Deep Purple fans were outraged, Heavy Metallurgists ran shrieking for cover. But
Ian Gillan's first post-
Purple project remains one of the hardest, loudest and most exciting of all the mothership's myriad offspring -- and the fact that
Child in Time is such a brutally funky album only amplifies its achievements. How easy it would have been, after all, for
Gillan to simply fall back on all the past glories that his audience was hoping he'd be replaying. Instead, even the album's title -- lifted, of course, from one of
Purple's most sacred classics -- was a joke. "Child in Time" was replayed within, of course. But you'd have a hard time recognizing it. It's strange -- looking back on the
Deep Purple story, it's the arrival of
David Coverdale and
Glenn Hughes that heralds the band's own flirtation with da funk, and the departure of
Gillan and
Roger Glover (the latter producer of this album) that allowed them into the family in the first place.