* En anglais uniquement
With a body of work spanning nearly seven decades, England's
Deep Purple are bona fide classic rock royalty. Along with
Cream,
Black Sabbath, and
Led Zeppelin, they defined hard rock and early heavy metal. Though their lineup has constantly evolved,
Deep Purple effectively made music a career for guitarist
Ritchie Blackmore, bassist
Roger Glover, vocalists
Ian Gillan and
David Coverdale, and organist/composer
Jon Lord. Shortly before his death in 2012,
Lord attributed
Deep Purple's success in selling more than 100 million albums to "musical restlessness." Their early singles were cover-heavy exercises in psychedelic pop and included "Kentucky Woman," "Hush," and "Might Just Take Your Life," as well as the 1968 long-players
Shades of Deep Purple and
The Book of Taliesyn. In 1970, after releasing the grandiose
Concerto for Group and Orchestra,
Deep Purple were dishing out molten, riff-heavy slabs of hard rock. 1970's Deep Purple in Rock and 1972's
Machine Head showcased the loud, proud, proto-metal riffs that fueled "Smoke on the Water," "Highway Star," and "Woman from Tokyo," all performed to extremes on the live classic
Made in Japan. Though times and tastes shifted,
Deep Purple continued to chart during the '80s with
Perfect Strangers and
Nobody's Perfect. In the '90s, with the rise of grunge and alt-rock, they surprised critics with the successful Slaves and Masters and
The Battle Rages On. Into the second decade of the 21st century,
Deep Purple continued to chart with 2013's acclaimed
Now What?! and Infinite four years later.
Deep Purple were formed in Hertford, England in 1968 with an inaugural lineup that featured guitarist
Blackmore, vocalist
Rod Evans, bassist
Nick Simper, keyboardist
Jon Lord, and drummer
Ian Paice. Initially dubbed Roundabout, the group was first assembled as a session band for ex-
Searchers drummer Chris Curtis but quickly went their own way, touring Scandinavia before beginning work on their debut LP,
Shades of Deep Purple. The most pop-oriented release of their career, the album generated a Top Five American hit with its reading of
Joe South's "Hush" but otherwise went unnoticed at home.
The Book of Taliesyn followed (in the U.S. only) in 1969, again cracking the U.S. Top 40 with a cover of
Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman."
With their self-titled third LP,
Deep Purple's ambitions grew; their songs reflected a new complexity and density as
Lord's classically influenced keyboards assumed a much greater focus. Soon after the album's release, their American label Tetragrammaton folded, and with the dismissal of
Evans and
Simper, the band started fresh, recruiting singer
Ian Gillan and bassist
Roger Glover from the ranks of the pop group
Episode Six.
The revamped
Deep Purple's first album, 1970's
Concerto for Group and Orchestra, further sought to fuse rock and classical music. When the project, which was recorded with
the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was poorly received,
Blackmore took creative control of the band, steering it toward a heavier, guitar-dominated approach that took full advantage of
Gillan's powerful vocals. The gambit worked: 1970's Deep Purple in Rock heralded the beginning of the group's most creatively and commercially successful period. At home, the album sold over a million copies, with the subsequent non-LP single "Black Night" falling just shy of topping the U.K. pop charts. Released in 1971,
Fireball was also a smash, scoring a hit with "Strange Kind of Woman."
Plans to record the follow-up at the Casino in Montreux, Switzerland, were derailed after the venue burned down during a live appearance by
Frank Zappa, but the experience inspired
Deep Purple's most enduring hit, the AOR staple "Smoke on the Water." The song, featured on the multi-platinum classic
Machine Head, reached the U.S. Top Five in mid-1972 and positioned
Deep Purple among rock's elite; the band consolidated its status with the 1973 studio follow-up
Who Do We Think We Are and the hit "Woman from Tokyo." However, long-simmering creative differences between
Blackmore and
Gillan pushed the latter out of the group that same year, with
Glover soon exiting as well. Singer
David Coverdale and bassist/singer
Glenn Hughes were recruited for 1974's
Burn, and
Gillan formed a band bearing his own name.
After completing 1974's
Stormbringer,
Blackmore left
Deep Purple to form
Rainbow with vocalist
Ronnie James Dio; his replacement was ex-
James Gang guitarist
Tommy Bolin, who made his debut on
Come Taste the Band. All the changes clearly took their toll, however, and following a farewell tour, the group dissolved in 1976.
Coverdale, meanwhile, went on to form
Whitesnake, and
Bolin died of a drug overdose later in the year.
The classic lineup of
Blackmore,
Gillan,
Lord,
Glover, and
Paice reunited
Deep Purple in 1984 for a new album, the platinum smash
Perfect Strangers.
The House of Blue Light followed three years later, but as past tensions resurfaced,
Gillan again exited in mid-1989. Onetime
Rainbow vocalist
Joe Lynn Turner was recruited for 1990's Slaves and Masters before
Gillan again rejoined to record
The Battle Rages On..., an apt title as
Blackmore quit the group midway through the supporting tour, temporarily replaced by
Joe Satriani.
In 1994,
Steve Morse took over the guitar slot (fresh from a stint in
Kansas), and the revitalized group returned to the studio for 1996's Purpendicular, which proved a success among the
Purple faithful. Abandon followed in 1998, along with a 1999 orchestral performance released the following year as
Live at the Royal Albert Hall.
Deep Purple were given the box set treatment the same year with the four-disc set Shades: 1968-1998, which collected hits, demos, live takes, and unreleased tracks from throughout the years (touching upon all of
Purple's different lineups). Meanwhile,
Blackmore kept himself busy after leaving the band by issuing a single album with his briefly resuscitated outfit
Rainbow (1998's
Stranger in Us All), before forming the Renaissance-inspired
Blackmore's Night with fiancée/vocalist
Candice Night.
Despite continuing lineup upheavals,
Deep Purple remained active well into the 21st century. Keyboardist
Lord departed the band in 2002 and issued several classical albums during the remainder of the decade; sadly, he died in 2012 after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a year.
Lord's replacement in
Deep Purple during the new millennium was
Don Airey, and the band issued two surprisingly strong albums with the lineup of
Gillan,
Glover,
Paice,
Morse, and
Airey: 2003's Bananas and 2005's
Rapture of the Deep. The late '90s and early 2000s also saw the release of many archival releases and collections preserving the band's enduring legacy (
Machine Head's 25th anniversary, Friends & Relatives, Rhino's The Very Best Of, and Days May Come and Days May Go: The 1975 California Rehearsals), as well as a slew of DVDs (Total Abandon: Live Australia 1999, In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra, Bombay Calling, and New Live & Rare). The impressive and timeless-sounding
Now What?!, produced by
Bob Ezrin, appeared early in 2013.
Surviving members of
Deep Purple reunited for a tribute concert on April 4, 2014 at Royal Albert Hall; it marked the 45th anniversary of the debut of
Jon Lord's "Concerto for Group and Orchestra." The event was chronicled on film and on two albums, Celebrating Jon Lord: The Rock Legend and Celebrating Jon Lord: The Composer, which appeared in the fall of 2014. The group returned to the same Nashville studio with
Ezrin early in 2016. A pre-release single of the opening track, "Time for Bedlam," was issued in December. In January, Infinite's title, cover, and track listing were announced. In an interview,
Airey described the album as "a little heavier than the last one...a bit more prog." Infinite was released in April 2017 as a precursor to
Deep Purple's global "Long Goodbye Tour." Later that year, Rhino issued
Fire in the Sky, a 40-track career retrospective that included at least one track from every studio album through 2013's
Now What?! The Infinite tour was documented with the 2018 live release
The Infinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1. After the tour,
Ezrin invited the band back to Nashville to write and record. Using the motivational motto "
Deep Purple is putting the 'Deep' back into 'Purple'," they stretched out in several musical directions. The completed outing, titled
Whoosh!, was released in July 2020. ~ Jason Ankeny & Greg Prato