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In 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards in the hope that he would manage a new group he was putting together. Curtis' idea was that the members of the group would get on and off a musical roundabout, and suitably impressed, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with a couple of business partners, John Coletta and Ron Hire (Hire-Edwards-Coletta - HEC Enterprises).
Curtis then set about building up the group, to be known as Roundabout. His first encounter was with Hammond organ player Jon Lord, then he persuaded session guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to return from Hamburg, Germany, to audition for the new group. Curtis himself, however, soon dropped out, but HEC Enterprises, as well as Lord and Blackmore, were keen that the project should continue, so firstly bassist Nick Simper, then finally vocalist Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice (both of whom were from the group The Maze), were recruited. After their first few gigs on a brief tour of Denmark in the spring of 1968, the band agreed on a new name suggested by Ritchie - Deep Purple.
In October 1968, the group had tremendous success in the US (but not the UK) with a cover of Joe South's "Hush," taken from their debut album Shades of Deep Purple, and they were duly booked to support Cream on their Goodbye tour. However they were soon kicked off the tour, allegedly because they were upstaging the headlining act. The band's second album, The Book of Taliesyn, was released in the United States to coincide with this tour, although it would not be released in their home country until the following year. 1969 saw the release of their third album, Deep Purple, which contained a symphony orchestra on some tracks. After these three albums and extensive touring in the States, Rod Evans and Nick Simper were unceremoniously sacked, and replaced by vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover both ex-Episode Six. This would create the quintessential Deep Purple "Mark 2" lineup. Initially, this version of the band released a single probably influenced by the then-popular stage musical "Hair", a cover of a Greenaway-Cook tune titled "Hallelujah", which flopped, and then the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a full three-movement work composed by Lord and performed at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Together with Five Bridges by The Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra, although at the time, certain members of Purple (Blackmore especially) were less than happy at the group being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras" when actually what they had in mind was to develop the band into a much tighter, hard-rocking style.
Shortly after the orchestral release, the band began a hectic touring and recording schedule that was to see little respite for the next three years. Their first studio album, released in mid-1970, was In Rock and contained concert staples Speed King and Child in Time. The band also issued the UK Top Ten single Black Night. Blackmore's and Lord's guitar-keyboard interplay coupled with Ian Gillan's howling vocals and the solid rhythm section of Glover and Paice, now started to become an instantly recognizable.[citation needed] A second album, the slightly more mellow and progressive Fireball (a favourite of Gillan's but not of Blackmore's), was issued in 1971. The band also scored another chart hit with Strange Kind Of Woman. Together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Purple were laying the groundwork for what is now called heavy metal music, although at the time, the phrase was still to be coined.
During 1972, Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on, releasing Machine Head, an album that was due to be recorded at a casino in Montreux, using the Rolling Stones' mobile recording truck, but after a supposedly accidental fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig burned down the casino the album was actually recorded at the nearby Grand Hotel -- this incident famously inspiring the song Smoke on the Water. Gillan believes that he witnessed a man fire a flare gun into the ceiling during the concert. Continuing from where both previous albums left off, adding more boogie and funk influences, Machine Head has since remained the band's most classic album, creating a number of career-spanning stage favourites (Highway Star, Space Truckin', Lazy and Smoke on the Water). This album was followed a few months later by a live release, Made in Japan mostly recorded at three Japanese gigs- two in Osaka and one in Tokyo, it is today still one of rock music's most popular live concert recordings (although at the time it was perhaps seen as less important, as only two band members turned up to mix it, them being Lord and Paice).
The classic Purple Mk 2 line-up continued to work and record into 1973, releasing the album Who Do We Think We Are (1973), featuring the hit single Woman from Tokyo, but tensions within the band were more noticeable than ever. The bad feelings culminated in Ian Gillan quitting the band after another European tour, and Roger Glover being pushed out with him. Their replacements were an unknown singer from northern England, David Coverdale, and bassist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. This new line-up continued into 1974 with the heavy blues/rock album Burn, another highly successful release. Hughes and Coverdale added a funky R&B/soul element to the band's music, a sound that was even more apparent on the 1974 release Stormbringer. Blackmore was not happy with the results, and as a result left the band in 1975 to form his own band with Ronnie James Dio and his band Elf, called Rainbow.
With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest vacancies in rock music. The gap was filled by American Tommy Bolin who had established himself with acts such as Zephyr, James Gang and Billy Cobham, with whom Bolin made his mark on the jazz fusion Spectrum album. On the face of it Bolin was just what the doctor ordered. The subsequent album, however, 1975's Come Taste the Band, proved unpopular with die-hard fans and failed to attract any new ones, perhaps since it was a radical departure from the expected Deep Purple sound. Bolin himself turned out not to be ready for the daunting job of filling Blackmore's shoes, suffering hostility from some crowds while turning in erratic performances varying from scintillating to mundane. Bolin also had a heroin habit, which made matters all the worse. After a particularly traumatic tour to promote Come Taste the Band, the band broke up. Bolin later died of a heroin overdose in Miami while on tour supporting Jeff Beck.
Subsequently, most of the past members of Deep Purple would go on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow, Whitesnake and Gillan, while there were a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 70s/early 80s.
In 1980, Rod Evans, along with a group of unknown musicians, toured under the banner of Deep Purple. As the only original member, and one little known to most fans, this band was instantly derided by press and fans as a fraud. The lineup performed concerts in Mexico and the USA before legal action was taken to deny them the use of the name. In retrospect, however tenuous the connection this band had to the name "Deep Purple", at least it kept the name alive and in the media, albeit briefly. More information on this "fake" Deep Purple is available here and here.
However, in April 1984, eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, a full-scale (and legal) reunion happened. It was announced on BBC radio's The Friday Rock Show that the "classic" early 70s line-up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, and Paice was reforming and recording new material. The band signed a deal with Polydor in Europe and Mercury in North America. The album Perfect Strangers was released in October 1984 and the tour followed, starting in Australia and winding its way across the world into Europe by the following summer. It was a tremendous success. The UK homecoming proved mixed as they elected to play just a single festival show at Knebworth (with main support from The Scorpions). The weather was famously bad but 80,000 turned up anyway.
The line-up recorded and toured The House of Blue Light in 1987 though to lower sales, a live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) was culled from several shows on this tour. While in the UK a new version of "Hush" was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Ian Gillan was fired from the band, as his relations with Blackmore soured. His replacement was former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. This line up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters (1990), and toured in support of it. Despite the renewed excellence of the band during this period, many fans were not pleased with Turner, preferring Gillan.
With the tour done, Turner was forced to go as Lord, Paice, Glover, and the record company wanted Gillan back in the fold. Blackmore relented and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On in 1993. During an artistically successful European tour during the fall of 1993, tensions between Gillan and Blackmore came to a head yet again. Blackmore walked out in November 1993, never to return and leaving the band in a fix. Joe Satriani was drafted in, so the live dates (in Japan) in December could be completed. Satriani stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994, Satriani was asked to stay permanently although his record contract commitments prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.
Steve Morse's arrival thoroughly revitalised the band as he is cited one the best and most accomplished modern guitarists. In 1996 the band released the critically acclaimed Purpendicular, which brimmed with confidence and new ideas. Deep Purple enjoyed success throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the harder-sounding Abandon in 1998, and touring with renewed relish, playing a setlist which was probably more adventurous and eclectic than ever before. In 1999, Jon Lord, with the help of a fan who was also a musicologist and composer, painstakingly recreated the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, and it was once again performed at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1999, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann. The concert also featured songs from each member's solo careers, as well as a short Deep Purple set, and the occasion was commemorated on the 2000 album In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Much of the next few years was spent on the road via constant touring. The group continued forward until 2002, when venerable founding member Jon Lord (who, along with Ian Paice, was the only member to be in all incarnations of the band) announced his amicable retirement from the band to pursue personal projects (especially orchestral work). Rock keyboard veteran Don Airey (Rainbow/Whitesnake, etc.), who had helped Purple out when Lord was injured in 2001, joined the band. In 2003, Deep Purple released their first studio album in five years, the highly praised (but controversially titled) Bananas, and began touring in support of the album immediately. In October of 2005, the band's 37th year, Purple released Rapture of the Deep, which, although recorded in just a few weeks, proved to be the most progressive and adventurous album for many years, and it is being followed by yet another extensive world tour.
Today, Deep Purple steadfastly carries on in the studio and around the globe as one of history's most prolific, longest-lived, and hardest touring rock 'n roll bands.
