Deep Purple - Machine Head

For those who don’t already know it, here’s the story of the making of Machine Head:  Deep Purple didn’t like recording studios.  They would rather record anywhere but a recording studio.  Other bands didn’t like them much either.  Led Zeppelin was famous for recording much of their untitled fourth album and most of Physical Graffiti with a mobile studio at a house called Headley Grange.  The Rolling Stones built a mobile recording studio so they could record at Mick Jagger’s house, Stargroves.  They used it to record the bulk of Sticky Fingers in 1970 and Exile on Main Street in 1972.  The Who used the Mobile to record Won’t Get Fooled Again for Who’s Next.  So recording an album anywhere but a proper studio in London was becoming less and less of an unusual thing.  DP had played in the Casino in Montreux, Switzerland in in spring 1971.  It was a regular stop on the European touring circuit.  It was the home of the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd had also performed there.  They liked the place and decided to record there if they had the chance.  DP went to Montreux to record a new album, and took the Rolling Stones Mobile with them.   

 

When they arrived in Montreux in December 1971, they were greeted with gift baskets from Claude Nobs, the founder and director of the Montreux Jazz Festival.  Included in the gift baskets were tickets to see a matinee show of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.  Since FZ was playing the Casino, DP decided not to unload their equipment until after FZ was gone [a most fortuitous decision].  During the FZ show, somebody shot a flare gun from behind where Ian Gillan was sitting.  The flare got stuck in the wooden trunking above the stage and caught the building on fire.  I was listening to a bootleg of the FZ show last night, and you can hear FZ directing people to calmly head for the exits on the sides of the building.  In a matter of a few minutes the Casino turned into an inferno.  While people were evacuating the building Nobs knew of some places where people might hide to get away from the flames.  He kept going into the building and pulling people out of these hidden places.  As the smoke rose from the Casino, drafts from the nearby Swiss Alps pushed the smoke out over Lake Geneva, hence the title Smoke on the Water.

Montreux Casino [pre-fire]

The Casino Fire

The Mobile Studio

With the Casino in ruins, the band had no place to record.  Claude Nobs found them a place called Le Pavilion, located in the center of Montreux.  They recorded one song there [called 'Title #1'] before they got complaints about the noise from the townspeople of Montreux.  Their roadies held off the police just long enough for them to finish 'THE take.'  Claude Nobs found them a more suitable, more isolated location to record.  The location was the Grand Hotel. It was a hotel that was closed for the season.   Jon Lord described it as a very forbidding place, a Victorian-era pile.  They found an alcove at the end of a corridor off the main lobby to record in.  It was a "T" shaped alcove, so that's where they stuck Ian Paice's drum kit.  The rest of the band recorded in the corridor.  They parked the Rolling Stones Mobile studio outside the front door, so it took some gymnastics to get from the recording area to the Mobile to hear any playbacks.  Maybe it was because of this set-up that the band usually nailed a song in only one or two takes.

Le Pavilion
 

The Grand Hotel

Highway Star - This was the only song the band had written and performed before they went to Switzerland to record Machine Head.  During a fall tour of the UK in 1971, Deep Purple and some members of the music press were taking a bus to a gig in Portsmouth.  On this trip, they asked "how do you write a song?"  Ritchie Blackmore said 'like this,' picked up a guitar and started playing a one-note rhythm part.  Ian Gillan started to ad-lib a vocal about being on the road in a rock and roll band. A song was born.  When they got to Portsmouth Guild Hall, the rest of the band worked out the song during the soundcheck, and Highway Star was in the set that night. Roger Glover said that about the only things he contributed to Highway Star were the title [he was the band's 'title' man] and a few words.  It's mostly Ian Gillan's lyrics. Ritchie did most of the music.  Jon Lord came up with the chords over which he played his solo. He called it a quasi-Bach chord sequence.  He showed these chords on the Classic Albums episode for Machine Head.  Some and members didn’t think it would work, but Ritchie thought it would, and would be proven to be right.  As for Ritchie, he usually made up his solos of the cuff, but for Highway Star he worked one out ahead of time and committed it to memory.  Ritchie once confirmed the chord sequence was, like Jon Lord’s part, inspired by Bach.  His solo is probably his best in Deep Purple.  Roger Glover called Highway Star the quintessential Deep Purple song.

Maybe I'm a Leo - This song originated from a Roger Glover riff.  On the Classic Albums series, he said he got the idea for the riff after hearing John Lennon’s song How Do You Sleep [from Imagine].  He liked the idea that the riff didn’t start on the down beat.  Gov’t Mule covered this song on their The Deep End, Volume 1 CD.  It was one of Allen Woody’s favorite songs so Warren Haynes decided to cover it.  As a bonus, Roger Glover played on their version.

Pictures of Home - This is Ian Gillan being homesick, singing about 'emptiness, eagles and snow' [though there weren't any eagles].  Jon Lord said he thought Ritchie got the idea for the song from a short wave radio that he kept hidden in his hat [he used to wear pilgrim hats back then - see below].  Ritchie did hear the riff from either Bulgaria or Turkey on his short wave radio. The revelation on this song was Ian Paice’s drumming.   Included besides the Blackmore/Lord interplay, Roger Glover played a brief bass solo.  On the deluxe version of Machine Head, Roger Glover [who remixed the album for the deluxe release] opted to let the song progress to its conclusion rather than to fade it.  During that extended ending you can hear Ian Paice make up the drum bits on the fly.  Paicey demonstrated what a truly talented drummer he is.

       

Never Before – This song closes out Side One.  The band was very sure this would be a hit single.  Little did they know the next song on the album would be the big hit, not this one.  It’s a good song, but not a great one.  I’ve heard one live version – from the In Concert 1970-72 album of BBC shows.  They rarely played it live.  On their 2004 tour they played it because they were playing the entire Machine Head album for the tour.

Smoke on the Water – On the live Made in Japan album Ian Gillan introduced this song thusly - “This song is also from the last album.  It tells the story of how we recorded it and what went wrong when we did it.  It happened in Switzerland – the song is a thing called Smoke on the Water…”  This was 'Title #1' that the band recorded at Le Pavilion.  Ritchie came up with the riff, one of the most simple, indestructible and unforgettable riffs in rock history.  It is such an insistent riff that when you hear it you can't get it out of your head.  People used to tease Ritchie about the riff's simplicity, but his comeback to that was always 'what about Beethoven's Fifth?'  Then his teasers would shut up.  As for the riff itself, don't strum it - pluck it.  Roger came up with the title in a dream.  The words are mostly Gillan's.  He tells the entire story of the recording of Machine Head all in one song.  On the deluxe version of Machine Head, as the song is ending you can hear Gillan say "ah, break a leg, Frank..."  The show Frank Zappa did after the disaster in Montreux was at London's Rainbow Theatre.  For some reason, a member of the audience who was jealous of FZ, leaped on stage and pushed him into the orchestra pit.  He broke his leg, his pelvis and fractured his larynx.   This incident nearly killed him.   It was not a good week for FZ.  Of note, the fire in Montreux and the assault on him in London happened during the same song [King Kong].

We all came out to Montreux

On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water

They burned down the gamblin' house,
It died with an awful sound
and Funky Claude was running in and out
Pulling kids out the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water

We ended up at the Grand Hotel
It was empty cold and bare
But with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside
Making our music there
With a few red lights and a few old beds
We make a place to sweat
No matter what we get out of this
I know, I know we'll never forget
Smoke on the water, a fire in the sky, smoke on the water…

Lazy – Deep Purple plays the blues with a long introduction from Jon Lord.  Ritchie’s riff sounds like Steppin’ Out, an old blues song Cream used to play in concert.  The guitar/organ back and forth went on for over four minutes until Gillan started to sing.  He didn’t sing much – he didn’t have to because the soloists were driving the song.  In concert, Jon Lord’s long intro got even longer.  His Hammond would be so overdriven and distorted it sounded like a spaceship about to land.

Space Truckin' - Ian Gillan thought it might be cool to combine the ideas of rock and roll and space travel in one song.  He was inspired somewhat by the old "Keep on Truckin'" cartoon from the early '70s.  Gillan demonstrates why he was one of the greatest hard rock singers of his generation.  He could do a scream and sing at the same time, and you could understand him when he did it.  My son and I still don’t know how he did that without losing his voice for a week.  [Note:  he’s 67 now and can’t do it like that anymore…]  Ian Paice got to show off for about 30 seconds before the whole band comes back full throttle with Gillan screaming at the top of his lungs.  In concert, this 4 and a half minute song stretched out to over twenty minutes.  They added the instrumental part from Mandrake Root onto the end of Space Truckin’, where both Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore would solo their brains out.  I saw them do this in ’85 – most excellent!

When a Blind Man Cries – This is the song that didn’t make Machine Head.  It ended up as the B-side of the single Never Before.  It’s a ballad that Ritchie didn’t like.  They never played it live when he was around.  I don’t know why he didn’t like it because his playing is very emotional, like any good blues player.  Someone else must have written it.  Immediately after Ritchie left the band for the final time in 1993, this song has been a staple of the band’s setlists.

DP recorded Machine Head in two weeks in December 1971.  They just went in, wrote the songs on the spot, banged them out, and they were done.  That kind of efficiency is unheard of these days.  It cost them £8,000 to make the album, £5,000 of which was rent for the Mobile.  Machine Head ended up becoming a good chunk of DP’s setlist until this particular line-up [Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, & Paice] broke up in June 1973.  A live document of the tour that supported Machine Head was released as Made In Japan [December 1972 – UK, April 1973 – US].

DP had been on the constant album/tour/album/tour treadmill since these five guys came together in 1969.  The cracks were starting to appear, and you can find them in Ian Gillan’s lyrics.

Here in this prison
Of my own making
Year after day I have grown
Into a hero
But there's no worship
Where have they hidden my throne... Pictures of Home

Had a friend once in a room

Had a good time but it ended much too soon

In a cold month in that room

We found a reason for the things we had to do… When a Blind Man Cries

This is foreshadowing of the problems that led to this line-up disintegrating.  The problems apparently began during the making of Fireball.  Blackmore wanted to continue in the heavy rock direction of Deep Purple In Rock, while Gillan wanted to experiment, be more “progressive” [whatever that means].  Blackmore and Gillan didn’t see eye-to-eye, and the overwork from constant touring didn’t help.  The DP Mark II lineup wouldn’t last long after Machine Head.

Machine Head is a very good album.  With Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin’ and Smoke on the Water, it’s a bonafide classic.  If you’re a serious hard rock fan, you need a copy.  Absolutely essential.

As a postscript, I read that Claude Nobs died at age 76 last week from injuries he sustained in a Nordic skiing accident.  It is not an understatement to say that were it not for him, Machine Head wouldn’t have been made.  Rock in peace, Funky Claude.

Claude Nobs

February 4, 1936 – January 10, 2013

Jon Lord - Concerto for Group and Orchestra

“Attempting to talk about a piece of music you have just written is difficult.  There is no retrospect.  So, without the benefits of hindsight, I will try to put into words what I hope will be apparent in the music...The problem of putting together two widely different field of music, ‘classical’ and beat (to label but a few) has interested me for a long time.  In fact, doing away with’ labels’ altogether has interested me for a long time.  The idea is, then, simply to present, in the First Movement, the group and the orchestra as antagonists, and in the Second and Third Movements, as unexpected allies…”

-          Jon Lord, 1969

Concerto for Group and Orchestra has a long and interesting history.  In June 1969, Deep Purple fired original vocalist Rod Evans and original bassist Nick Simper.  The remaining founders [Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice] all decided to take their music in a harder direction.  They replaced Evans and Simper with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively.  The new line-up began almost immediately to work up new material for their new direction.  However, the group’s management had seized upon a chance remark from Jon Lord that he’d like to “do something” with an orchestra.   When they asked him if he was serious about this, he told them yes, at which time they informed him they had booked the Royal Albert Hall for a September performance and that he’d better get to work.  So the keyboard player of a rock band who had no experience writing classical music had three months to come up with a score.   A new hard rock album from Deep Purple would have to wait.

One of Jon Lord’s influences was composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, who had written numerous symphonies and chamber works as well as movie scores [Bridge on the River Kwai anyone?].  Jon Lord asked Sir Malcolm to look over his work-in-progress.  Sir Malcolm not only liked what he saw, he offered to conduct the piece himself.   This support was most helpful because the band was apprehensive at best, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was outright hostile.  After a half-hearted run-through of the piece with the LPO, Sir Malcolm gave them a good tongue lashing, telling the musicians they played “like a bunch of cunts.”  Ian Gillan waited until the last moment to write the lyrics, having done so the afternoon of the performance over a bottle or two of wine.  Sir Malcolm and Jon Lord managed to pull it off, with a stirring performance on September 24, 1969 that was recorded and released.  Deep Purple played the piece once more almost a year later [August 1970], this time with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.  Their conductor wasn’t as supportive as Sir Malcolm.  He made changes to Jon Lord’s score.  After this performance, the original score vanished.

Conductor Paul Mann contacted Jon Lord about the possibility of performing the Concerto on the 25^th anniversary of its debut.  Lord thought about trying to reconstruct his lost score, but given that Deep Purple toured heavily after Ritchie Blackmore left the band, he thought the task was too daunting and too time-consuming.  In 1998, the unthinkable happened.  While Deep Purple was on tour in the Netherlands, he was approached in Rotterdam by a Dutch composer named Marco de Goeij.  He told Lord “I think I’ve recreated your Concerto.”  On his own initiative, de Goeij spent the better part of the previous two years transcribing the original Royal Albert Hall performance.  He watched the performance as filmed by the BBC, and listened to the album over and over again.  He did it for free, for the love of the music.  It was a sheer act of musical altruism if there ever was one.  Lord and Paul Mann got together to look at de Goeji’s transcription.  The transcription wasn’t complete, but enough of it was there for Lord and Mann to fill in the blanks.  Once completed, Deep Purple and the London Symphony Orchestra [conducted by Mann] performed the Concerto on September 25^th and 26^th, 1999, just over thirty years to the day after its debut.  

In addition to performing the Concerto, the music program featured songs from each member’s solo careers.  Vocalists Miller Anderson and Sam Brown each performed one song from Jon Lord’s Pictured Within album.  Ronnie James Dio sang two songs from Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball project. The Steve Morse Band performed the Dixie Dregs song Take It Off the Top.  Ian Gillan performed two songs from his solo catalog.  Ian Paice played the old Deep Purple instrumental Wring That Neck with a horn section.  After Wring That Neck the full band took the stage.  They played several Deep Purple songs with the orchestra.  The songs:  Pictures of Home [Machine Head], Ted the Mechanic [Purpendicular], Watching the Sky [Abandon], Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming [Purpendicular], and for the encore…Smoke on the Water, of which Dio sang the second verse.  It’s hard to imagine a version of Smoke on the Water with brass, but it’s entertaining.  Steve Morse sounded more comfortable playing this piece than did Ritchie Blackmore.  I think he was a lot more open to the idea than was Ritchie in 1969.  The entire performance was released on CD [Live at the Royal Albert Hall] and on DVD [In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra].  Unlike the London Philharmonic in 1969, the LSO were very enthusiastic about performing with Deep Purple.  What a difference thirty years makes.  After these performances, Deep Purple did the unthinkable and took this show on the road.  They and the orchestra played the Concerto in over 30 cities around the world [in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico City, throughout Europe and later in Japan].  But the story of the Concerto doesn’t die here…

Roughly a year after this tour ended, Jon Lord retired from Deep Purple.  He was 61 at the time, there were other musical things he wanted to do with his life, and a heavy touring schedule left little if any room for pursuing such interests.  His classical composition and recording career began to flourish.  His classical works include:

Boom of the Tingling Strings [2004] – a piano concerto of four movements recorded in Odense, Denmark with pianist Nelson Goerner and the Odense Symfoniorkester [conducted by Paul Mann];

Durham Concerto [2008] – a concerto commissioned by Durham University to celebrate its 175^th anniversary.  This concerto has soloists on cello, violin, Northumbrian pipes, and Hammond organ [played by Jon Lord himself].  This was recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Mischa Damev];

To Notice Such Things [2010] – a six-movement suite for solo flute, piano and string orchestra.   Jon Lord created this work in memory of his close friend Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.  This was also recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Clark Rundell].

But what about the Concerto for Group and Orchestra?  After leaving Deep Purple, Jon Lord took the Concerto on the road again and played it another seventeen times.  With more than forty public performances of the Concerto, Lord had the opportunity to fine-tune the score so it could receive a proper studio recording.  For this recording Jon Lord wanted to use different singers and guitarists for each of the Concerto’s three movements.  As with Durham Concerto and To Notice Such Things, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Paul Mann] played on the studio version of Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

Track Listing:

Movement One – Moderato-Allegro:  Darin Vasilev - guitar

Movement Two – Andante:  Joe Bonamassa – guitar; Bruce Dickinson, Steve Balsamo, Kasia Laska – vocals;

Movement Three – Vivace-Presto:  Steve Morse – guitar.

Guy Pratt – bass

Brett Morgan – drums

Jon Lord – Hammond organ

The First Movement features guitarist Darin Vasilev.  Vasilev is a Bulgarian guitarist from the band TE.  I wondered how Jon Lord came to invite him to contribute to the studio version of the Concerto.  After a bit of research I found out why.   In 2009-10, TE performed the Concerto with Jon Lord in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, so Vasilev was more than familiar with the material.  Vasilev shreds a bit, but he doesn’t overdo it.  His solo is shorter than that of Ritchie Blackmore from the first performance in 1969, but it works fine.

The Second Movement is the vocal bit.  At first it was a bit jarring to hear someone else sing Ian Gillan’s words.  After many listens one gets used to how something sounds. I knew nothing of Steve Balsamo and Kasia Laska, but they were a pleasant surprise.  They didn’t sing much – just the first couple of verses.  I knew what to expect from Bruce Dickinson – he pulled off his parts with his usual flair.    Joe Bonamassa was very good, though is appearance here was brief.

What’s my favorite part of the Concerto?  The Third Movement.  Steve Morse reprises his role from the Live at the Royal Albert Hall set.  It is good to hear him play with Jon Lord one final time.  He doesn’t copy his solos from the Albert Hall.  Jon Lord gives him the leeway to play what he wants to play.  Ian Paice is a hard act to follow on the drums, but Brett Morgan does a more than capable job.  Jon Lord was his usual, spectacular self.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra is a fitting epitaph for Jon Lord.  He always wanted a studio version of his Concerto.  Before he passed away, he approved the final mixes of this release, so at least he knew what it sounded like.  This was his first classical composition, and 43 years after its debut, this studio version has gotten it right.  It is a joy to listen to.

Deep Purple In Rock

When one hears the name Deep Purple the thing that immediately comes to mind is Smoke on the Water and the album from whence it came, Machine Head.  Machine Head is a great album, but it isn’t my favorite.  That honor goes to Deep Purple In Rock [1970].  For the longest time Fireball was my favorite because it is so much different than either In Rock or Machine Head.  But the more I listened to it, the more In Rock grew on me.  Deep Purple never thought of themselves as a “heavy metal” band.  They were a hard rock band that had influences ranging from jazz to classical, folk to 1950s rock and roll to the blues.

At the end of the 1960s, there were three bands [very LOUD bands] that appeared as if from nowhere.  Led Zeppelin emerged from the ruins of the Yardbirds, and effortlessly incorporated British folk music and American blues into their sound.  Black Sabbath merely invented a genre – heavy metal.  With Geezer Butler’s lyrics of doom and Tony Iommi’s skull-crushing riffs, this was music for the apocalypse.  There was a third group began as a progressive rock band with classical influences – Deep Purple.  The instrumental focus of Zeppelin and Sabbath were their respective guitarists – Jimmy Page [Led Zeppelin] and Tony Iommi [Black Sabbath].  In my circle of friends, most liked either Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath.  I was the Deep Purple guy, because they had a two-headed monster in Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord.  Deep Purple’s sound had a lot to do with the sound of Jon Lord’s Hammond.  He fed his Hammond C-3 through a Marshall stack, which turned a piece of furniture into a smoke-belching beast.  As a guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore is a king among men. The combination of the two is just more interesting to me, musically.

The year was 1969 and Deep Purple was at a creative crossroads.  Both Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore wanted to take Deep Purple in a heavier direction.  Up until then, the band’s music was written mostly by Jon Lord and had touches of classical music thrown in the mix, but they knew they couldn’t carry on in that direction for very long.  They recorded covers from Joe South [Hush], Neil Diamond [Kentucky Woman] and the Beatles [Help!].  Jon Lord was the instrumental focal point for the band.  Ritchie wanted Deep Purple to go in the same musical direction as Led Zeppelin, a more riff-based approach.  Lord and Blackmore both concluded [along with drummer Ian Paice] that their then-current singer [Rod Evans] and bassist [Nick Simper] weren’t up to that challenge.  To solve their problem they recruited singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover from the band Episode Six.  Not only could Gillan go toe-to-toe with any rock vocalist of the day, as a bonus Gillan and Glover were also a songwriting team.  But before they could get into a studio to put something down, there is the not-so-small matter of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra. 

Apparently Jon Lord let slip that he wanted to do something like the Concerto sometime in the future.  Their managers overheard what he said, and before Jon Lord knew it the managers already had the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Philharmonic booked.  Ian Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore weren’t thrilled about the project, but they did it anyway.  If nothing else, Concerto for Group and Orchestra got Deep Purple noticed.  But since classical music was something the band was trying to get away from, Ritchie was dying to try things his way.  He told Jon Lord that if his way didn’t work he’d be happy to play with orchestras the rest of his life.  Luckily for us, Jon Lord scratched his musical itch and Ritchie got his way.  Once the Concerto was done, they gigged like mad.  They’d play about five shows a week, then they would record whenever they got a spare moment.  Such was Deep Purple’s workload.  On their “off days” they were in the studio creating something new. This was how Deep Purple In Rock was born.  The pattern would repeat on the follow-up, Fireball.  Though the Concerto was the new group’s first recorded effort, Deep Purple In Rock was the group’s proper debut in their new riff-based heavy rock direction.  During the recording of the album, a phrase that illustrated the band’s mindset was born – “can we have everything louder than everything else?”  Ian Gillan can be heard saying it between songs on Made In Japan.  To set the mood for the album, Ritchie Blackmore decreed:  “If it’s not dramatic or exciting, it has no place on this album.”  The songs that became Deep Purple In Rock were dramatic, and they were exciting.

The songs -

Speed King – The chaotic beginning [which the band referred to as “Woffle” – recorded separately from Speed King] was an unusual way to begin an album.  I think it was the band’s way of breaking with their past.  Roger Glover came up with the riff after Ritchie Blackmore told him he really liked Jimi Hendrix’s Fire.  Ian Gillan strung together bits of lyrics from songs like Good Golly Miss Molly and Tutti Frutti.  The song is not a drug song – it’s just about singing fast [I’m a speed king, can’t you hear me sing it/I’m a speed king/ See me fly…].  The song started out with piano instead of organ and was once called Kneel and Pray.  That version is on the 25^th Anniversary Edition of Deep Purple In Rock.  They made the right choice in sticking with the organ.  After Gillan sang the first couple of verses we the listeners are treated to Lord and Blackmore trading solos back and forth while Glover and Paice are playing the groove.  In a live setting, the Blackmore/Lord duel became more intense – for proof listen to the 25^th Anniversary edition of Made In Japan.  This is what set Deep Purple apart from Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

Bloodsucker – A short song this one.  Not very memorable except for Gillan’s screaming – AAAAAGH NO NO NO!!!!  This was later recorded again with Steve Morse for Abandon [1998].  That version is titled Bludsucker.  I have no idea why they did that.

Child In Time – The masterpiece - this epic from Deep Purple is the band at its most intense.  According to the liner notes, Ian Gillan said “this is of a loser – it could be you.”  Jon Lord pinched the riff from a San Francisco group called It’s a Beautiful Day.  The song he borrowed it from was Bombay Calling.  Apparently It’s a Beautiful Day returned the favor by borrowing Wring That Neck for one of their songs.  This is Ian Gillan’s finest performance – ever.  He scaled three octaves up to a controlled scream.  How did he do that?  There is no way either Robert Plant or Ozzy Osbourne could do what Ian Gillan did on Child In Time - nor could anyone else for that matter.  While Jon Lord played the chords underneath, Ritchie played a 2:32 speed solo.  The longer the solo went, the faster it got.  With 21 seconds left Jon Lord joined him to finish the solo, almost as if they were racing each other to the finish.  That’s what I like about old Deep Purple – Jon Lord was able to match Ritchie Blackmore note for note.  After a couple of seconds of silence, Jon plays the organ riff again.  Then it was a race to the finish with Gillan screaming over all of it, then a thunderous crash to end it all.  Simply breathtaking…Luckily Gillan could still hit the high notes when I first saw Deep Purple in 1985.  He can’t hit them anymore.

Flight of the Rat – How does one follow Child In Time?  You follow it with eight minutes of hard-core riffage.  The riff has got Blackmore’s name all over it.  Powerful.  Relentless.  This would have been a great song to play live, but they never did.

Into the Fire – Roger Glover came up with this riff too.  He also said that lyrically it was a warning about drugs.  This is a good song, but not great.  Deep Purple wasn’t a “drug” band – they were a “drinking” band.  The hard drugs didn’t come into Deep Purple until Tommy Bolin and Glenn Hughes came along.

Living Wreck – This song is the quiet one from In Rock.  It would not have been out of place on Fireball.  I’m not sure how it made the cut, but it does serve as foreshadowing for Fireball.

Hard Lovin’ Man – Here is yet another riff from Roger Glover.  Jon Lord uncaged the Hammond beast on this one.  He fed his Hammond organ through Marshall amps instead of the usual Leslie speaker, giving the Hammond a more metallic, machine-like character.  This was Jon Lord’s live set-up, which accounts for his performance sounding as close to on stage performance as possible [though in the studio].  Not to be outdone, Ritchie Blackmore abused the hell out of his guitar.

Black Night – Recorded after the In Rock sessions were complete. It was an afterthought because the managers asked “where’s the single?” after they finished the album.  It wasn’t included on the album at the time, but later came out as part of the 25^th Anniversary disc.  After wracking their brains trying to come up with a song [they were NOT a singles band], they went to the pub and got pissed.  Afterward they came back to the studio and a song was born.  Ritchie Blackmore borrowed the riff from Ricky Nelson’s Summertime.  The words came about as the group sat around trying to come up with words that matched “black night.”  The band turned their noses up to singles, until this one became a Top 5 hit in the UK.

Cry Free – This outtake came out with the 25^th Anniversary disc.  Back in 1970 there were 20 minutes a side for a vinyl album.  This one didn’t make the cut, but it is no less urgent and aggressive than any of the other songs that made the album.

Jam Stew – an instrumental outtake that would be revived for a session album with Albert Lee called Green Bullfrog.

Also for the 25^th Anniversary disc, Roger Glover remixed three songs – Speed King, Black Night, and Flight of the Rat.  They sound as if the drums were cleaned up, and the vocals are clearer, but that’s about it.  Why he didn’t give the entire album the same treatment I haven’t a clue.

Jon Lord RIP

This is a blog I didn’t think I would write for years, but fate intervened.  This morning I received the sad news via the Internet that a brilliant musician, Jon Lord, had passed away.  Last year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had been receiving treatments for that disease.  It was during one of those treatments that Mr. Lord had succumbed to a pulmonary embolism.  I had the pleasure to see Jon Lord with Deep Purple twice.  The first time was in 1985.  The album was Perfect Strangers.  The place was McNichols Arena in Denver, Colorado.  My circle of friends in college all loved Deep Purple, so when we heard they were reforming, we waited in the ticket line for four hours, and it was worth it.  We scored fourth row seats on the floor, and as fate would have it, we were on Jon Lord’s side of the stage.  It was quite a night.  The band played everything we wanted to hear.  In the cacophony of sound that was Deep Purple, it was quite the spectacle to see Jon Lord rocking his Hammond organ back and forth.  We all thought it might tip over at some point because a Hammond is a pretty heavy machine, but it never did.  The next time I saw Deep Purple was again in Denver, this time at the outdoor venue Fiddler’s Green.  They were touring in support of the album Abandon.  Dream Theater and Emerson, Lake and Palmer were also on the bill.  Jon didn’t abuse his Hammond like he did in 1985, but to hear him do call-and-response solos with Steve Morse was simply breathtaking.

Who was Jon Lord?  Jon Lord was not a household name in the Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston sense, but in the rock community Jon Lord was a legend.  He was a founding member of one of my favorite bands of all time, Deep Purple.  He was their keyboard player, but he wasn’t just any keyboard player.  After the 1960s turned into the 1970s there were three hard rock bands to come out of England to gain worldwide fame – Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple.  Zeppelin and Sabbath were four-piece bands – guitar, bass, drums, and vocals.  Zeppelin had their secret weapon in John Paul Jones.  He is a multi-instrumentalist who could really play anything that had strings or a keyboard.  Sometimes on-stage he would swap his bass for a keyboard instrument, usually an electric piano or a Hammond organ.  Black Sabbath stuck with their four-piece set-up.  If they had a keyboard player [usually Geoff Nichols], he would perform behind the stage curtain – you’d never see him on stage.  This is what set Deep Purple apart from Zeppelin and Sabbath.  Jon Lord was an integral part of Deep Purple.  A classically trained musician who had a love for the blues and rock and roll, Jon Lord was the instrumental counterpoint to guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, a fantastic but mercurial musician.  Jon Lord’s contribution to Deep Purple was taking a piece of furniture, the Hammond organ [then known mainly as a jazz instrument], linking it with a Marshall stack, and turning that “piece of furniture” into a fire-breathing, smoke-belching metallic beast.  He gave Deep Purple a second solo voice that set them apart from the rest of the hard rock/heavy metal bands of the era.

In 1968, Jon Lord founded Deep Purple with Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Paice, Nick Simper and Rod Evans.  The band recorded three albums with this line-up – Shades of Deep Purple [1968], Book of Taliesyn [1968], and Deep Purple [1969].  They had a Top 5 hit with a cover of Joe South’s song Hush.  During those early years Deep Purple searched for a direction.  Those first three records saw Deep Purple playing psychedelic rock, and some progressive rock with tinges of classical music thrown in.  Given that, the foreshadowing of things to come arrived with the songs Mandrake Root and Wring That Neck.  Each was a fairly short song on record, but in a live setting those pieces became vehicles of wondrous improvisation for both Jon and Ritchie.  In 1969 the Ritchie Blackmore had an epiphany.  He saw that Led Zeppelin had become successful by playing riff-based hard rock, and why couldn’t Deep Purple try it as well?  Jon Lord and Ian Paice agreed, so Rod Evans and Nick Simper were out, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover were in.  The first thing they took on as a group was Jon’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra.  This project was written by Jon, with lyrics from Ian Gillan.  It was a labor of love for Jon, but the band knew that they weren’t going to play with orchestras forever.  They let Ritchie have his way, and a monster band was born.  

What came next was a succession of some of the best rock ever committed to vinyl – Deep Purple In Rock [1970], Fireball [1971], Machine Head [1972], Made In Japan [1973], Who Do We Think We Are [1973], and Burn [1974].  My favorite Jon Lord moments with Deep Purple – Speed King, Flight of the Rat and Child In Time from Deep Purple In Rock, Highway Star, Lazy and Space Truckin’ from Made in Japan, the title track from Burn, and Mandrake Root [In Concert 1970/72, 1980].  Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left Deep Purple in June 1973, to be replaced by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes respectively.  They made one great album [Burn, 1974] and one not-so-great album [Stormbringer, 1974], Ritchie left the band in 1975, to be succeeded [not “replaced”] by Tommy Bolin.  Deep Purple made Come Taste the Band with Bolin.  It was a good album, definitely better than Stormbringer.  A highlight for me was the Lord/Hughes piece This Time Around/Owed to “G.”  Things didn’t last long with Tommy Bolin, and Deep Purple split up in 1976.  A couple of years after that split, David Coverdale formed his own band, Whitesnake.  Jon Lord joined as a hired hand.  He wasn’t a soloist in Whitesnake like he was with Deep Purple. Whitesnake was a two-guitar blues rock band, so Jon added “color” to the music of Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody.  But out of all the music that Whitesnake produced during Jon Lord’s stint in the band, I fondly remember one song – Here I Go Again.  It was originally released in 1982 on the Saints & Sinners album.  On this album, it wasn’t the fluffy, synthesized arena rock crap that came out in 1987.  This version was more earthy and more real, more so because of Jon Lord’s Hammond organ.  He stayed with Whitesnake until Deep Purple reformed with the Mk II line-up in 1984.

Jon Lord stayed with Deep Purple until 2002.  The band maintained a very busy touring schedule, one that began to wear on him.  So he amicably left the band to pursue his love for classical music.  Although he played hard rock with Deep Purple and Whitesnake to pay the bills, Jon Lord still maintained an interest in and a commitment to classical music.  He recorded several works during that time – Gemini Suite [1972], Windows [1974], Sarabande [1976], Before I Forget [1982].  Since leaving Deep Purple, Jon Lord composed and recorded several classical works – Durham Concerto [2007], Boom of the Tingling Strings [2008], and To Notice Such Things [2010].  He recently re-recorded his Concerto for Group and Orchestra which will sadly be released posthumously.  They’re available as MP3s, so I think I will check them out.  The last thing I heard from Jon was a song he played on from Ian Gillan and Tony Iommi called Out of My Mind.  This was released under the banner WhoCares for charity.  The charity is support for Armenian music schools, a thing very near and dear to both Gillan and Iommi.  It was very cool to hear Jon Lord and Tony Iommi on the same recording.

Jon Lord left behind him a large musical body of work. One never wants to see a favorite musician or actor pass away, especially when he/she is still active and creative.  I knew he was sick with cancer but I didn’t know how sick he was until he canceled an appearance in Germany not too long ago.  That said, he had a helluva ride and left behind a lot of great music which I will enjoy for the rest of my days.  Hopefully you will too.

RIP Jon – say hi to Ronnie James Dio.

It’s unthinkable that Jon is gone.  My thoughts are for his wife Vicky and all his children and family at this sad moment in their lives.  I wish them all strength.
A great sadness and sense of loss hangs over me.  Not only has the music world lost a fantastic musician but a gentleman of the finest order.  He was a giant in my life, a great friend, a fellow traveler, a teacher, not only of music, but of life.  I am devastated at his passing - Roger Glover

Our beloved Jon passed away on this day Monday 16th July 2012.
We have lost a dear friend, a brother and a wonderful musician.
His dignity and graciousness touched us all. His music was an inspiration and took us to places beyond our imagination…
A truly great man.
We humbly express our eternal love and great respect.
Deep Purple

Friends: I have just landed in LA from London, to hear the sad news of the passing of our brother Jon Lord. I will miss him. – Glenn Hughes

All the members of Whitesnake & all at Whitesnake.com wish to express their sincere condolences to Jon's Family, Friends & Fans...David Coverdale said "It was an absolute joy & pleasure for me to know him & to work alongside him. He is missed already."

The news today has hurt me like no other loss of a musician I have known. I can only thank him for the legacy he has left us all with his great music, great vision and for his kindness as he was one of the most gentle and kind persons I have ever had the pleasure of being able to call my friend. My heart goes out to Vicki his wife and all his family. – Rick Wakeman

"Farewell To A Gentleman.
Jon has left us now but his music and inspiration will live forever.
I am deeply saddened by his departure."- Keith Emerson

A statement from his representatives reads simply: "Jon passes from Darkness to Light".