While Blackmore’s first choice for the role of lead vocalist, a 19 year old named Terry Reid, was found to be unavailable due to his standing contract, another of Blackmore’s acquaintances named Mick Underwood was more helpful. Underwood had been in a band called the Outlaws with Blackmore and was now the drummer in a band called Episode Six, and he suggested to Blackmore that his band’s singer, a guy called Ian Gillan, might be who he was searching for. In June 1969, Blackmore, Lord and Paice went to see Episode Six perform at a pub gig, and from that point on they knew he was their man. Gillan was later offered the job, and was also asked if he knew any bass guitarists who would be interested in what they were setting out to do. He mentioned his current Episode Six band mate, Roger Glover, who was not only a good bass guitarist but an experienced song writer as well. However, Glover did not want to leave Episode Six, so Gillan suggested he could help out with Deep Purple's songwriting as a compromise. On 7 June, Gillan and Glover were asked to play on a Deep Purple recording session for their next single, "Hallelujah", with Glover performing as a session musician. It was after this that Glover changed his mind and decided he would like to join the band. Blackmore was later quoted as saying about the hiring of Glover, "He turned up for the session...he was their bass player. We weren't originally going to take him until Paicey said, 'he's a good bass player, let's keep him.' So I said okay." Not long after he was confirmed, and Deep Purple had their two replacement players. Rod Evans, who had already been voicing his desire to move to the US, did so once his firing from the band had taken place. Nick Simper, who had been unaware of his virtual dismissal until after the new lineup had begun working together on new material, moved on to form his own band Warhorse. And thus, Deep Purple Mark II came into being.
The first album release from the band was Jon Lord contemporaneous “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” performed by the band at the Royal Albert Hall in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It was the first album of Deep Purple’s that had charted and had success in their home UK, but both Gillan and Blackmore felt that it was a distraction from the direction that they were looking for the band to head in. Lord acknowledged that not all of his bandmates had been happy to go along with his project, while newcomer Glover noted a few years later that at this point of the band’s trajectory it was obvious that it was Lord who was the leader of the band. The writing process for the new album had been interrupted by the Concerto album, along with a gruelling touring schedule the band had begun in order to take advantage of their growing popularity. Songs for the new album were tested on the road, and tweaked and tightened as deemed necessary. Overall it was a seven month period of writing and recording for the album. The band produced the album themselves, but lent heavily on a young sound engineer by the name of Martin Birch to help them recreate the live sound in the studio. Eventually, almost 12 months after the Mark II lineup had first come together, their first effort was released to the world under the title “Deep Purple in Rock”.
Those that drifted with the first three Deep Purple albums – all of the time and the music of the day, and all enjoyable for what they are – who then went out and bought this album of the new Mark II era, took it home, put it on their turntable, turned the volume up, heard the crackle of needle on vinyl... could not have been prepared for what came out at them from the opening stanza. From out of nowhere, Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar screams out of the speakers, announcing the arrival of the new formation of the band, and the new direction of their music. Backed by the full quartet of musicians it is a wall of noise, that dies into the more peaceful tones of Jon Lord’s organ, that seems to return order to the album, and perhaps the more languid sounds that fans have been used to. No indeed, and Ian Paice’s drums crash hard, and the first Ian Gillan vocals of the new era hits immediately, singing lyrics that Gillan wrote by taking phrases of old rock 'n' roll songs by Little Richard. By merging the franticness of Little Richard’s work with his own words, “Speed King” takes off immediately at pace and with great fun behind it. Even the breakdown in the middle of the song, with the calmer languid exchange between Lord and Blackmore almost fools you into believing the song will return to a more mortal state of affairs, until it then explodes back to full speed and sound again, playing off against each other in the first of what will become so many wonderful and amazing duels between the two instrumental protagonists over the course of the next few albums. As the first song of the new era, it makes its mark from the start, and lays down the foundation for what became the band’s legacy.
“Bloodsucker” follows in emphatic style, not replicating the speed and aggression of the opening track, instead giving us what would become a standard entry through the years. A great rhythm set down by Paice on drums and Roger Glover’s beautiful basslines is the mainstay throughout the song, which gives Gillan the chance to express himself as only he can, with a great vocal through the first half of the song with an impressive scream in the chorus couple of lines, before going full high pitched larynx stretching in is final efforts of the song. The middle is against dominated by the byplay between Blackmore and Lord which completes another excellent song.
As magnificent as “Speed King” is on this album, and is the point of difference immediately between the eras of the band, it is “Child in Time” that sets this album, and the band, from what everyone else was doing at this time. At over ten minutes in length, the complete change of tempo and mood from the opening makes it obvious, and yet not so obvious by its conclusion. Lord’s organ and Gillan’s amazing vocals take the first stanza of the track, Gillan singing his words of war: “Sweet child in time you'll see the line, the line that's drawn between Good and bad, See the blind man shooting at the world, Bullets flying oh, taking toll, If you've been bad Oh Lord, I bet you have, And you've not been hit Oh, by a flying lead. You'd better close your eyes, Oh-oh, bow your head, Wait for the ricochet”. And then Gillan’s increasingly soaring woahs and ahs that i can’t even pretend to reproduce, take us into the solo section of the track. Blackmore’s solo in this song is the work of a genius. He takes the mood that the song has driven to this point of the track, starts off with the moody harmonic solo that suits everything perfectly, before breaking out into his own wonderfully crafted higher velocity and heavier solo break, taking centre stage and drawing all eyes to him as he riffs and shreds over Paice’s speeded up drum beat and dragging Glover's bass along for the ride, before Lord’s organ joins in to completement it all... and then the abrupt stop into the breakdown back to Lord’s gentle restoration of the beginning of the track, and Gillan's sweet and beautiful vocal back again. And we build to the finish that the song deserves. It is hard to explain the amazing platitudes that this track has, and how even all of these years later it is still one of the all time great songs. It concludes the first side of the album, one that is stamped with greatness.
Side two opens with “Flight of the Rat”, probably not a title that inspires any great enthusiasm for the unknown fan. It features a rumbling and rambling bass line from Roger Glover as its basis, apparently from his rearrangement of the classical track “Flight of the Bumblebee”. The bass is prominent throughout along with the organ, and the solo playoff between Lord and Blackmore again makes the best part of the song. Each has a lengthy time to create their own mark on the track. It is another example of the wonderful completeness of the four musicians in the band, each not only complements what the others are doing, they all have their moment in the sun to shine. “Into the Fire” sets back in that standard rhythm the band does so well, which accentuates the hard drum beat from Paice and staccato stop start from the guitars and organ. “Living Wreck” was one of the earliest tracks completed and recorded, finished in October 1969, and when listening to the album you can notice differences between it and later recorded tracks. As a result it also doesn’t have Martin Birch involved in the engineering, and that too is noticeable. The album then closes out with “Hard Lovin’ Man”, which conversely from the previous track was the first to be recorded at the studio with Birch involved, and the one whose sound convinced the band to have him more heavily involved for the rest of the album and into the future. This song derived from a studio jam and when you listen to it you can hear how that was the case, with Paice’s upbeat double time drums matched by Glover’s bassline, and the two protagonists again playing off of each other on organ and lead guitar. It’s a great way to conclude the album, allowing the band to riff off of each other, and showcasing their undoubted and unbelievable talent.
My first introduction to Deep Purple came through, inevitably, the song “Smoke on the Water”. Because, you know, growing up, everybody knew “Smoke on the Water”. If you picked up a guitar, someone would expect you to play that riff. So, both that and “Black Night” were songs that I knew. But when it came to albums it was the Mark II reunion album, 1984’s “Perfect Strangers” that was my first experience of an album of the band back in 1986. And I was hooked from the start. Such that it was only natural to then go back and find those two massive and undeniably wonderful albums from their heyday, “Machine Head’ and “Deep Purple in Rock”.
I first had this album as a second hand vinyl copy from one of the many second hand record stores that existed in Sydney in the mid-to-late 1980’s. The iconic cover lent itself to being noticed, but not as much as that opening frenzy that kicks the album off in “Speed King”. That’s an attention drawing moment, where speed IS the king. Then the transformation to “Bloodsucker” and the timelessness of “Child in Time”. Those three songs in particular announced the arrival of Deep Purple Mark II and left no one in any doubt as to what they were here to achieve.
Early on I was always more enamoured by “Machine Head”, the album that came two years after “In Rock” had been released, and I always thought with incredulity why the band had recorded “Black Night” at the same time, but only released that as a single at the same time the album came out, but didn’t actually include it on the album! In a way, it wasn’t until I heard the band’s first three albums that I grew far more admiring respect for this album. Because if you take a listen to the band’s third album, the self-titled “Deep Purple”, the final album with the first line up of the band, and the style of music that it contains, and then listen to this album, the first by the second line up of the band – you would have trouble reconciling that it is the same band. The absolute and astonishing pure aggression, then mixed with the epic and grandiose visions of the five artists involved is another world from what the band had done prior to this album, and that more than anything drew me in deeper to this album. Because how can you possibly change so much in the course of one album, in the course of 12 months, simply by deciding you want to explore other musical options and then exchanging two members of the group for two others from another? There are other examples in music history where an artist or band had changed course in the release of one album, but this is on another level.
I have had this album on again for the past two weeks. And this is another album that doesn’t spend too long out of my rotation. But listening to it over this past period of time, with a critical ear as well as my fan’s ear, I have really found an increased appreciation for this album again. It is a masterpiece, one of several that Deep Purple put together over the course of their career. And listening to this album now, in the same way as listening to Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album, released 55 freaking years ago, is mind blowing. I remember being 13 years old and listening to The Beatles first album “Please Please Me”, and thinking “wow - this is 20 years old. I can’t believe I would be listening to an album that was released 20 years ago”. Nice one Past Bill. I wonder how you would have gone trying to get your head around the concept that in the future you would be listening to albums from 55 years in the past, and still loving them as though they had been released yesterday.
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