612. Deep Purple / ABandOn. 1998. 2/5

Despite the changing landscape of music throughout the 1990’s decade, and the fact that the band had now been playing for thirty years, Deep Purple had still found a way to be relevant in the era that they had arrived in, and were still drawing sell out crowds to their shows around the world. The split with Ritchie Blackmore had achieved a couple of things. Firstly, the relationship between all of the members of the band settled down to the point that they could all work with each other without the tension and the bickering that had taken place over years with the Mark II lineup. And that was clear on their first album together “Purpendicular”, where a different sound was incorporated into the album, differing styles that caught some fans unawares, and which was attributed to the new guitarist Steve Morse. And this was the second point of the departure of Blackmore. He had always advocated for remaining in the rock to hard rock spectrum, incorporating melodic song structures more in the way that had been the latter-day Rainbow albums (thus his preference in trying to keep Joe Lynn Turner on vocals after the “Slaves and Masters” album), whereas Ian Gillan was trending towards a different type of singing and therefore musical sound. And this is certainly more of the direction that “Purpendicular” took against “The Battle Rages On”.
Coming into the writing and recording for this new album, Morse was now a core member of the band, and no doubt would have been more comfortable in the writing department. And it was an important album in the history of the band. The late 1990’s, as has been discussed on many podcast episodes of albums released in this era, was a turbulent melting pot of changes in the hard rock and metal genre, and for a classic band such as Deep Purple, the trappings had to be negotiated as well. Finding a way of writing an album that the band loved and wanted to perform, and yet finding a way to keep themselves relevant in the current music climate, was never going to be an easy task.

Reviews over the years have suggested that “Abandon” is a return to a harder place than what the band produced for “Purpendicular”. Overall I tend to disagree with that. For me, this album has been the transition that the band truly wanted to make after the removal of Blackmore from the band, the transition to a more conservative groove oriented band rather than the bastions of the wild and crazy days of hard rock from the early 1970’s.
The opening of “Any Fule Kno That” into “Almost Human” works well enough for those that have followed the course of the past few albums. And “Seventh Heaven” has some nice guitar pieces woven in to the framework of the song that overall does appear like it is trying to find where it sits in the world, while “Watching the Sky” moves between the thoughtful and the hard core throughout the song.
“Don’t Make Me Happy” is a very bluesy, almost lounge-club act-like song, that first taste of what is to come. “Fingers to the Bone” is the template for me as to where Deep Purple were heading with this album and the way they wanted to sound in the future. It’s a very easy listening type song, which Gillan sings well and the band plays well... but with zero ferocity or true type of instruments. Lord’s organ is in piano tinkling mode, Paice’s drumming stays in neutral, Morse and Glover are barely present. And you can add a few more songs like that into this category. “Jack Ruby” is, like “Don’t Make Me Happy”, more a lounge club act song, in a seedy blues club in a basement somewhere. “She Was” and “Whatsername” travel along the same slow tempo easy listening path that “Fingers to the Bone” takes.
The end of the album does brighten up proceedings. “’69” brings us back to the tempo that we know from Deep Purple in their modern era, a more enjoyable mix of pace and energy from Gillan’s vocals, as well as duelling solos from Lord and Morse that finally allows us to feel comfortable in the band again. “Evil Louie” isn’t quite the same energy output but does have a nice Morse guitar piece to showcase what can actually do as apart from what he mainly showcases on this album. And, just to prove that the band seem to be making a course change in their music but still want to retain their older fanbase, there is a reworking of the song “Bloodsucker” that originally appeared on “Deep Purple In Rock” as the final track. And yet, all it proves is that Ian Gillan cannot and doesn’t try to hit those notes that he did 25 years previously, and that the original is not only a brilliant track but a difficult one to re-examine.

Deep Purple toured Australia for the first time since the Mark II reunion tour back in 1984. On that tour I was lucky enough to see them twice, first at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and then for a secret gig they did at Selina’s on Anzac Day, which was just amazingly awesome. They even played a tweaked and extended setlist at that gig at Selina’s, and being the smaller venue, and being able to be right up close to this amazing band doing their thing, it was an amazing experience.
On this tour, they played only three songs from this album in their setlist - “Almost Human”, “Watching the Sky” and at the secret gig they played “Seventh Heaven” in the encore. Well, they played “Bloodsucker” as well, but you can’t count that, can you? And given the back catalogue of material that the band has, and that they are expected to play every night, you can understand why there were only a couple from their newest album. But, in some ways, it also highlighted the difference in the material from this album to what most people wanted to hear.
I had a copy of this album prior to seeing them in concert, and to be honest it just hadn’t grabbed me at the time. A few listens in, and I was already turning back to “Perfect Strangers” and “The House of Blue Light” and “Slaves and Masters”. And for me it was the first indications that the band was looking to become less raucous, less heavy, less loud, and create a different spectrum to reside in. And I couldn’t begrudge them that. And in the albums that have come since, more of that has been obvious. And, those albums I still like, as I still do this album. But it is very much a different band from the one that had been around until 1976, and then again from 1984 onwards. This album for me is where the metamorphosis began in earnest, to a sound that suited the slowly greying members of the band. It also signalled the final album that founding member Jon Lord played on before he moved in another direction in 2001. The changes were continuing for Deep Purple, and this album was just the beginning.