Deep Purple TShirTS,

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Deep Purple are an English hard rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered one of the pioneers of heavy metal and hard rock, although the members of the Deep Purple have always refused to label themselves as the former. Deep Purple have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.

Deep Purple has gone through many line-up changes, as well as an eight years split and two reunions. Their second and most commercially successful line-up featured: Ian Gillan (lead vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Jon Lord (keyboard), Roger Glover (bass guitar) and Ian Paice (drums).

In October 1968, Deep Purple had tremendous success in the US (but not the UK) with a cover of Joe South's "Hush," taken from their debut album Shades of Deep Purple, and Deep Purple were booked to support Cream on their Goodbye tour. However Deep Purple were soon kicked off the tour, allegedly because they were upstaging the headlining act. Deep Purple's second album, The Book of Taliesyn, was released in the United States to coincide with this tour, although it would not be released in their home country until the following year. 1969 saw the release of their third album, Deep Purple, which contained strings and woodwind on one track.

After these three albums and extensive touring in the States, Rod Evans and Nick Simper were unceremoniously sacked, and replaced by vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, both ex-Episode Six. This would create the quintessential Deep Purple "Mark 2" lineup. Initially, this version of the Deep Purple released a great single probably influenced by the then-popular stage musical "Hair", a cover of a Greenaway-Cook tune titled "Hallelujah", which flopped. Deep Purple gained some much-needed publicity with the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a three-movement epic composed by Lord as a solo project and performed by Deep Purple at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Together with Five Bridges by The Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra, although at the time, certain members of Purple (Blackmore and Gillan especially) were less than happy at the group being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras" when actually what they had in mind was to develop Deep Purple into a much tighter, hard-rocking style.

Shortly after the orchestral release, Deep Purple began a hectic touring and recording schedule that was to see little respite for the next three years. Their first studio album of this period, released in mid-1970, was Deep Purple in Rock and contained the then concert staples "Speed King", "Into The Fire", and "Child in Time". Deep Purple also issued the UK Top Ten single "Black Night". Blackmore's and Lord's guitar-keyboard interplay coupled with Ian Gillan's howling vocals and the solid rhythm section of Glover and Paice, now started to take on a unique identity and become instantly recognisable to rock fans throughout Europe. A second album, the more mellow and creatively progressive Fireball (a favourite of Gillan but not of the rest of the band ), was issued in the summer of 1971, including the singles "Fireball" and "Strange Kind of Woman". Together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Purple were laying the groundwork for what is now called heavy metal music, although at the time, the phrase was still wholly unknown.

Within weeks of Fireball's release, Deep Purple was already performing songs planned for the next album. One song (which later became "Highway Star") was performed at the first gig of the Fireball tour, having been written on the bus to a show in Portsmouth, in answer to a journalist's question: "How do you go about writing songs?" Three months later, in December 1971, the band found itself in Switzerland to record Machine Head. The album was due to be recorded at a casino in Montreux, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but a fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig burned down the casino. The album was actually recorded at the nearby empty Grand Hotel. This incident famously inspired the song "Smoke on the Water". Gillan believes that he witnessed a man fire a flare gun into the ceiling during the concert, prompting Zappa to comment: "I see Arthur Brown is here tonight."

Continuing from where both previous albums left off, Machine Head has since become one of Deep Purple's most famous albums, including tracks that became live classics such as "Highway Star", "Space Truckin' ", "Lazy", and "Smoke on the Water", all of which were performed in their live album Made in Japan. Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on: when Machine Head was recorded, Deep Purple had only been together three and a half years, yet it was their seventh LP. Meanwhile Deep Purple undertook four US tours in 1972 and the August tour of Japan that led to a double-vinyl live release, Made in Japan. Originally intended as a Japan-only record, its world-wide release saw the double become an instant hit. It remains one of rock music's most popular and highest selling live concert recordings (although at the time it was perhaps seen as less important, as only Glover and Paice turned up to mix it).

The classic Purple Mk 2 line-up continued to work and released the album Who Do We Think We Are (1973), featuring the hit single "Woman from Tokyo", but internal tensions and exhaustion were more noticeable than ever. The bad feelings culminated in Ian Gillan quitting Deep Purple after their second tour of Japan in the summer of 1973, and Roger Glover being pushed out with him. Their replacements were an unknown singer from Redcar in Northern England, David Coverdale, and Midlands bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. This new line-up continued into 1974 with the heavier blues-rock album Burn, another highly successful release and world tour. Hughes and Coverdale added both vocal harmonies and a more funky element to Deep Purple's music, a sound that was even more apparent on the late 1974 release Stormbringer. Besides the title track, the album had a number of songs that received much radio play, such as "Lady Double Dealer", "The Gypsy", and "Soldier Of Fortune". Yet Blackmore voiced unhappiness with the album, and as a result left Deep Purple in the spring of 1975 to form his own band with Ronnie James Dio and Elf, called Rainbow.

With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest vacancies in rock music. In spite of this, the rest of the band refused to go down without a fight, and to the surprise of many long-time fans actually announced a replacement for the "irreplaceable" Man in Black; American Tommy Bolin.

It was Coverdale who had suggested auditioning Bolin. "He walked in, thin as a rake, his hair coloured green, yellow, and blue with feathers in it. Slinking along beside him was this stunning Hawaiian girl in a crochet dress with nothing on underneath. He plugged into four Marshall 100-watt stacks and . . ." The job was his. Bolin had been a member of many now-forgotten mid-60s bands - Denny & The Triumphs, American Standard, and Zephyr, which released three albums from '69-72. Before Deep Purple, Bolin's best-known recordings were made as a session musician on Billy Cobham's 1973 jazz fusion album, Spectrum, and on The James Gang's "Bang" (1973) and "Miami" (1974). He had also jammed with such luminaries as Dr. John, Albert King, and Alphonse Mouzon and was busy working on his first solo album, Teaser, when he accepted the invitation to join Deep Purple.

The resulting album, Come Taste the Band, was released in the US in October 1975. Despite mixed reviews, the collection revitalised Deep Purple once again, bringing a new, extreme funk edge to their hard rock sound. Bolin's influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, the guitarist came up with much of the material. Later, Bolin's personal problems with drugs began to manifest themselves, and after cancelled shows and below-par concert performances, the writing was on the wall for Deep Purple.

The end came on tour in Britain in March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. David Coverdale reportedly walked off in tears and handed in his resignation, to which he was allegedly told there was no band left to quit. The decision to pull the plug on Deep Purple had been made some time before the last show by Lord and Paice (the last surviving original members), who hadn't told anyone else. The break-up was finally made public in July 1976.

Later, Bolin had just finished recording his second solo album, Private Eyes, when, on December 4, 1976, tragedy struck. In Miami, during a tour supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death: multiple-drug intoxication. He was 25 years old.

After the break-up most of the past and present members of Deep Purple went on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and Gillan. There were, however, a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 70s/early 80s.

In April 1984, eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, a full-scale (and legal) reunion happened. It was announced on BBC radio's The Friday Rock Show that the "classic" early 70s line-up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, and Paice was reforming and recording new material. The band signed a deal with Polydor Records in Europe and Mercury in North America (both labels were at the time owned by PolyGram, they are now part of Universal Music Group). The album Perfect Strangers was released in October 1984. A solid release, it sold extremely well, and included the singles and concert staples "Knockin' At Your Back Door" and "Perfect Strangers". The Deep Purple reunion tour followed, starting in Australia and wending its way across the world into Europe by the following summer. Financially, the tour was also a tremendous success. The UK homecoming proved limited, as they elected to play just a single festival show at Knebworth (with main support from the Scorpions). The weather was famously bad but 80,000 turned up anyway.

The line-up then recorded The House of Blue Light in 1986, which was followed by a world tour in 1987. This was followed by another live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) which was culled from several shows on this tour, but still largely based around the by-now familiar "Made in Japan" set-list. In the UK a new version of "Hush" was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Ian Gillan was fired from Deep Purple, as his relations with Blackmore had again soured, and their musical differences had widened too far. Gillan's replacement was former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. This line up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters (1990) and toured in support. It is one of Blackmore's favourite Purple albums, though some fans regard it as little more than a Rainbow album. Despite the renewed excellence of the band during this period, many hard-core fans were unhappy with Turner, preferring Gillan.

With the tour done, Turner was forced out, as Lord, Paice and Glover wanted Gillan back in the fold. Blackmore relented and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On in 1993. During the European tour during the fall of 1993, tensions between Gillan and Blackmore came to a head yet again. Blackmore walked out in November 1993, never to return. Joe Satriani was drafted in, so the live dates (in Japan) in December could be completed. Satriani stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994, and he was asked to stay permanently, but his record contract commitments prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.

from Wikipedia licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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