ON THIS DATE (54 YEARS AGO) June 21, 1969 - Deep Purple: Deep Purple is released. # ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 4/5 # Allmusic 4.5/5 stars Deep Purple (also referred to as Deep Purple III), is the third studio album by Deep Purple, released in the US on June 21, 1969. It is the last album with the original lineup. What's often taken for granted about Deep Purple Mk 1 is that inside nine months they recorded three studio albums and a non-album single... prolific isn't the word. Those early releases have been described as lacking direction. In reality, the band was still coming to grips with a wonderful new sound which seemed to work with virtually any type of music, and which did not limit them to a set direction. Every musical avenue was open, and the first to bring success was pop. Debut single 'Hush' was a huge US hit, climbing into the Billboard top five. Soon afterward their very aptly titled first album 'Shades Of Deep Purple' was scaling the album charts. There was hardly a pause for breath. A major American tour was booked for October 1968, and second album 'The Book Of Taliesyn' was recorded and rush-released to coincide. It followed the same basic formula as the first; a mix of Vanilla Fudge style covers (ie. expanded, slowed down and steamrollered), classical interludes, and self-written pieces packed with every musical idea that could be shoehorned in. However, the music had become more uncompromising. It was developing an edge at odds with their unwelcome pigeon-holing as a pop act. Follow-up singles 'Kentucky Woman' and 'River Deep, Mountain High' still did reasonably well, however, indeed Purple's 'River Deep..' outperformed the classic Ike & Tina Turner version in the US charts. When US sales began to slide (a non-album single 'Emmaretta' went nowhere fast in early 1969) so did the reasoning to keep the band as it was. Despite carrying a wide spectrum of interesting and intricate music, their third album (the eponymous 'Deep Purple'), was not the way forward, and the line up that recorded it was history by the time of release in June. In May 1969 Paice, Lord, and Blackmore decided to take the plunge and concentrate on the increasingly dominant hard rock and classical elements in their music, leaving behind the pop and commercial side, and aiming at the UK and European rock circuit. Some of the earlier album material lent itself well to the superb improvised instrumental skills of the musicians, but new, dynamic songs were also needed. Nick Simper and Evans, now seen as being unsuited to the band, were to be replaced. The split was not as straightforward as it could have been, both Simper and Evans were kept uninformed as long as possible. Even after their replacements Ian Gillan and Roger Glover (from Episode Six) had already been enlisted and begun recording and rehearsing with the band, Simper and Evans remained in the dark and continued to play live with the band for some time. Neither was pleased with eventually hearing of their impending fate through the musicians' grapevine. Deep Purple was released at a time when the band was starting to grow as performers, both live and in the studio, finding their direction musically. There were some conflicts over whether the band should continue on their rawer, heavier direction. This caused turmoil, which was partially responsible for two of the members, Nick Simper (bass) and Rod Evans (vocals), being replaced. Commercially, this album was the least successful of the three Mark I era albums. __________ REVIEW Bruce Eder, allmusic This is a record that even those who aren't Deep Purple fans can listen to two or three times in one sitting -- but then, this wasn't much like any other album that the group ever issued. Actually, Deep Purple was highly prized for many years by fans of progressive rock, and for good reason. The group was going through a transition -- original lead singer Rod Evans and bassist Nick Simper would be voted out of the lineup soon after the album was finished (although they weren't told about it until three months later), organist Jon Lord and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore having perceived limitations in their work in terms of where each wanted to take the band. And between Lord's ever-greater ambitions toward fusing classical and rock and Blackmore's ever-bolder guitar attack, both of which began to coalesce with the session for Deep Purple in early 1969, the group managed to create an LP that combined heavy metal's early, raw excitement, intensity, and boldness with progressive rock's complexity and intellectual scope, and virtuosity on both levels. On "The Painter," "Why Didn't Rosemary?," and, especially, "Bird Has Flown," they strike a spellbinding balance between all of those elements, and Evans' work on the latter is one of the landmark vocal performances in progressive rock. "April," a three-part suite with orchestral accompaniment, is overall a match for such similar efforts by the Nice as the "Five Bridges Suite," and gets extra points for crediting its audience with the patience for a relatively long, moody developmental section and for including a serious orchestral interlude that does more than feature a pretty tune, exploiting the timbre of various instruments as well as the characteristics of the full ensemble. Additionally, the band turns in a very successful stripped-down, hard rock version of Donovan's "Lalena," with an organ break that shows Lord's debt to modern jazz as well as classical training. In all, amid all of those elements -- the orchestral accompaniment, harpsichord embellishments, and backward organ and drum tracks -- Deep Purple holds together astonishingly well as a great body of music. This is one of the most bracing progressive rock albums ever, and a successful vision of a musical path that the group might have taken but didn't. Ironically, the group's American label, Tetragrammaton Records, which was rapidly approaching bankruptcy, released this album a lot sooner than EMI did in England, but ran into trouble over the use of the Hieronymus Bosch painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights" on the cover; although it has been on display at the Vatican, the work was wrongly perceived as containing profane images and never stocked as widely in stores as it might've been. [The 2000 remastered edition on the Spitfire label, by way of EMI, sounds magnificent and offers five bonus tracks: a killer hard rock B-side, "Emmaretta," showcasing a slashing Ritchie Blackmore guitar break, and a looser, more flowing BBC-recorded version of the latter song, plus "Lalena" and "The Painter" and a harder alternate take of "The Bird Has Flown."] TRACKS: Evans, Ritchie Blackmore, Simper, Jon Lord, Ian Paice except noted. Side one 1 Chasing Shadows (Jon Lord, Ian Paice) - 5:34 2 Blind (Lord) - 5:26 3 Lalena (Donovan Leitch) - 5:05 4 Medley (Blackmore, Nick Simper, Lord, Paice) - 5:38 Fault Line The Painter Side two 1 Why Didn't Rosemary? - 5:04 2 Bird Has Flown (Evans, Blackmore, Lord) - 5:36 3 April (Blackmore, Lord) - 12:10 #deeppurple