Deep Purple, also referred to as Deep Purple III, is the third studio album by the English rock band Deep Purple, released in June 1969 on Tetragrammaton Records in the United States, but not until September 1969 on Harvest Records in the United Kingdom. Its release was preceded by the single "Emmaretta" and by a long tour in the UK, whose dates were interspersed between the album's recording sessions.
The music of this album is mostly original and a combination of progressive rock, hard rock and psychedelic rock, but with a harder edge and with the guitar parts in more evidence than in the past. This was due both to the growth of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore as a songwriter and to the conflicts within the band over the fusion of classical music and rock proposed by keyboard player Jon Lord and amply implemented in the band's previous releases.
The band started their second US tour in April 1969 with little support from their almost-bankrupt American label and without an album to promote, because of a delay in the manufacturing of the new LP. During the tour, Deep Purple showed a remarkable progress as performers and a musical direction more oriented towards a heavier and louder sound than before. Doubts about the compatibility of vocalist Rod Evans with the hard rock music that other band members wanted to pursue brought about the decision to search for a substitute, which was found in Ian Gillan of the band Episode Six. Gillan had formed a songwriting duo with Episode Six's bassist Roger Glover, who was also invited to join Deep Purple and replace Nick Simper. The band's new line-up, identified as Mark II, debuted live in London on 10 July 1969.
This was the least commercially successful of the three albums released by the band's Mark I line-up, and was ignored by critics upon its release. Modern reviews are generally positive, and remark on the variety of styles within the album and the boldness of the song arrangements.
Background In late 1968, Deep Purple had embarked on a successful first US tour to promote their second album The Book of Taliesyn, and returned home on 3 January 1969.Robinson: p. 4 The band was considered an underground act in the United Kingdom, but word of their success in America had influenced their reputation at home, as they gradually rose in popularity and request.Thompson: p. 58 However, their releases had yet to make an impact in the UK,Popoff: p. 33 where their second single, a cover of Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman", had not charted and was retired after six weeks, after having peaked at No. 38 in the United States and No. 21 in Canada.
Deep Purple's American label Tetragrammaton Records pressured the band to make a single to match the success of their hit "Hush",Bloom: p.121 and the band had tried to satisfy that request while still in the US for the last dates of their tour; they recorded some covers in a New York studio in December 1968, without worthwhile results.Thompson: p. 56 The musicians had come up with much more complex original material for their second album, and making a song that would easily fit the three-minute range was apparently becoming difficult.
A few days after their US tour, Deep Purple settled in with their usual producer Derek Lawrence at De Lane Lea Studios in Kingsway, London, already used for The Book of Taliesyn sessions, to compose and record new songs and solve the new single problem. The song "Emmaretta" (named after the musical Hair cast member Emmaretta Marks, whom singer Rod Evans had met in the US) was composed for that purpose and recorded on 7 January 1969, after four takes. The heavier and more experimental song "The Bird Has Flown" was arranged and recorded later on the same day and was chosen as the B-side for the US release. The instrumental "Wring That Neck" from their previous album was the B-side of the British edition of "Emmaretta", which was issued in February 1969 and promoted by Deep Purple in their first full UK tour. This was the first time that a Deep Purple release appeared in the UK before the US. The tour started in Birmingham on 6 February with a concert broadcast by BBC Radio 1, and went on as a series of one-nighters in clubs and colleges across the country during February and March. Deep Purple's greater visibility and their declared interest in the British public induced local music magazines to print a few articles on them. However, after keyboard player and spokesperson Jon Lord publicly stated that they would play large arenas for £2500 per show in America then come home and only be able to book small venues paying £150 a night, typical headlines were "Purple won't starve for an ideal" and "They lose £2350 a night working in Britain".Robinson: p. 5
Writing and recording The band's management organized the spare time from the UK tour to record new songs for a third album over the course of February and March 1969 at De Lane Lea Studios, with Lawrence as producer and Barry Ainsworth as sound engineer. The pressure of the multiple engagements left the band very little time for composition and most of the tracks were written and rehearsed in the studio.Popoff: p.36 Deep Purple was the band's third album to be recorded, even though they had been together for less than one year. According to Nick Simper: "Recording was always a problem. We were always short of material, purely because of our schedule. The fact that we were always being chased by Tetragrammaton for material, we never had the luxury like most bands do now of saying, 'hang on fellas, we need a little bit of down time to just think about stuff and try and be creative.'" Added Blackmore: "That really bugs me...going to the studio, 'right, you gotta turn out an LP, boys.' You know, 'here we go, you gotta write a song...today.' It’s just ridiculous."
The musicians were now starting to fully endeavour to write original material and found ideas for seven songs, more than on either of their first two albums.Thompson: p. 57 Musical and lyrical inspiration came from very disparate sources. The opener "Chasing Shadows" was based on African rhythms created by drummer Ian Paice with lyrics inspired by one of Jon Lord's nightmares.Popoff: p. 34 The baroque "Blind" was written by Lord and largely performed on harpsichord. The short instrumental "Fault Line" was inspired by an earthquake that the band had experienced while in Los Angeles and featured Paice's drum patterns reversed and double tracked. "Fault Line" served as an intro to the blues rocker "The Painter". Roman Polanski's movie Rosemary's Baby, which the band members had watched together at a cinema, was the main inspiration for the blues-based "Why Didn't Rosemary?" The song's lyrics pose the question, "Why didn't Rosemary ever take the pill?". "April" was a tune written by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore about his birthday month before the recording sessions had begun; it was later augmented with a long middle section of classical music written by Lord, becoming the album's 12-minute-plus final track and Deep Purple's longest ever studio recording.Popoff: p. 35 The only cover song on the album is the Donovan-penned ballad "Lalena", which had been a Top 40 single for its author in the US in the autumn of 1968.
The first new song to be publicly performed was titled "Hey Bop a Re Bop", which aired on the Top Gear radio show on 14 January 1969. It was broadcast again on 11 February before being reworked and becoming the psychedelic blues song "The Painter".
Although most recording dates are lost, it is known that the band recorded two songs on 17 February. "Lalena" and most of "April" were recorded on 28 February, while a new version of "The Bird Has Flown", retitled "Bird Has Flown", was put on tape on 28 March. The orchestral part of "April" played by hired musicians was the last recording for the yet-unnamed album, which was mixed and delivered by the end of March.
Musical style
As is the case with most of the material on their previous two albums, the songs of Deep Purple mix elements of progressive rock, hard rock and psychedelic rock, but this time in a darker and more baroque atmosphere. Perhaps in response to British audiences craving more blues-based rock, the band also incorporated a 12-bar blues structure on the songs "The Painter" and "Why Didn't Rosemary?" "Emmaretta" is a pop rock song written to be a commercial single, but the sound of the album is heavier and more guitar-oriented than previous works, similar to how the band sounded live during this period.Robinson: p. 7Bloom: p.123
Lord had been the main writer on the first two albums and his classical music upbringing and interest in fusing classical and rock had profoundly influenced the direction taken by the band. Blackmore compared the organ-heavy mix of those releases to the works of British progressive rock band the Nice, who featured Keith Emerson on keyboards.Popoff: p. 28 On Deep Purple Lord still had a great influence, which found maximum expression in the harpsichord-flavoured "Blind" and in the orchestral section of "April", an original piece for choir and string quartet that he composed despite being hard at work in writing and arranging his Concerto for Group and Orchestra. Lord's dominance waned some in this release as more writing and performing space was given to Blackmore, who delivered his longest and, for some critics, best guitar solos to date. Critics also remark Paice's progress as performer, especially on the "tribal" opening track "Chasing Shadows" where he had his first chance at songwriting. Bass player Nick Simper later stated that "there was a lot of pressure from Jon Lord to do this kind of semi-classical stuff [and] we didn't actually rebel against it until the third album."
Psychedelic rock had been another main influence in the first two Deep Purple albums, but it was rapidly going out of fashion; the musicians ceased their exploration of the genre in this album with songs such as "The Painter" and "Bird Has Flown", dedicating themselves completely to the trendier hard rock genre in the following studio releases.
Cover art
Tetragrammaton issued the album in a stark gatefold sleeve, wrapped around with a segmented illustration from Hieronymus Bosch's painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. The label ran into difficulty over the use of the Museo del Prado-owned painting, which was incorrectly perceived in the US as being anti-religious, featuring immoral scenes, and was thus rejected or poorly stocked by many record shops.Robinson: p. 8 The original painting is in colour, although it appeared on the LP in monochrome due to a printing error for the original layout, and the band opted to keep it that way. Another section of the same Bosch painting (in colour) had been used as an album cover two years earlier, by Pearls Before Swine on their debut One Nation Underground.
Release and promotion Tetragrammaton Records had been active only for a year, but was on the brink of bankruptcy in the US. Its initial solid financial foundation had been quickly eroded by expensive promotional campaigns and by failed commercial strategies.Thompson: p. 31Thompson: p. 59 Deep Purple were the label's most successful artist, but the band had not been able to produce another hit single like "Hush" and their latest release "Emmaretta", out just in time for their second US tour in April 1969, was also largely unsuccessful and failed to affect the US charts. The label's financial distress caused a delay in the printing of Deep Purple, which was released in the US only in June 1969, after the band had returned home having completed their US tour.