Deep Purple - Hard Rock at White Noise

Deep Purple are one of the pivotal bands in hard rock, inferior perhaps only to Led Zeppelin, compared to whom they probably never had the same inclination towards experimentation and sonic exploration. That said, one shouldn't think Deep Purple were entirely devoid of originality; their blend of thunder and refined melody, combined with an undeniable elegance of execution, was something new within the rougher end of rock. Their best music comes across as extremely simple and accessible, yet never banal: still, a portion of the critics tend to downplay their worth, dismissing the band as purveyors of records that are too facile and ordinary. In truth, during the band's golden period there's a clear willingness to open up to a very wide range of sounds and styles; this quality is an added value that sets Deep Purple apart from the many bands who would later dryly rehash some of their brilliant solutions without the same taste, helping to flatten and impoverish the hard rock "scene". These particular qualities are often claimed by the band's own members, to the point that Ian Gillan said in a relatively recent interview: "What saddens me most is seeing our name today associated exclusively with the metal world; in reality we moved in a field with no fixed boundaries, our music ranged from Black Sabbath to Marc Bolan, and we threw in everything in between."

The band forms around organist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore; both come from a classical musical background and are fascinated by the fledgling symphonic pop of Moody Blues and Vanilla Fudge, but an even stronger pull comes from American rhythm & blues, a passion shared with the other members: Ian Paice on drums, Rod Evans on vocals and Nick Simper on bass. So their first, still-unripe records Shades Of Deep Purple and The Book Of Taliesyn try to reconcile these influences, with results that are little more than modest; they're essentially collections of original tracks interspersed with covers, rounding out a still rather thin repertoire. There are a few classical quotations here and there (in "And The Address" or "River Deep, Mountain High"), rather forced and not especially convincing. Still, Deep Purple taste their first commercial success thanks to a cover of "Hush" (written by Joe South), which puts them on the wider public's radar. This kicks off their first long tours, extremely useful for homing in on the sound the band were chasing, one that would be built on Lord's powerful, mustachioed Hammond organ and Blackmore's guitar playing, at once refined and energetic.

The following self-titled album (1969) marks a clear step forward: convincing, well-built songs played with fresh drive. The excellent "Why Didn't Roselary" features Blackmore's first great solo, while Lord indulges his taste for classical form on the baroque "Blind" and above all on "April", a long track played alternately by the band and a symphony orchestra (arranged by the keyboardist himself). The tour following the release of "Deep Purple" is a hit with audiences, but Lord and Blackmore sense that further improvement requires a change to the lineup: Simper and Evans are pushed out, replaced respectively by Roger Glover and Ian Gillan. The choice proves spot-on from the new lineup's very first shows, a line-up that would later become known as Mark II: Glover is a bassist with a sober style, solid enough to anchor the long solo excursions the two leaders love to indulge in live, while Gillan is a hugely talented singer as well as an excellent frontman. Once settled, the band becomes a veritable "live machine", as documented by blistering bootlegs still easy to find today. They also write plenty of new material: the single "Black Night" is one example, an aggressive, highly catchy hard-blues number that quickly becomes extremely well known. But just as the band seems set to rocket to the top of hard rock, Jon Lord surprises everyone by throwing himself into an ambitious and daring project of his own: a symphonic concert for band and orchestra, held in September '69 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Lord handles the writing and the orchestral arrangement (the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is enlisted for the occasion), while the band is left relatively little room. Overall the concert is enjoyable and offers some gripping moments, even if some of the arrangements probably come across as a touch too overblown.

Having set aside the symphonic experiment, in 1970 the band releases the now-legendary Deep Purple In Rock; probably their masterpiece, it's a record bursting with energy and packed with superb songs. The sound is deliberately raw and rough, yet everything is crafted with remarkable taste. The tour that follows cements Deep Purple as one of the top acts on the British rock scene.

But the band doesn't rest on its laurels, and when Fireball comes out in '71, signs of change are immediately apparent; the ferocity of the previous record gives way to a quest for a slightly cleaner sound; so alongside the usual hard-hitting tracks (the title track or "No One Came"), there are a few songs with vaguely psychedelic intentions ("Mule" and "Fools", featuring an organ à-la Manzarek), as well as the quasi-country digressions of "Anyone's Daughter".

The attempt at refinement succeeds even better with Machine Head (1972): "Maybe I'm A Leo" and "Lazy" gracefully pick up the conventions of the blues and show a Blackmore equally at ease scratching out rough riffs or weaving delicate solos; Gillan too, here giving his finest performance, moves with agility and confidence through daring vocal flourishes. There's no shortage of harder-charging moments either ("Highway Star" and the acrobatic "Pictures Of Home"), and the band's golden run is confirmed by the incredible, unexpected commercial success of "Smoke On The Water" (the track was tucked away on side two, almost as mere filler). They set off on a new world tour, which also takes them as far as Japan: from three dates on Japanese soil comes the celebrated Made In Japan, a double live album that captures the band in a genuine state of grace, and which quickly becomes one of the most beloved records in rock.

Success overwhelms the band and ramps up the pressure and tension within it: it's in this climate that Who Do We Think We Are? (1973) is born, an album usually regarded as minor, but still a very good one that represents a further development of the Deep Purple musical formula ("Woman From Tokio" and "Smooth Dancer" are the best-known tracks). Either way, shortly after recording wraps up, Gillan and Glover leave the band to pursue their respective solo careers: Gillan in particular manages to achieve decent success, even while venturing into territory far removed from Purple-style rock (as in "Scarabus").
Blackmore and Lord waste no time and replace the two defectors in one move, bringing in young singer and bassist Glenn Hughes, who had already built up solid experience with Trapeze. This would in itself have completed the lineup, but the entourage surrounding the band pushes for the five-piece format to be kept: so a second singer, David Coverdale, joins the fold.

Burn comes out at the start of '74; the intention is to return to the path of In Rock, with a rawer sound and a more instinctive approach to performance. "Burn" is indeed a good record, with fine songs enriched by a clever use of the two voices (Coverdale's powerful and warm, Hughes's fresher and higher-pitched). This, however, marks the end of the evolutionary phase of Deep Purple's musical formula; from here on they will limit themselves to endlessly retreading paths already laid out in previous years (the isolated exception being the guitar-synth duet experiment on the instrumental "A 200"). Lord and Blackmore probably sense this, and on the immediately following Stormbringer they attempt a sudden change of direction towards funky sounds ("You Can't Do It Right" and "Hold On") and try their hand at a few ballads ("Soldier Of Fortune" or "Holy Man"); but a certain compositional fatigue is palpable, to the point that the more typically hard rock tracks are the most disappointing.

Ritchie Blackmore, dissatisfied with the results of Stormbringer, leaves the band to form Rainbow; the group will be a direct extension of himself, through which he can indulge his passion for grandiose sounds across a handful of solid albums (from the debut album all the way to "Long Live Rock'n'Roll"). Deep Purple thus lose their principal leader, and many think that without the guitarist's unmistakable style, the band is doomed to fold. Instead, in '75 the solid Come Taste The Band is released, featuring the little-known Tommy Bolin on guitar; despite the lineup change, the result doesn't shift significantly: by now Deep Purple can't help but be a copy of themselves. But the crisis is by now irreversible, and after the customary tour, the band announces its breakup. Meanwhile another live album is released, Made In Europe, featuring recordings from the '74 concerts and performances of some of the more recent songs; the title's nod to the earlier live album is rather unfortunate, and in any case the two recordings simply aren't comparable. What's more, Made In Europe is hampered by a dreadful mix, which almost seems determined to bury the fugitive Blackmore's guitar.

In the years that followed, a large number of compilation albums and live recordings were released, some of rather dubious value.
Meanwhile, David Coverdale formed Whitesnake, purveyors of a decent brand of blues-inflected hard rock; in the early Eighties, both Lord and Paice would also join the band's ranks. In the meantime, the brooding Blackmore's Rainbow had lost their initial momentum and were trudging along with mediocre albums, chasing the lucrative A.O.R. trend. Rumours of a reunion of the so-called "Mark II" line-up (the 1970-'73 one, to be clear) began to mount, but in 1983 Gillan caught everyone off guard by taking on vocal duties for Black Sabbath; however, that stint only produced one album (the decent Born Again) and a short tour. So by 1984 the time was ripe for the official reunion. Perfect Strangers came out, a great rock record certainly tied to the band's classic style, yet never nostalgic. The sound is fresh enough and the songs are highly effective and well produced ("Knocking On Your Back Door", the title track and the electric ballad "Wasting Sunsets" are the standout tracks). Things in the band seemed to be back on track, and the lengthy tour that followed was a thrilling ride.

The follow-up, The House Of Blue Light (1987), moved towards more subdued, mature moods, but overall it's less convincing than its explosive predecessor. The following year, Nobody's Perfect documented the band's return to the stage. But soon Gillan and Blackmore started feuding again, and the singer left once more; his replacement was former Rainbow man Joe Lynn Turner (which says a lot about how much weight the guitarist now carried within the band). Thus in 1990 Slaves And Masters saw the light of day, a decidedly mediocre, toothless record that revealed a band ill at ease with more modern sounds and clearly in creative decline. Partly out of disappointment, partly because the band's 25th anniversary was approaching, Gillan was brought back into the fold; The Battle Rages On (1993) thus marked yet another return of the "Mark II" line-up, with an energetic but uninspired record. Internal squabbles were by now the norm, and after another largely pointless live album (Come Hell Or High Water) there was another departure: this time it was Blackmore who left, soon to embark on the much-discussed new project called Blackmore's Night.
The brooding guitarist's replacement was Steve Morse, a seasoned and highly skilled American musician (ex-Dixie Dregs and Kansas), with whom the band released Purpendicular in '96 and, two years later, Abandon — both enjoyable, if hopelessly nostalgic.

The feeling is that these new albums are little more than a pretext to get back on tour, where Deep Purple still draw enthusiastic crowds. The band's fixation with anniversaries struck again, as they revisited Concerto For Group And Orchestra for its thirtieth anniversary; for the occasion, with the orchestra's help, they also performed a handful of songs drawn from the members' solo careers, joined by a few old comrades-in-arms (Sam Brown and Ronnie James Dio).

In 2003 Deep Purple returned with the new Bananas, which continues along the lines of their recent output, notable above all for the absence of longtime leader Jon Lord, here replaced by Don Airey.

And so the career of this essential hard rock band wears on wearily, still unmatched by the endless array of more or less legitimate heirs who have tried to follow in its footsteps.

In 2005, Rapture Of The Deep attempted to reverse the trend, ending up a pleasant surprise for its freshness and creative drive. It's true that the catchy, upbeat "Girls Like That" brings back that sort of Eighties-style refrain that Bananas was full of, but this record has an extra gear that's worth seeking out and appreciating, albeit within the limited context of the album itself. The intro of "Money Talks", in fact, seems to take us back in time, along with the flourishes scattered here and there from the Hammond of the talented Don Airey, who, surprisingly, doesn't make us miss the late John Lord too much.
"Wrong Man" is a typically à-la-Purple track, with riff and organ trading blows with power and skill, backed by a particularly inspired Gillan who goes back to reaching for the high notes. It's strange, too, how Blackmore's spirit still hovers over this band. The title track strongly recalls the Eastern-tinged scales the guitarist used to employ in Rainbow, creating a decidedly compelling progressive sound.
Purple also know how to slow things down, and "Clearly Quite Absurd" is an atypical ballad worthy of a rawer Eric Clapton. Then the steady blues of "Don't Let Go" and the synthesizer of "Back To Back" slightly break up the album's tension. Ian Paice reminds us he's a great drummer, and his tribal, à-la-Bo-Diddley groove opens "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye", which strongly recalls the production of the "Fireball" era. After the modest rock of "Junkyard Blues", it falls to Gillan to close out the album. "Before Time Began" is a sort of crescendo suite featuring a highly charged, passionate performance from the singer, who, for a moment, almost manages to stop time gone by.

Eight years after their last studio record, but above all seventeen years since the last one anyone actually listened to (Purpendicular, yet another new start, and not a bad one at that), Deep Purple returned to the studio for Now What?! (2013), with Bob Ezrin at the helm — none other than the engineer behind the massive hits of Alice Cooper, Kiss, the very man Roger Waters turned to for more than a little advice in his attempt — eventually successful countless times — to scale the most forbidding wall of all time. Second move: let's try to do something dignified, so that the dedication owed to the late John Lord doesn't come across as a tasteless joke.
So here are 11 tracks, plus a bonus track for the more devoted big spenders, revisiting a style that spawned followers everywhere, between blues, symphonic echoes and pop flourishes. And, with a little patience, a few keepers can be found here too: the single "Hell To Pay" is a decent, muscular rocker, with Gillan managing not to slip into caricature, Paice and Glover grinding away, Steve Morse as unrivalled as ever in his use of chromatic runs within a rhythmic framework, and Don Airey offering the best Lord impression around; "Body Line" approaches Purple's trademark sound through a fusion lens, Toto-style à la "Rosanna", with Paice's intro disguised as Jeff Porcaro, an AOR-flavoured chorus, all very nimble and fresh despite its reference points; "Above And Beyond", with its measured, almost spoken-word pace apart from the classic surges, its deliciously Seventies keyboards — an easy landing, but a pleasant one; "Uncommon Man", the expected tribute to the moustache no longer among us, seven minutes of prog orchestration that halfway through nods to the old score of "Fanfare For The Common Man", yet never comes off as crude; this too can be seen as a finish line crossed, just like having averted, for the umpteenth time, the much-heralded tour of the world's finest retirement homes.

In 2017 the twentieth studio album, Infinite, was released.

In 2020, Whoosh! was finally released, the twenty-first album of a career spanning no fewer than seven different decades. A genre record, in line with the band's usual standards, built on robust songwriting (amid moments more or less nostalgic) and a sound enhanced by Bob Ezrin's production.
The first half of the album is the one most tied to the band's traditional atmospheres, centred above all on guitar-and-Hammond duels, but with Ian Gillan's voice, which for years now has often taken on a more restrained and groovy role.
In the second half, the tones become relatively darker and the moods more varied, though without ever tipping into melodrama. And it's precisely in this second part that the most interesting ideas are concentrated.
Among the most striking tracks are the driving "No Need To Shout", the breezy boogie-woogie of "What The What", the traditional-style gallop of "The Long Way Around" (featuring what is perhaps Steve Morse's most enjoyable solo on the record, alongside the one in the opening "Throw My Bones"), the dark "The Power Of The Moon", and the closing "Dancing In My Sleep" with its restrained but sharp electronic touches. Worth noting too is "And The Address", a revisiting of the instrumental opening track from the band's historic debut album "Shades Of Deep Purple", of whose line-up only Ian Paice remains, and whose font for the band's name on the cover is also reprised.
Conceptually, the band is keen to stress that they want to tackle weightier themes than in their younger years, picking up the thread from the previous Infinite. Title and cover artwork seem to nod to one of the key moments of the recent Avengers films, but with a clear reference to environmental impact and human fragility.
The album is certainly recommended to fans of the English band, who will find honest, meticulously crafted hard rock, with formally flawless songs, compelling interplay of notes and memorable choruses. The end result is fun and smooth-flowing; from this point of view, it's certainly one of the band's most successful and inspired works released this century.

A covers album, Turning To Crime, enjoyable but undeniably forgettable, filled a gap in the band's discography that foreshadowed some trouble ahead: guitarist Steve Morse left for serious family reasons, his wife's health conditions, and with Simon McBride (who had already been standing in for Steve Morse on live shows) stepping in permanently, the Mark IX line-up of Deep Purple was born, releasing a new album of original songs in 2024.

With Bob Ezrin increasingly involved in songwriting, the band set aside its progressive leanings in favour of gritty hard rock bordering on AOR. = 1 is a record where guitar riffs once again take centre stage, with Simon McBride (who at times recalls the excellent Gary Moore) trading licks and duelling with Don Airey with measured energy; Bob Ezrin's ever more significant input, including on the songwriting side, yields at least a couple of songs with an infectious drive and flashes of real inspiration: the fun "Lazy Nod" and the pulsing, intricate "A Bit On The Side" (Gillan's best vocal performance on the record).
= 1 is an album that some critics may find not entirely free of clichés and needless stylistic repetition, but it's also the band's most solid collection of songs since "Perfect Stranger", a record that has already yielded several excellent singles — "Picture Of You" but above all "Portable Door", the latter destined to become one of the highlights of their live shows — and doesn't skimp on further potential hits either — "If I Were You", "Show Me" — as well as two heavyweight tracks like the remarkable "Now You're Talkin'" and the lively rock'n'roll of "Old-Fangled Thing".

The ninth metamorphosis of these hard rock veterans carries on undaunted. With new guitarist Simon McBride on board, the historic British juggernaut capitalises on the creative momentum of = 1, translating it into a renewed sense of expressive urgency. Deep Purple haven't just reclaimed the top of the charts, they've also won over critics in a way that's unusual for a band with such a long history.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it! Splat! (2026) therefore fields the very same line-up as the previous album: Ian Gillan (vocals), Roger Glover (bass), Ian Paice (drums), Don Airey (keyboards) and Simon McBride (guitar). At the production helm, once again, sits the demiurge Bob Ezrin, supreme architect of a sonic alchemy capable of blending technical grandeur with executional exuberance, brushing up against legend without ever sliding into self-parody or the grotesque.
The band shows plenty of vigour and craft, serving up a string of songs that, while keeping to nimble, radio-friendly running times of three or four minutes, are dense with instrumental layering and free of dead air. This happy knack for concision is embodied by the lightning-fast lead single, "Arrogant Boy": a jolt of pure adrenaline in which the ever-reliable rhythm section of Glover and Paice grinds away at supersonic speed, while Don Airey sends the organ on a genuine old-school charge in the vein of "Highway Star", backed by McBride's pyrotechnic solos — flourishes that plenty of aspiring rockers are already trying to copy. All in just three minutes and eighteen seconds.
Without risking predictability, the new single "Diablo" (the story of a gondolier) is partly convincing too, thanks to a gutsy vocal performance and a finely crafted instrumental break, where the surreal lyrics are deftly balanced by executional discipline.
Splat! is an album that offers far more than one has any right to expect from a band of near-octogenarians. The dizzying crescendo of "The Only Horse In Town" is in keeping with the band's most glorious past, with Airey chasing after the legendary Jon Lord more and more closely. This same creative spark animates both the intricate architecture of "Guilt Trippin'" and the solid, well-crafted "The Rider", though it's the epic "Sacred Land" (with the Moog mimicking a flute) that's set to stir the passions of longtime fans.
The English band also allows itself some clever, mischievous detours: from the Celtic-rock exuberance of "Jessica's Bra" — a curious lexical divertissement playing on a typo where "bar" becomes "bra" — to the elegant blues-rock with exquisitely jazzy shadings of "The Beating Of Wings", by way of the dark, magnetic Middle Eastern atmospheres of "The Lunatic".
Deep Purple's twenty-fourth studio album confirms the extraordinary flexibility and stylistic ease of the Mark IX line-up, able to balance hard rock orthodoxy with contemporary openness. Within the record's sonic continuum, tracks like "Scriblin' Gib'rish" and "Third Call" stand out for their well-judged dynamic and structural handling, landing the final blow with the title track — a song that, beyond its mighty bassline, showcases a wealth of ideas and hints of a fiery live rendition to come, slotting effortlessly among the new classics of a band that has crossed the threshold of old age without ever looking ridiculous.

In a landscape crowded with bloodless imitators of bygone eras, a jolt of energy from Deep Purple is undoubtedly heartening — the story of the English rock band has not yet reached its final word.

Contributions by Mauro Vecchio ("Rapture Of The Deep"), Davide Sechi ("Now What?!"), Alessandro Mattedi ("Whoosh!"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("= 1", "Splat!")

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