Deep Purple

This week with Purple in 1972 performing live at The Purley Orchid Ballroom, England "Forget about chart placing and record sales for just one moment. The true testing point of any big group is its drawing capacity at the box office,and from what I saw on Tuesday it would appear that Deep Purple are enjoying the very best of both worlds. On a night which should have keptmost people at home and in front of the fire, Purple attracted well over 3,000 exuberant devotees for the grand opening of the Orchid Ballroom's season of heavy rock attractions. When groups reach the status that Purple now find themselves with -acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic -they do one of two things: become complacent and predictable or they improve. Deep Purple have not only improved since the last time I witnessed their high-energy performance at Royal Albert's emporium, but they've also become a whole lot funkier. Familiar favourites like "Strange Kinda Woman", "Child In Time", "Fireball" and "Speed King" have been slightly re-worked to accommodate the new funkier approach, and from the ecstatic reaction from the crowd it would appear that there's still considerable mileage left in Deep Purple's brand of cerebral rock." Roy Carr/New Musical Express

Having some fun down under celebrating Deep Purple in early 1976 - The local EMI office placed a few advertisements highlighting the bands success. You have to consider at the time that the price of a concert ticket was about $2!

A very cool advertisement from late 1975 by EMI Italy who wanted to express their appreciation of the bands success. Coem Taste The Band!

's cover photo

Something really great for Purple fans to check out - We are looking back to the success of Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers tour. The band had just started the USA leg of the tour, the album was in the charts and the band were on fire - Check out Deep Purple Mark 2 in Houston Texas January 1985 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6yozvlpFKE&feature=youtu.be

The great Ritchie Blackmore on tour with Deep Purple Mark 3 in April 1975. © Photo -Finn Costello

Check out this live concert presentation of Deep Purple live in 2014 with the classic track 'Black Night' featuring Steve Morse on guitar.

Along with Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord founded Deep purple back in 1968. This cool promo photo was used in 1975 promoting the band. The BRON agency was always a great friend of the band.

How things change ....This advert is from 1975, and at that time the west was at loggerheads with China. 40 years later it's very interesting to read.

Glorious beginnings - David Coverdale's first promotional photo for Deep Purple taken at Clearwell Castle in November 1973.

This week with Deep Purple in February 1972. The band performed the yet to be released track ‘Highway Star’ in their set at Stuttgart Sporthalle, Germany. There was a TV report about the gig (10th February) shown during "Abendschau" on Wednesday, 16th February at 6.35pm SWF and SDR, including brief footage of the band playing "Highway Star", and of Gillan and Glover backstage. Check out this link on the official Deep Purple YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFu3QSAuT1M

This week in February 1971, Deep Purple perform the yet to be recorded track ‘Strange Kind Of Woman’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eal9dRYTi8c "This next one is a new thing and it's actually being released as a single or something, I think it's either this Friday or next Friday, but I don't know which 'cos there's a lot of confusion over it. It's in fact a single and we recorded it just about two weeks ago and we wrote it the same day just about half an hour after we recorded it! You'll have to excuse me, I'm confused about the whole thing." Ian Gillan having some fun early February 1971

This week in February 1970 - London UK De Lane Lea studios Members of Deep Purple are involved in the recording of the "Green Bullfrog" LP. which was conceived and produced by Derek Lawrence, and engineered by Martin Birch. When the album originally came out, over a year later, there was speculation about the line up, since, for contractual reasons, the musicians were only credited on the album by their nicknames. The line-up on these recordings is actually: Ritchie (Boots) Blackmore/guitar, Big Jim (The Boss) Sullivan/guitar, Albert (Pinta) Lee/guitar, Tony (Bevy) Ashton/keyboards and some vocals, Matthew (Sorry) Fisher/keyboards, Rod (The Vicar) Alexander/guitar, Chas (Sleepy) Hodges/bass, the Les Humphries Singers' Earl (Jordan) Jordan/vocals, and Ian (Speedy) Paice/drums.

Steve Morse at NAMM 2019. Steve lets it slip that Deep Purple will be heading back to the studio in 2019, as well as playing a series of shows as yet unannounced. Stay tuned!

Eddie Van Halen is certainly one of the greatest guitarists of any era .....Check out this cool little piece backstage when he has some fun with some great Ritchie Blackmore riffs including Hard Lovin' Man (In Rock), Speed King (In Rock) and Space Truckin' (Machine Head). Enjoy!

A press advertisement for the brilliant chart topping Deep Purple's Machine Head in March 1972. Check out the official Smoke On The Water film clip : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsxPZNaawSc

Deep Purple 31st January 1973 Deep Purple were forced to cancel several shows with Jon Lord falling ill. "I had a pain in my side for about two weeks and totally ignored it. After a show in Düsseldorf I could hardly move and I flew back to England on the first plane out, the 08:15... the only time in my life that I caught a plane so early. I was operated on that night but something went wrong. It festered and I ended up being in hospital for three weeks instead of five days." Jon Lord Deep Purple chart success continued with both Machine Head and Made in Japan riding high in the global charts.

Deep Purple 30th January 1970 at The Royal Albert Hall London, UK with Canned Heat Deep Purple replaced Spooky Tooth, who were originally billed. Canned Heat's UK tour programme (they toured with Renaissance) included a feature on Purple. It seems that Canned Heat's set at the Royal Albert Hall was recorded - at the end of a CD entitled "Canned Heat Live In Europe 1970", singer Bob Hite thanks the crowd on behalf of Canned Heat, Renaissance and Deep Purple!

Moonglow is the upcoming eighth full-length album by Tobias Sammet's rock opera project Avantasia. It will be released on 15 February 2019 through Nuclear Blast and features an incredible vocal performance by Candice Night. Check out the lyric video now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZGQ1LsdCUM

This is a little lesson in the transformation of Purple's management. The first photo captures Purple manager Tony Edwards with the bands agent, Bruce Payne at The California Jam in April 1974. Months later, Bruce is shot with Purple's co manager John Coletta at which point in time the management had decided to bring their agent on board as an 'in house' agency to be known as Thames Talent. Bruce Payne went on to manage Rainbow and then ignited the guys to bring about Purple's glorious reformation in 1984. Bruce continues to manage the band into 2019. A huge effort devoting 45 years of his life to the band.

These 2 photos were taken inside the offices of Deep Purple (Overseas) in June 1974 when the band was celebrating huge successes. The award was presented to Tony Edward's for the global smash hit live album 'Made In Japan'

Ian Gillan in a very different position, but incredibly only 2 years separate the photos. The first photo was taken during Ian's final days with Mark 2 Deep Purple back in 1973, whilst the second photo was taken on Ian's return to the stage in October 1975 for The Butterfly Ball.

Bloody Australian's 1975 style - they even had their own beer! January 25th 1975 "Deep Purple is one of the greatest heavy rock bands of all time. If there were ever any doubts in Australian minds they vanished under the midnight stars at Sunbury on Saturday. In two very short hours the British band brought Sunbury out of the mud, the flies and the musical boredom. There is something quite insane about waiting in a muddy paddock for two days getting drenched, but somehow Deep Purple gave an explanation for the phenomenon. To see Richie Blackmore tear rapid-fire lead out of those three guitars, to see an Ian Paice drum solo (perhaps the world's fastest), or just to see Jon Lord on keyboards is a rare experience indeed. In combination, with David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, it is quite incredible. The real Sunbury show began at 11 p.m. on Saturday when even the dark rain clouds made way for clear starlight. They began with"Burn" and "Stormbringer", the two best-known songs of the band's line-up. The highspots were a magnificent performance of "Mistreated", "Smoke on the Water" and a shattering finale of "Highway Star". At times the long stretches of jamming lost the crowd, and right at the end an equipment malfunction lost Ritchie Blackmore for a few moments, but they were the only failings of an electrifying performance." The Age Melbourne

Deep Purple - This week in January 1971 at Olympic Studios London UK The band set about recording "Strange Kind Of Woman", "The Mule", "Freedom", "I'm Alone" and "Slow Train" for the "Fireball" LP. The original working title for "Strange Kind Of Woman" was "Prostitute", whilst "Freedom" started out as "Born To Live". Ritchie and Roger reprised part of "Slow Train" many years later with Rainbow, on the track "Make Your Move". Four Scottish dates, originally scheduled for the end of January, were rearranged for early March to allow more time in the studio working on the new album.

This is a great fan generated video of the 1993 track 'The Battle Rages On..' which came from the final mark 2 line up album featuring Ian Gillan on vocals and Ritchie Blackmore on guitar. Thanks to Russell Wagusfor the cool edit!