1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 186. Deep Purple – Deep Purple In Rock (1970)

 

Or should that be “Deep Purple in RAWK \m/”? And so the final third of the “unholy trinity of rock” has arrived, and I think if anything they’re heavier in sound than Black Sabbath, and definitely heavier in sound than Led Zeppelin who at this stage are still tending towards both blues and folk.

The distinctive sound for Deep Purple comes from them having John Lord on organ, where he rips it up and gets some really chunky sounds out of it, often doing call/response work against Ritchie Blackmore on lead guitar. Meanwhile the rhythm section, Roger Glover on bass, Ian Paice on drums, keep it driving and heavy, and Ritchie Blackmore breaks out with fast and squealy guitar solos. 

Although other bands have done hard rock, it’s arguably Deep Purple that develop so many of the rock cliches, with lots of the tracks ending with a seemingly never-ending series of crescendos. As John Peel used to say, “Fuddle-a-dumpf. Just waiting for that.” There’s only one track, Child of Time, that is more of a slow ballad (there’s always one), where Ian Gillan really give some powerful vocals, although the track does develop into a more of a fast rock, high guitar solo, kind of deal. And then does it all over again.

I used to live where a lot of rock stars went to retire, and through a friend of a friend I ended up at a party in Ian Paice’s garden, where he came out to tell us to keep the noise down. I’ve always loved the irony of that.