Deep Purple hard rock pioneers in the truest sense, the band carved a path through the late 1960s and early 1970s that would define what heavy music could be, sitting alongside Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin in the unholy trinity that built the blueprint for an entire genre. In 2012, singer Ian Gillan and drummer Ian Paice looked back on all of it: the lineup chaos, the Guinness records, the near-collapses, and the moments of genuine lightning-in-a-bottle genius.
From the beginning: how Deep Purple hard rock pioneers found their sound
The story starts in 1968, when the band released their debut album Shades Of Deep Purple. A cover of Joe South’s Hush gave them a surprise American hit, and they moved fast, touring the US with Cream and rushing out a second album, the spacey Book Of Taliesyn. It sold respectably in the States but yielded nothing to write home about. Their self-titled 1969 record changed the direction entirely: wrapped in a nightmarish Bosch cover, the airy acid-delicacy of their earlier work was replaced by tribal thumping and proto-metal riff-rock. Songs like Chasing Shadows and Bird Has Flown were stark and brutal. The album tanked commercially, but it made clear which way the band wanted to go.
The problem was that not everyone in the group agreed. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and keyboard player Jon Lord wanted to pursue the heavier direction; vocalist Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper did not. Within months, Evans and Simper were out. Simper went on to form Warhorse. Evans moved to the US and joined Captain Beyond. Then Purple caught Ian Gillan’s pop-psyche band Episode Six, and everything shifted.
Gillan and Episode Six bassist Roger Glover were brought on board. ‘We had some great musicians,’ explains Paice, Purple’s only constant member throughout the band’s entire history. ‘What we didn’t have were great songwriters, which is what we got with Ian and Roger.’
The revamped lineup recorded 1970’s In Rock, a watershed moment. It eventually scraped the top five rock charts in the UK and produced two classics: the ramshackle Speed King and the throbbing, ten-minute Child In Time. ‘It was a huge leap into another dimension, musically,’ says Paice. ‘We had no idea if it’d be successful, but it was great fun to play.’
Machine Head, the Guinness record and the making of an anthem
The two years that followed were relentless. Fireball came out first and hit number one on the UK charts. Then, in time for Christmas 1971, Machine Head arrived. It opened with Highway Star, written on the bus to a gig and performed that same night in Portsmouth. ‘People wouldn’t believe it, but fortunately we had a few journalists on the bus,’ says Gillan.
Machine Head also contained Smoke On The Water, based on an incident the band witnessed at the Montreux Casino, where Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention were playing when a fan fired a flare gun, setting the venue ablaze. Purple watched the fire from their hotel, with Roger Glover observing how the smoke drifted across Lake Geneva. The song ran to seven minutes and was ignored by radio until someone at Warner Brothers cut it down. ‘The edit followed the rules of the radio, and it became a hit,’ Gillan says.
In 1972, after a particularly punishing gig at the London Rainbow Theater, Guinness World Records recognised Deep Purple as the loudest band in the world. Paice is characteristically dry about it. ‘The Who were probably louder. We were just the first to have meters to record our volume levels. Still, you needed something to stick out those days, and loud worked.’ August of that year brought the double-live Made In Japan, seven songs across four sides of vinyl, illuminating the jammy sprawl of their live show and Blackmore’s guitar heroics. It cemented the band’s global reach.
Purple weren’t Bowie-sexy or Sabbath-sinister. They were something simpler and more durable: everyman hard rock, the weekend release valve for wage slaves and high school zeroes. Their fans covered their jackets in badges, wore the t-shirts every day, and grew their hair as long as mum or the boss would allow.
Collapse, reinvention and the Perfect Strangers reunion
By the summer of 1972, Gillan had already decided to walk. The music had become formulaic, the personal chemistry had broken down, and he finished one more album, 1973’s Who Do We Think We Are, before leaving. ‘I was very sad and uninspired,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d quit while I was ahead.’ He built a hotel. He dabbled in motorbikes. He never expected to sing again.
The band carried on, drafting Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. They played the California Jam in April 1974, a festival that drew over 250,000 people and was broadcast on US television. Burn and Stormbringer both went gold in the States, with Burn cracking the Top 10. Then Blackmore departed in 1975 to form Rainbow, Tommy Bolin came in, the resulting record sold poorly, and Bolin’s drug use tore what remained of the band apart. Deep Purple called it quits at the end of a UK tour in March 1976. Bolin died of a heroin overdose a few months later.
The reunion happened through a combination of a footballer’s candour and a very long dinner. After Gillan had returned to rock with the Gillan Band, a hero of his named Rodney Marsh came backstage, praised the show, and told him he still wasn’t as good as Deep Purple. ‘He said, “Well, why the fuck don’t you get them back together again?” If the greatest hero in your life said something like that to you… I figured I must at least try it.’ First, though, Gillan got drunk with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler and ended up joining Black Sabbath, releasing the Born Again album in 1983 and touring the world with a Stonehenge stage prop.
By the time Gillan returned to Purple, there was ground to make up on more than one front. During the years the band had been dormant, Jon Lord had moved on to Whitesnake, according to Ultimate Classic Rock, and reassembling the classic lineup required everyone to step back from where their careers had taken them. It happened anyway. The five-piece of Gillan, Blackmore, Lord, Paice and Glover convened to record Perfect Strangers in 1984. ‘We met in secret and had a rehearsal,’ says Gillan. ‘It was obvious within 20 minutes of jamming that everything was gonna be fine.’
Perfect Strangers was a smash on both sides of the Atlantic. But the Gillan-Blackmore friction that had always simmered eventually boiled over again. By 1989 Gillan was out, replaced by Joe Lynn Turner for one album, 1990’s Slaves and Masters. Fans shrugged. Purple’s 25th anniversary loomed, and the band didn’t want to mark it without their real singer. Gillan rejoined for 1993’s The Battle Rages On, their 14th studio album. Blackmore quit on the eve of a Japanese tour, tearing up his visa in what Gillan describes as a ‘very dramatic’ exit.
Joe Satriani stepped in to complete the tour schedule, and Steve Morse was signed on permanently in 1994, recording Purpendicular a year later. Jon Lord later retired from the band and was replaced by Don Airey. Lord died in 2012, the same year Gillan and Paice gave this interview. Purple kept going, releasing studio albums and steadily touring through the decades that followed.
‘You don’t have to worry about egos anymore,’ says Paice. ‘Now all you have to worry about is remembering the songs.’
