Deep Purple

Nice @Naty , welcome on board! :)

I pretty much agree with all of your points. Blackmore and Lord were the two virtuosos in the band and also the ones pushing the band muscially. Lord with his love of classical music and Blackmore with the harder edged sounds. We can't forget to give credit to Ian Paice either, his drumming is on point already on these two albums I feel.
 
Deep Purple is "three stars" - star on the right (Blackmore), star on the left (Lord), and star in the back (Paice).
Deep Purple has a long history of different lineups, but these three guys are mandatory. That's why Mk IV, Mk V, Mk VI aren't "real" Deep Purple.

IMHO.
 
Don't think I've ever seen any early 90's live footage from Purple. That was cool @Zare , thanks! Joe Lynn Turner can sound very soft on record but live there's a lot more roughness there.
 
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Deep Purple (1969)

The third and final studio album by the original Mk I band.

If the band were throwing everything into the melting pot on The Book Taliesyn trying to find their own sound, this album sees the band coming together in a more focused effort. The songs are much better arranged and perhaps a bit more, cut into the bone, straightforward bluesy in their approach. It's quite clear though that they haven't completely forgotten their artistic side just yet either, it's just more controlled. Examples of this is the 12-minute long "April" that sees Deep Purple fine-tune everything they tried to do on Taliesyn into one behemoth classical rock mix with numerous challenging sequences and the great interplay between Lord and Blackmore. Truly a well-accomplished piece unlike anything they would ever do again. Other highlights for me include the charming and moody track "Blind" with some great harpsichord playing by Lord giving the track a medieval feeling. The song also contains great poetic lyrics and a screaming solo by Blackmore! "Lalena" follows Blind beautifully and contains some absolute highlights in the carefully played organ by Lord with Paice providing subtle jazzy drums in the background. "Why Didn't Rosemary?" is straight up bluesy through and through but a great track nonetheless. "Bird Has Flown " has some great rhythms and an insistent wah-wah by Blackmore, another good if not fairly straightforward rock track.

Overall this is musically probably the best of the first three albums but the least successful album of them and when none of the singles managed to chart or garner any real attention the band knew that they had to make some changes and adapt to the current musical climate,. Blackmore and Lord started scheming in the background to form a band inspired by the music of chart toppers at the time like Hendrix and Zeppelin and so Exit: singer Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper.

Both Evans and Simper would go on to form/join excellent hard rock bands in their own right. Evans would fly to the US and form Captain Beyond with members from Iron Butterfly. Simper would stay in the UK and the next year form Warhorse. Both bands very recommendable.


 
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Regarding Deep Purple (the album) ... this is a pretty hodgepodge of stuff. Really a mix of the first two albums. While some good moments, nothing that really stands out as all that great to me. Another album I had not listened to in a long time and probably will not be in much of a rush to get back to.

One area that Gillan really helped in were lyrics ... the original songs really did not stick with my lyrically on the first 3 albums. It gets much better with Gillan not to mention he is oen of the best rock vocalists ever.
 
bearfan said:
Regarding Deep Purple (the album) ... this is a pretty hodgepodge of stuff. Really a mix of the first two albums. While some good moments, nothing that really stands out as all that great to me. Another album I had not listened to in a long time and probably will not be in much of a rush to get back to.

One area that Gillan really helped in were lyrics ... the original songs really did not stick with my lyrically on the first 3 albums. It gets much better with Gillan not to mention he is oen of the best rock vocalists ever.
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I think I've gained a bigger appreciation for the original Purple after sinking into these three albums. I will unquestionably return to songs such as "Blind", "Shield", "Help" and some of the classics.

What's your favorite of the three? I'm still gonna go with the self titled but I must admit it doesn't have the charm of an album like Shades of Deep Purple for example. Taliesyn is too all over the place for me :)
 
Well, I got into Purple in the late 70s .. so these albums were at least reasonably "new" at the time (well, a decade or so old). I listened to them a fair amount back then, but always considered them not nearly as good as the main Gillan albums

That said, I think they are all pretty good to good albums, just on the lower end of the Purple catalog and that if Purple had not become what they did, hardly anyone would care/know that these albums exist. They would be lost in the hordes of pretty good/good albums that were out there at the time and maybe a song like Hush would occasionally get played on classics radio.

If I had to rank them, I would go 1) Shades 2) Deep Purple 3) Taliesyn
 
It is fun to listen to their journey, and what experimental and progressive music they had been serving the young perceptive rock audience at the time, before the scales tipped for them and they gained success and turned into superstars with the In Rock album :)

I was also just looking at some Episode Six (Gillan's band before he joined Purple) videos and it's hard to believe it's the same guy in some of them!
 
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Nope I haven't @SinisterMinisterX , I think I've heard about it before just never checked it out. The band he was in before Purple was very mid sixties flower power pop. Not using his voice at all like he would in Purple.
 
Deep Purple contains really good songs but which fail to be associated with canon Deep Purple. I love "Chasing Shadows" (what bass parts!) and I consider the solo of "Why Didn't Rosemary" one of Blackmore's signature moments (although the riff had been lifted from an Elvis Presley song - see below).

Only "Fault Line / The Painter" and "Lalena", which unfortunately appear one after the other, are rather fillers ("The Painter" had been even more or less improvised on the spot for a BBC Sessions recording and not much reworked, and "Lalena" is the last cover featured on a studio album) and break the rhythm of the album.

On a side note, I think "(The) Bird Has Flown" has been played a few times with Ian Gillan, but I can't find any recording.

Now, compare: ;)

at 1'20

and the beginning:
... then enjoy the guitar! :)
 
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Good informative post @Black Bart ! :) I never knew about the Elvis connection before you pointed it out. It's not so strange after all considering that they liked to rework pieces into their own songs. Not as full covers but just bits and pieces here and there...like this from the previous record:

at 1:23


Is actually 2:18 here:


And they did that A LOT with classical music on that album, so why not Elvis too...:)
 
Also their cover of Donovan's Lalena is pretty good too. A lot better than their last cover of Beatles....

If we want to compare:



Actually after listening tot he original version of Lalena. they should have developed upon the orchestra already on that track...
 
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Lalena, the early "Child in Time". Not the intensity but that moody organ interacting at the beginning for sure. As a whole album, I'd say this one feels the best to me. Just one or two duller tracks but most others make it a worthwhile listening session.
 
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