Jon Lord – Keyboards
• Neil Murray – Bass
• Ian Paice – Drums

Deep Purple - Machine Head (1972)

As seminal albums go, Deep Purple’s 1972 Machine Head has to be near the top of the heap. I stumbled across this gem purely by accident at about 14 after seeing Ian Paice, then drummer with the Gary Moore band, on BBC2’s Rockschool programme and – as a budding drummer myself – wanted to hear more of his playing. A friend mentioned that he thought Paice used to be in Deep Purple, of whom I’d not heard, but trundled I off to the nearest record shop and randomly picked Machine Head . . . purely a stroke of luck that went a large way to shaping my musical tastes for many years to come.

Featuring the Mark II Gillan-Glover lineup of Purple, the album really captures Purple at the peak of their powers. I’m sure most people are aware of the drama around its recording where the venue in Montreaux to be used burnt down during a Frank Zappa gig leading to Purple being offered the use of a closed for off-season hotel to lay down the tracks . . . providing inspiration for one of the band’s most famous compositions, Smoke On The Water, which is featured here.

The impromptu venue change certainly helped Purple focus their minds as Machine Head is a belter from start to finish, a real career defining moment. From the driving Highway Star to the blues stylings of Lazy, all members of the band were firing on all cylinders with Paice, in particular, at the top of his game with an endless supply of rapid fire rolls.

Whilst Smoke On The Water is possibly the most famous track from Machine Head, there’s no fillers here, and Pictures From Home also conjures up the mindset of the band recording in a freezing hotel in the Alps “with emptiness, eagles and snow, Unfriendliness chilling my body. And whispering pictures of home”.

For the 25th anniversary of the album a Special Edition has also been released featuring alternate versions of a handful of the tracks and the excellent When A Blind Man Cries which was recorded at the sessions but didn’t make the final cut of the original album and is well worth purchasing.

If you only buy one Deep Purple album, I would recommend that Machine Head is the one: hear the band at their best before Gillan – Blackmore bickering led to the demise of their greatest lineup after the band’s follow-up release.

• Ian Gillan – Vocals
• Ian Paice – Drums
• Richie Blackmore – Guitar
• Jon Lord – Keyboards
• Roger Glover – Bass

Deep Purple - Slaves And Masters (1990)

I have to say that a glimpse of the cover alone should be reason enough to give this Deep Purple album a wide birth! However, before die-hard Purple fans feel too aggrieved, I too am a long-time Purple fan and as such soooo wanted to play this album and feel the same excitement I did when I first put Machine Head on the turntable some 25 years ago, but alas, it was not to be.

The album features the ‘classic’ Mark II lineup minus Ian Gillan with extremely able ex-Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn turner providing the vocals. As a concept, that sounds quite good but when put into practice what was actually achieved was a dismal affair indeed.

The band sounds like they were merely going through the motions – Lynn Turner himself admits that the band were under pressure to update their sound and be more ‘commercial’ and so we don’t get any of the distinctive halcyon days Purple sound here, rather a bland and uninspiring AOR album. Jon Lord’s grinding Hammond and Ian Paice’s quick-fire rolls are sadly absent throughout – as are apparently a lack of ideas.

Never has the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ been ignored more completely than in their post comeback output with this being a prime example.

• Ritchie Blackmore – Guitar
• Roger Glover – Bass
• Jon Lord – Keyboards
• Ian Paice – Drums
• Joe Lynn Turner – Vocals