Deep Purple & Rainbow in the 1970s

Tod E. Jones ©2021

Deep Purple, one of the most influential rock bands, began in 1968 and, apart from a period stretching from 1976 to 1984, has continued to thrive and produce music until the present day. In the United States, they have had two albums attain Platinum status, and five others go Gold. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. But the decade during which Purple reached the widest audience and had the most devoted fan base was the 1970s.

Back then, I was one of those teenagers who eagerly looked forward to every record from Deep Purple, and I was one of the many who were confused and disappointed by some of the changes in its sound. What I knew of the band, in those days, I had either read from the back cover

Tod E. Jones

1

of an LP or had gathered from the pages of Circus magazine. This was the decade of guitar heroes, and Ritchie Blackmore was my idol. When he left Deep Purple, my devotion followed him to Rainbow.

What I didn’t understand then—and I was far from alone in my ignorance—was what was truly going on behind the scenes in the Deep Purple and Rainbow camps, and especially what a guiding influence Blackmore exerted, and what that influence meant to the other band members and to their music. Though I claim no original revelations in this brief book, my hope is that it helps to shed light upon its subject and to add to the reader’s appreciation for the music.

The Roundabout

During the summer of 1967, Ritchie Blackmore was

unemployed and living with and off the earnings of his girlfriend and future second wife, Barbel (Babs) Hardie. She was an exotic dancer in Hamburg, West Germany, and while she was out practicing her trade, Blackmore would be hanging out at the Star Club, listening to the bands that played there and, sometimes, joining in for a jam session. There, too, he met an off-beat character by the name of Chris Curtis, a man in a suit who made it a point to get around among the up-and-coming in the music business and fancied himself a sort of manager. Curtis was impressed by what he saw and heard when Blackmore took the stage, befriended the fast-playing guitarist, and took down his contact information—just in case something might come up.

Tod E. Jones

2

Back in England, Curtis renewed his acquaintance with three businessmen—Ron Hire, Tony Edwards, and John Coletta (HEC Enterprises)—who were looking to invest in a band with real potential. Curtis tried, once again, to sell them on the notion of what he called a Roundabout. In theory, this would be a band comprised of two or three core members, each capable of extemporizing on the spot in a live jamming session with invited guest singers or other instrumentalists. Edwards, particularly, was intrigued, but Curtis’s idea was just that; there was no Roundabout. If Curtis could put together the band, maybe it would be worth an investment.

That late autumn, the Roundabout began to take tangible shape when Curtis persuaded keyboard player Jon Lord to help him put together the band. Ostensibly, Curtis knew this fantastic guitarist living in Hamburg who, he felt certain, he could entice back to England. “He wouldn’t come back for anyone but me,” Curtis told Lord. In the meantime, Lord talked to his bandmate bassist Nick Simper and convinced him to give the Roundabout a go. On December 8, Blackmore returned and, after watching Lord and Simper perform with The Flowerpot Men, showed up with his acoustic guitar one evening, in the middle of a snowstorm, on Lord’s doorstep. “That night,” remembered Lord, “we came up with two of the songs that went on the first album ‘And the Address’ and ‘Mandrake Root.’”

By the end of the year, not only were Lord, Simper, Blackmore, and drummer Bobby Woodman on board, but so too were HEC Enterprises. They invested £7,000 in new equipment from Marshalls, including a Hammond organ

Tod E. Jones

3

and amplifiers, and rented out Deeves Hall, a Georgian farmhouse in Hertfordshire, for six weeks—another £300. In early 1968, Blackmore and Babs returned to England and moved directly into the farmhouse, two weeks ahead of the band. By this time, Curtis had removed himself from the picture. Blackmore would later remark, “I think he got into drugs and he started to get silly, unfortunately—for he did get everyone together. It was his band. For what it was worth a very important person: without Chris Curtis, it would not have happened.”

It was about this time that Curtis’s notion of a Roundabout also seems to have removed itself from the picture—for, not content with just rehearsing, the band decided to post an advertisement in the weekly Melody Maker, calling upon aspiring vocalists to audition at Deeves Hall and promising at least two months of well-paid work upon being hired. Among the many who applied for the job was Rod Stewart, until recently employed in the Jeff Beck band. But his voice simply wasn’t what they were looking for. Mick Angus, then with the Berkshire band The Maze, was so confident he got the job that, first, he recommended to the boys at Deeves that they replace Woodman with Maze drummer Ian Paice, and then, announced his audition to his bandmates. Maze singer Rod Evans then decided that he too would apply for the job.

Evans sang Frank Sinatra, and Woodman thought, “We don’t want this kind of singer.” But it was his song-writing ideas, especially his proposal to convert The Beatles’ “Help” into a Vanilla Fudge style ballad, that won over the other three members. They all were great fans of the New York band Vanilla Fudge. Evans got the position,

Tod E. Jones

4

and then seconded Angus’s belief that Paice was a much better drummer than Woodman. Blackmore, who had seen the Maze perform in Hamburg and had enjoyed a few beers with Paice, was excited at the prospect of getting him into their band. Evans was told to bring back the drummer for an audition.

When Paice showed up with his drum-kit, Lord quickly gathered up Woodman and brought him to the local Speakeasy Club. After an hour, they returned to the farmhouse to find the band playing with their new drummer. Rather than let Woodman in on what was really happening, in a move that was to become standard practice for the band, they had Edwards and Coletta tell him he was out. (Jon Hire—who had only been a silent investor—was now in jail for receiving stolen goods, and Edwards and Coletta had bought out his share in HEC Enterprises.)

Shades of Deep Purple

HEC had also booked time for the band at Trident Studios in London, so they could record demos for circulation among recording companies. Blackmore contacted an old friend, Derek Lawrence, now a producer for EMI Records, who came out to Deeves Hall to witness the band rehearse. Their set now included, in addition to “And the Address” and “Mandrake Root,” “Love Help Me,” “Shadows,” and three covers, “Help,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe,” and Joe South’s “Hush.” (The latter had been recorded by Billy Joe Royal in the previous year, although Blackmore—having lived recently in Hamburg— may have been more familiar with the Dutch

Tod E. Jones

5

version by Kris Ife.) Lawrence thought the band were ready and, in March, accompanied them into Trident Studios, where they produced four demos.

Taking a demo with him, Lawrence approached Roy Featherstone at EMI and managed to make a deal with the Parlophone label. Later Lawrence was approached by the American label Tetragrammaton, who were wanting to enlist a British band. That band, not yet having selected their own name, were still going as Roundabout. But this wasn’t to last long.

It was in the third week of April, while the band was on the sea, on its way to its first gig at the Park School in Tastrup, Denmark, that the members finally decided upon the name. They were very nearly Orpheus, but Blackmore pushed hard for Deep Purple. Not only was it the name of his mother’s favorite song—a song composed in 1933 by pianist Peter De Rose, but which had the most success thirty years later when sung by Nino Tempo and April Stevens—but it was also the name of a popular strain of acid in the US. Thus, the name would not only please Blackmore’s mother, but it would have a psychedelic ring to it among people in the know. More current fans of the band know this line-up as Deep Purple, Mark I:

Rod Evans: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Nick Simper: bass guitar Jon Lord: organ Ian Paice: drums

Tod E. Jones

6

Their first tour included additional shows in Denmark at Roskilde and Copenhagen, and one gig at Gothenburg, Sweden. When they returned, they were informed that EMI had booked for them two days of studio time at Pye Studios, during the second weekend of May, to record their first album. Having just got off a tour, the set was well rehearsed, and the band recorded most of their material in a single take. The crucial musical difference between the studio versions and the live set was that the latter included lengthy improvisations and solos, showing off the talents of Blackmore, Lord, and Paice. This would remain true throughout the band’s history, which is why bootleg recordings of their concerts were so much in demand—and why their first authorized live recording sold so well. But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Perhaps, instead, we should go back a bit. Another thing that made the live shows so different was the visual aspect. Blackmore, especially, knew how to put on a show. In May 1962 he had been hired by David Sutch to join his professional band, Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. Sutch’s band was well known and respected at that time for having highly talented members and for engaging the audience with very active performances. As the band’s pianist, Freddy Lee, explained, “The whole band were showmen, and you had to be to keep in the band. You weren’t allowed to sit still in any way. He made you get involved. The other bands stood still like wooden planks. But with Sutch you never stood still.” Blackmore would never forget what he learned from performing as one of Sutch’s Savages.

Tod E. Jones

7

Four months would pass before Parlophone would finally release the band’s first album, Shades of Deep Purple, in the UK. The US was more fortunate, as Tetragrammaton rushed to get the album out in July. Both record companies, however, agreed to release a single from the album as early as June. Purple wanted that single to be their cover of “Help,” but they were wisely overruled. In the US, where “Hush” was promoted well, with radio stations giving it frequent airtime on both coasts, it sold 600,000 copies in the first month alone and ultimately reached No. 4 in the Top 100. In the UK, it rose to No. 58. The same stark difference between US and UK sales was to be seen upon the release of Shades of Deep Purple, and the band laid all the blame at the feet of Parlophone, who were, apparently, putting all their efforts behind The Beatles.

The Book of Taliesyn

Tetragrammaton, at least, was so excited about the recent success of Deep Purple that they advanced them $250,000 to make a second album, one to be released in October, when they were scheduled for their first US tour. The idea that a new band could come up with an entire album’s material within five months (but with only three months’ notice) may strike the reader as rather absurd, but such was the pressure that record companies could place on bands.

While coming up with new songs, Purple had to perform at several gigs lined up in their own country. One of these was on August 3 at the Red Lion pub in

Tod E. Jones

8

Warrington, Cheshire. This was the hometown of one of their roadies, Ian Hansford, who arranged the gig with the best of intentions, but left the owner clueless as to what sort of band he was hiring. He ended up having to pull Purple off the stage halfway into their set, as the audience had come expecting dance music. Afterwards, Paice would inform Melody Maker, “As far as we are concerned, dancing audiences are out. There are only about three numbers in our act that they can dance to. We make a point of warning promoters that we are not a dance group.”

Another gig was opening for an impressive line-up of bands on Saturday, August 10, at the Sunbury Blues Festival. Deep Purple were to be followed by Joe Cocker, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Ten Years After, Jeff Beck, The Nice, Ginger Baker, and Arthur Brown. Purple opened at 7 p.m. with a half-hour set, but in Chris Welch’s review in Melody Maker, they were entirely ignored, as he claimed the night had opened with Joe Cocker. Purple was furious. They were finding it more than difficult to get recognition at home.

The following month, with two weeks blocked for the occasion, Purple entered De Lane Lea Studios in Soho, London, to work on their follow-up album, mysteriously titled The Book of Taliesyn, referencing a fourteenth-century Welsh manuscript of that name. Prominent among their cover songs are Neil Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman” and The Beatles’s “We Can Work It Out.” Even so, it’s the original work added to the album that gives it lasting value. Such pieces as “Listen, Learn, Read On,” “Shield,” “Anthem,” and the instrumental “Wring That Neck” showcase the band’s musicianship and give hints of

Tod E. Jones

9

Blackmore’s signature style. Tetragrammaton released it in the US in October, but with nothing in the album so popular as “Hush,” it climbed no higher than No. 54 in the Top 100. “Kentucky Woman,” released as a single, reached No. 38.

Meanwhile, EMI had created a new label specifically to deal with the progressive rock music that developed out of the short-lived psychedelia phase of 1967–68. It was called Harvest Records, and one of the first albums it was given to produce was The Book of Taliesyn. They were slow to act, and when it was finally released without any meaningful promotion in June of 1969—by which time Tetragrammaton would be releasing Deep Purple’s third album in the US—it failed to chart.

On October 15, 1968, Purple arrived at Los Angeles. Cream had started their farewell tour on October 4, and now Purple were to join them as the opening act at the LA Forum on the 18th and 19th, before continuing at San Diego on the 20th. They had no more than half an hour each night, during which time they were to play mostly covers, beginning, of course, with “Hush” and closing the set with “Hey Joe.” They had time to squeeze in one original work from each album, “Mandrake Root” and “Wring That Neck.” They performed loudly and flawlessly and got along well with Cream, but, by a decision of Cream’s management, they were taken off the tour after playing San Diego.

Tetragrammaton worked hard to schedule a new tour, booking Deep Purple from coast to coast and keeping them in the States through New Year’s Day, concluding with four shows in New York City. Among the stops was the

Tod E. Jones

10

KYA San Francisco International Pop Festival at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Purple was placed third in the line-up for Sunday, October 27, sandwiched between Credence Clearwater Revival and Procol Harum. The US tour was just what Purple needed to boost their confidence before returning home.

Deep Purple

The band returned to the UK on January 3, 1969. Aside from a live TV performance on a late-night talk show in January, they resumed their pattern of performing at modest venues, but much of their first month home was spent at De Lane Lea Studios recording their third album, simply titled Deep Purple. More appropriate for a first album, the title suggests that Purple was trying to make a fresh start and put out something that was truly representative of who they were at this time as a band. Tellingly, the only cover on the album is Donovan’s evocative “Lalena.” The record begins with Paice’s tribal pounding in “Chasing Shadows,” a much heavier number as the band intently moves away from the psychedelic influences that appeared on The Book of Taliesyn. The upbeat R&B influenced “Why Didn’t Rosemary?” wonders “Why” (in “Satan’s world”) “didn’t Rosemary ever take the pill?”—a tongue-in-cheek response to the 1968 movie Rosemary’s Baby. “The Bird Has Flown,” while showcasing Blackmore and Lord’s riffs, shows off Evans’s capacity to sing a harder, more grinding vocal. “April” brings the record to a rocking conclusion, after passing through Lord’s interweaving of orchestral pieces.

Tod E. Jones

11

Altogether, this is a more consistent and more original effort than the previous two albums.

Perhaps, it was just as well that Purple didn’t wait for this latest album to be released before heading off, on April 1, to their second US tour. In fact, they would complete the tour at the end of May, just three weeks before Deep Purple hit the record stores. When it was, finally, released, this time without any single to herald its coming, it barely got off the ground and climbed no higher than No. 162 in the US charts, although the album did make gold status in Germany—their first album to do so in any country.

Blackmore had become dissatisfied with the record even before he went on tour. In February, Led Zeppelin’s debut album made its appearance, and to the extent that Blackmore was favorably impressed by Robert Plant’s vocals, he felt that Rod Evans just didn’t have the range that was needed for a rock ’n’ roll band. The guitarist believed that, if Purple were to be successful, then the days of ballads and Vanilla Fudge-flavored covers had to be behind them. It seemed to him that, for the first time—thanks to Led Zep—he had a real sense of direction.

It was while they were in the US, that Blackmore first expressed his dissatisfaction with Evans to Lord. The organist concurred, but they needed one more on board to form a majority. They approached Evans’s former bandmate, Paice. He heard them out and would support their decision. The three, then, went to HEC and unanimously agreed to go no further with the matter until they were returned to England, lest Evans catch wind and decide to walk out mid-tour.

Tod E. Jones

12

Well, when they did return home, Evans wasn’t with them. He had stayed in the US to work out arrangements for his wedding with his American fiance. This circumstance left things open for the rest of the band to search out and audition a new singer before Evans got the news. So, Blackmore got hold of his old friend from the Outlaws, Mick Underwood, at this time drumming for Episode Six, and asked if he could recommend any singers. Somewhat oddly, but not necessarily unselfishly, Underwood suggested the singer for his own band, Ian Gillan. Perhaps there was tension between the drummer and singer, or perhaps Underwood knew that Episode Six was on the verge of breaking apart. Blackmore didn’t seek an explanation, and he and Lord soon showed up at the Ivy Club Lodge in Woodford Green, Essex, to hear the singer perform. After the show, they spoke privately with Gillan. “They were great,” said Gillan, “and helped me through the ordeal, as we talked rock ’n’ roll and great futures, before they offered me the job.”

According to Gillan, Blackmore and Lord were already looking for a new bass player as well, and Gillan then and there suggested Episode Six colleague Roger Glover. When approached, Glover turned down the offer, but Gillan worked to persuade him. And when, three days later, Gillan was going to sing for Purple at the studio, Glover accompanied him with the intent to audition. According to another scenario, supported by Simper and Blackmore, Glover merely came along with Gillan for the ride and did not bring his bass with him, but—seeing that he had accompanied Gillan—Blackmore, Lord, and Paice arranged for Simper to be away from the studio so that

Tod E. Jones

13

Glover and Gillan could perform together with Purple. “We weren’t originally going to take him,” said Blackmore, “until Paicey said, ‘He’s a good bass player; let’s keep him,’ so I said, ‘Okay.’” And this version of events is also supported by Lord, who said, “We had no thoughts at that time of including their bass player, Roger Glover, in our plans, but our drummer, Ian Paice, heard him just once and realized that he would blend perfectly with his percussion.”

In any event, Simper returned to the studio in the evening to find out that Glover and Gillan had not only been performing with the band, but that Gillan had, in fact, joined the band. Simper still didn’t know that he himself had been replaced until he heard a rumor and confronted HEC. Coletta then explained to Simper that the decision had been a majority one by the band, and that neither he nor Edwards could do anything about it. One important consideration behind the decision to hire Glover was that he and Gillan were a song-writing team. However adequate a bassist Simper was, Purple simply could not have passed up the opportunity to pick up a lyricist along with a new singer. Thus, we now arrive at what is often called the “classic” line-up or Deep Purple, Mark II:

Ian Gillan: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Roger Glover: bass guitar

Jon Lord: organ Ian Paice: drums

Tod E. Jones

14

It cost Deep Purple £3,000 to release Gillan and Glover from their contracts with Episode Six. In the meantime, Evans and Simper continued to play with Purple, their last gig being at the Top Rank Ballroom in Cardiff on July 4, 1969. Six days later, Gillan and Glover took their places, as the former describes: “And so arrived that special night of 10 July 1969, when I fronted the band on that tiny stage at the Speakeasy in Margaret Street, London, and where I stood before my peers, professional musicians, family, friends—and girls! As soon as we started, the place just went wild, and I coasted through the show, the feeling of power indescribable. There was ‘Mandrake Root’ and whatever else (I almost forget), plus, I played congas for want of something to do during the instrumentals. And I cried—oh, I cried—because on that night I reflected on all the bands I’d travelled with, but left or dumped, including, in particular, the turmoil of transition from Episode Six to Deep Purple. On that tiny stage, all of these emotions touched me so deeply, because I’d enjoyed each and every band, but now it seemed that all these musicians, friends, and relatives had been lined up along the path to this very moment in time, because this was it!”

In Concert & In Rock The revised Purple wasted no time getting into rehearsals and coming up with new material. Two of the first songs that emerged were “Speed King” and “Child in Time.” The former, although it would pass through several revisions and name changes, was first recorded for the

Tod E. Jones

15

BBC Radio on August 11, 1969. “Ricochet” and “Kneel and Pray” were other titles for this fast and furious piece. The latter originated out of Lord and Gillan playing around with the melody for strings in “Bombay Calling,” an instrumental piece by San Francisco band It’s A Beautiful Day. Soon they had the introduction, and then the rest of the band joined in and made it the distinctly Purple song that it now is.

“If it’s not dramatic or exciting, it has no place on this album,” dictated Blackmore. And while the rest of the band were following his lead, Lord was busy composing his Concerto for Group and Orchestra—a work that, as far as his bandmates were concerned, was neither dramatic nor exciting, but was, indeed, a major distraction. “As Deep Purple,” recalled Gillan, “we were trying to make Deep Purple in Rock, while Jon was increasingly unavailable to rehearse, and against this we were being asked to support a high-profile non-rock project, which was his very own property.” What had happened was this: Lord had suggested in passing to HEC the idea of a collaboration between Purple and a symphonic orchestra, and Edwards, always enthusiastic about novel projects, went ahead and made all the necessary arrangements, giving Lord just three months to compose his Concerto and to rehearse it with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Sir Malcolm Arnold. The public performance was set for September 24, at the Royal Albert Hall, and—after just three rehearsals, during which it became apparent that members of the orchestra harbored their own resentments against collaborating with a rock band—the result was a brilliant success that pleased almost everyone

Tod E. Jones

16

concerned. The only hitch in the concerto came in the First Movement, when Blackmore extended his solo, extemporizing well beyond its prescribed length, leaving both Lord and Arnold anxiously to wonder whether the guitarist was going to ruin the whole thing.

A film documentary, called The Best of Both Worlds, was made of the evening’s performance. But the title begs the question whether such a collaborative affair did, in fact, provide the audience with the best of both worlds. Dave Thompson, taking his cue from classical music reviewer Noel Goodwin, argues that the Concerto “laid bare the compromise necessary for the two musical units to coexist, and it was one that denied the two ensembles the opportunity to function at anything approaching their peak.” That peak, for Deep Purple, could not be delivered in Concert, and would only be attained in Rock. Even so, the recording of the live concert, released in December 1969, reached No. 26 in the UK, finally putting Purple on the home charts.

Unfortunately, the publicity that Deep Purple received for the Concerto sometimes left promoters with the presumption that Purple regularly played together with orchestras or even community ensembles. Gillan recalls an occasion in Folkestone “where we pulled into town to see posters saying, ‘Deep Purple in Concert,’ adding the name of such-and-such a silver band! Well, Ritchie took one look at that ‘banner’ and went berserk, ranting on about the Concerto having become a millstone around our necks.” Misunderstandings such as this were only another reason to follow-up quickly with a corrective recording, and the title of their next album would leave no doubt as

Tod E. Jones

17

to what sort of music Purple were really into producing. But it wasn’t just people’s perception of the music that

needed changing. The lyrics, the performance, every aspect of the band that didn’t scream audacious rock ’n’ roll were things that had to be transformed. Deep Purple in Concert were gentlemen, but Deep Purple in Rock were bad boys. It was a transition from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, and there could be no uncertainty about who they were. Speaking of himself and Glover, Gillan noted, “We ditched the culture of restraint and ‘holding back,’ which had defined the way we went to work in the past. Then we were ‘nice people.’ . . . Well for us those days were now history, and we didn’t have to be nice people anymore. We could just stick two fingers in the air and go for it, and I think this is what Purple had been looking for—and we were prepared to deliver on it!” This ditching of the culture of restraint, the public unleashing of the rock ’n’ roll animal, is what Blackmore was also prepared to deliver. David Sutch had taught him to be a Savage on stage, but even back then there was some holding back for the sake of decency. Those days had passed. Now, when Hendrix and Townshend were laying waste to their guitars, Blackmore would do more than follow suit.

Steve Peacock, in a review for Melody Maker, describes Blackmore’s performance on December 6, 1969, particularly during the concluding piece, “Mandrake Root”: “No words could possibly do justice to the climax of Deep Purple’s act at Manchester College of Technology on Saturday. It came at the end of a brilliant set lasting more than one and a half hours, before one of the college’s largest and most appreciative audiences this year.

Tod E. Jones

18

Suddenly Blackmore threw a mic stand over the stage, stepped back and went into a wild flailing solo. Simultaneously a strobe light came on focusing on the guitarist and casting the rest of the group into an eerie gleam as they crouched over their instruments, providing an electronic drone behind Blackmore’s amazing solo. He danced in the strobe, weaving around, and throwing his guitar all over the place again and again. The move was terrific, and the spectacle was terrifying—it went on building and building with ever increasing intensity, until all the force was spent. This was a musical and visual catharsis, and it left both the group and the audience dazed and exhausted.”

Purple was in France just after the New Year and followed up with gigs in Holland and West Germany. But for the most part, for the next six months, while sporadically recording in De Lane Lea Studio, they toured extensively in England, said Lord, “playing up and down the country at every reasonable gig we could find to get across to people what we were doing. If we were good we thought the word would spread, and that’s the way it seems to have worked. But we worked hard to make it work.” Everywhere they went, they drew both criticism and praise for their stage performance. But even the reporters and outspoken viewers who objected to Blackmore’s “violence” helped to make the name of Deep Purple a household item.

When June 3, 1970, came around and In Rock was released, all the publicity and hard work appeared to pay off, and the album was an immense success, quickly thereafter becoming the favorite party record that

Tod E. Jones

19

Blackmore had dreamed of creating. It would peak in the UK charts at the lofty position of No. 4, while attaining the No. 1 spot in Austria, Norway, and West Germany, and generally faring well throughout Europe. But, for one reason or another, Warner Bros.—who had acquired the assets of the bankrupt Tetragrammaton—sat on the album for months, despite Purple’s upcoming tour in the US, and when they did finally release In Rock, it topped off at No. 143. If not entirely satisfied with the airplay, criticism, and sales that the album received, they were nevertheless completely satisfied with the album itself, for the process of making it, along with its reception, had built up their confidence and solidified their sense of direction.

Gillan noted that several of the songs on the album left people with the impression that Deep Purple were into the drug scene. “Flight of the Rat,” “Into the Fire” and “Bloodsucker” were all drug related. The truth, however, is that, at this time, Purple was purely a drinking band, although only Gillan himself admitted to regularly abusing alcohol from the beginning of his association with them. In the Nineties, Blackmore told an interviewer, “The drugs I never took. Until this day I’ve never taken cocaine. . . . Okay, I drink. But LSD, cocaine, all that nonsense, I don’t take, and I’ve never touched it.” Regarding drugs, throughout the Seventies and Eighties, the rock ’n’ roll music scene could have used more examples like Ritchie Blackmore, and it is just too bad that he was not more vocal in taking a stand against their abuse.

The one song that Harvest Records could not find on In Rock was the one that would stand alone as a hit—a single. They, with the support of HEC, sent Purple back

Tod E. Jones

20

into the studio to come up with something. “The session,” Gillan recalled, “was a washout” for the band. “Evening came and they had accomplished nothing. Finally, around 8, the band gave up and went to the nearby Newton Arms pub, in the vague hope that liquid refreshment might deliver the inspiration that mere hard graft had so patently failed to provide. And, for Glover and Blackmore, it did. They returned to the studio after just a couple of hours and, when the others joined them later in the evening, the pair had conjured a riff that, if it didn’t have ‘hit single’ written all over it, at least had an indefinable something that made it stand out. Glover called it ‘Black Night.’” It was released in the UK in June, along with the LP, and rose to the No. 2 spot on the charts. Gillan insists that, to this day, he hasn’t a clue what the song is about—which is understandable, given the condition he was in when he wrote the lyrics.

Fireball

Purple’s In Rock world tour kicked off in Bedford, England, on July 4, 1970, and didn’t really conclude until the publication of Fireball one year later. During the latter half of August 1970, they were in the U.S. and performed at the Hollywood Bowl on August 25. Warner Bros., instead of releasing In Rock, had issued a new edition of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra and wanted Purple to perform it one last time at the Hollywood Bowl. The band reluctantly consented. The set for the evening began with “Speed King,” followed by “Hush,” “Wring That Neck,” “Mandrake Root,” “Child in Time,” “Black

Tod E. Jones

21

Night,” and concluded with a shortened version of the Concerto.

By September, they were back in England and back in De Lane Lea Studios. The first song they came up with for the new album was “Anyone’s Daughter,” a bit of country-styled whimsy far from the hard rock ’n’ roll they had just recently released. It was a beginning, but inspiration would come slowly for this next album, and for much of the time that the band was in the studio they should have been resting.

With eighteen separate gigs scheduled in October, the band were either on the stage or on the road throughout the month. On October 12, Purple performed at Tiffany’s in Edinburgh, outside of which a crowd of hundreds erupted into chaos upon being turned away from the already-packed ballroom. To accommodate the number of would-be attendees, the venue for the following night was moved from Tiffany’s in Glasgow to the Electric Garden, and this time there were thousands denied entry. In an October review from Melody Maker, the term “Purplemania” was coined to describe the phenomenon that greeted the band at every venue in the UK. Gillan describes the girls “fainting, crying, and screaming at our feet on stage, as we played to the backs of bouncers.”

Several tour dates were cancelled in November so the band could spend more time in the studio. Even so, only a few songs were written and recorded for the new album as 1970 ended. Among these were “Strange Kind of Woman,” a love song about a call girl named Nancy, which Harvest released in February 1971 as a single, backed with “I’m Alone.” It would reach No. 8 on the UK

Tod E. Jones

22

charts. Between touring and recording, the band members

were spending all of their time, for months on end, in each other’s company. Friction was bound to develop, and sparks arose between Blackmore and Gillan. The guitarist—knowing that he was the one most instrumental in steering the band toward a heavier sound, knowing that he was the riff-master who came up with the basic melody for each song, and knowing that he was lead entertainer on the stage—figured that he, above everyone else, was the leader of the band. The vocalist—knowing that it was his admission that facilitated the movement toward a harder rock ’n’ roll, knowing that he was the chief lyricist, and knowing that he was the frontman at every concert—figured that his opinion, in all matters that concerned the band, was of equal weight to Blackmore’s. Egos clashed. But, as far as Blackmore was concerned, there was more. It was bad enough that the singer drank too much, but on top of that he attached vulgar lyrics to the guitarist’s melodies. This, sometimes, tested Blackmore’s patience more than anything else; but, if he was angry, he took out his aggression on stage and, for the most part, maintained a brooding silence off the stage. Another source of irritation for Blackmore (who had been married to Babs since September 1969) was the fact that Gillan brought on tour with him his longtime girlfriend, Zoe. Blackmore preferred no unsympathetic witnesses to his sexual conduct while on tour. As Paice said, “Touring was a lot of fun then. It was a single man’s game and we were all single men, or at least we behaved like single men.”

Tod E. Jones

23

On March 8, while the band were performing in Aberdeen, Scotland, Glover collapsed on stage with severe abdominal pains. Still, the band continued to perform. During April, Purple had a rigorous tour through West Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway, before returning to the UK. A substitute bassist, Chas Hodges, was brought on board, in case Glover became too ill to play. After shows, he would have to lie stretched out for an hour in the dressing room. It was thought that he had tuberculosis of the liver, but, to his good fortune, his condition was later successfully treated with hypnotherapy.

With Deep Purple scheduled to tour the US throughout the month of July, Warner Bros. grew impatient with the progress being made on the new album. In late April, just before returning to the studio, Blackmore stated to the Record Mirror, “We’ve already thrown out five songs on this album and it has cost at least £6,000 so far, but we are not going to start compromising the standards we have established with In Rock, and if the result is another album with the longevity of that, which it will be, who is going to complain?” When Purple left the studio this time, Warner Bros. decided to go with what the band had already recorded, and in order to fill the album, to include the previously released “Strange Kind of Woman.” Harvest decided to wait another month, and as a result were able to include “Demon’s Eye” on the UK release.

Fireball was released in the US on July 9, 1971, when Purple was one week into its US tour. It entered America’s Billboard chart on August 21 and, ultimately, reached No. 32—a much higher showing than that of In Rock; in fact

Tod E. Jones

24

the best performance of any Deep Purple album in the US since the release of Shades of Deep Purple. Upon Fireball’s release in the UK, in September, it quickly shot up the charts to the coveted position of No. 1. Although there is no question about the album’s success, and its reception by the critics was generally positive, the band itself had different takes on it. Gillan wrote, “I thought we kept up our progressive standards with the album, and am proud of it.” Lord thought, “It could have done with another steamer. But I still think it’s a better album than In Rock.” Glover said, “It was a good album, but I find it a little stodgy. Considering the freshness and fire of In Rock, Fireball is very self-conscious.” Paice was more negative, telling Music Scene, “I don’t think it was a particularly good album for us. It was a time when we were getting financially stable and resting back on our laurels.” And finally, Blackmore dismissed more than half the album, saying, “There are only three tracks that I think are good—‘No, No, No,’ ‘Fools,’ and ‘Fireball’ itself.” Artists can be their own worse critics.

On their US tour, Deep Purple, although now flying in their own personal jet, were the opening act for the Faces, featuring singer Rod Stewart. According to Gillan, the Faces “hardly set a great example when it came to moderation!” They were, he says, “the real bad boys of rock ’n’ roll.” Purple’s set now often included “Strange Kind of Woman,” a song that was on only the US edition of Fireball, and “Demon’s Eye,” a song that was on only the UK edition. Also included was “Fireball” (presumably without the opening sound-effect, which is that of an air-conditioner turning on) and “The Mule,” which replaced

Tod E. Jones

25

“Paint It Black” from the Mark I set as a piece to showcase Paice’s drum skills.

Machine Head

On September 13, 1971, the band was traveling, in route to Portsmouth, where they were scheduled to play at the Guildhall—the first of thirteen UK gigs during a month’s time—when a journalist accompanying them asked Blackmore, “How do you write a song?” Being in a good mood, Blackmore picked up his instrument and said, “Like this,” and proceeded to play a fast riff. Gillan joined in with some off-the-cuff lyrics, and within minutes they had a song. Glover came up with the title “Highway Star.” Once at the venue, they rehearsed the song and, then, three hours later, performed it before their audience, who loved it. Another new song they introduced into their set was “Lazy,” a blues-based piece that finally replaced “Wring That Neck.”

The UK tour ended with a performance at Southampton, at the Guildhall, on October 11, and eleven days later they commenced, at New York City’s Felt Forum, what was supposed to be a month-long tour of the US, supported by Fleetwood Mac. Deep Purple was to be the main attraction at sold-out arenas and stadiums. But it was not to be. On the following night, October 23, Gillan, though feeling terribly sick, performed on the stage of William and Mary Hall, in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was to be his last show for the year. By the time the band arrived at the airport in Chicago, for their next gig, Gillan was turning yellow. “So I was waiting for my bags to come

Tod E. Jones

26

through,” he recalls, “when this appalling sensation came over me, a bit like leaping out of bed too quickly; and then I couldn’t hear or see too well, or articulate to people who were moving very slowly around me, staring.” He was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with hepatitis.

Already in Chicago, the band decided to go on and perform that night as a quartet at the Auditorium Theater. Then, they canceled the tour at a cost to them of $200,000 and flew home. Five days later, Gillan too would fly back home. For the first time in over a year, the band scattered. For Gillan, this was to be “a time for peace and gentle recovery.”

Not so for Blackmore, who recognized an opportunity to pursue what had, up until now, been a private ambition. Upset over Gillan’s challenge to his authority, the guitarist had been dreaming of forming his own band—over which he would have complete control. He would bring along Ian Paice as drummer, and getting rid of the Gillan-Glover team, would replace them with the bassist and vocalist Phil Lynott. His new band would be a power trio, like the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Cream. What would become of Deep Purple was an uncertainty. Whether this new band would become Deep Purple, or whether it would have to take upon itself another name . . . he couldn’t foresee. But he was prepared to play his hand and see how the cards fell. His first move was to book time at De Lane Lea Studios, so he could find out whether they could produce anything together and whether it would be worth releasing. Lynott, too, was only testing the waters. His band, Thin Lizzy, whose debut album had come out in April, were

Tod E. Jones

27

still little known with an uncertain future. These recordings at De Lane Lea, which have since

disappeared, would become known as the “Babyface Sessions.” Recollections differ as to just how many songs they recorded, whether five or only a couple, but Blackmore felt they were too derivative: “They were good, but it may have been a bit near Hendrix. I was playing that way, and Phil was singing that way.” In the end, nothing became of the experiment. But Blackmore would not be so easily deterred from his dream of going solo.

Deep Purple had planned to spend the first half of December 1971 in the resort town of Montreux, Switzerland. The Casino, a large arena which was the venue for an annual summer Jazz Festival and for various other concerts throughout the year, was scheduled to close for winter restoration after a final matinee by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on December 4. Purple had planned with Casino music promoter Claude Nobs to use the facilities after their closure for rehearsing and recording. They had reserved the Rolling Stones mobile recording studio and had moved it from the south of France for this purpose. But, with Gillan still recovering, they were prepared to cancel. At the last moment, however, the singer insisted that he was well enough to join them.

Thus, on December 3, the band flew out to Montreux and checked into the Hotel Eden au Lac. On the following day, they decided to check out the Zappa concert. Gillan remembers,

Tod E. Jones

28

During the show, I have this vague recollection of a guy of Mediterranean appearance walking in, but I thought nothing of it until, the next think I knew, there was a flash of light followed by the sharp crack of a flare gun—and then the troubles began. It later emerged that the person I’d seen arriving had apparently parked his Rolls-Royce outside, and come in to simply make a ‘happening,’ I suppose! Apparently, no evil was intended, but never in his wildest imagination could he have expected his action to set off the tragic sequence of events that followed, as a spark from his flare must have touched some exposed wiring around the covings, and then it was whoosh, as the whole lot went up like a firework display, quickly turning the Casino into a raging inferno, as the woodwork instantaneously combusted like kindling.

Zappa was brilliant, taking positive command of a situation that was rapidly turning to chaos around us. From his vantage point on stage, he directed and urged calm, as the audience began to leave, but there were corners of the Casino where the evacuation went badly wrong, including where some of the kids threw themselves through huge plate-glass windows. Many suffered cuts and other injuries, but Zappa stayed for as long as he possibly could, as the hall rapidly filled with acrid smoke—until even he had to leave, with us just ahead of him.

No sooner was the band outside than Zoe, Gillan’s girlfriend, let him know that, in all the chaos, she had forgotten her coat inside the Casino. Gillan decided to push his way through the crowd toward the front entrance and then re-enter the Casino to retrieve it.

Tod E. Jones

29

What I came across inside the burning building was astonishing. Everyone was calling for Claude Nobs, because he was the man who knew all the answers, because he was in control, because he was . . . well, he was Montreux! Otherwise there was nothing to see: no exit signs, no stage, no kids! All that could be heard was the yelling and shrieking of frightened people, but with no sign of Claude, only smoke, and plenty of it, as people who saw me started shouting, ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ Others were still calling, ‘Where’s Claude?’

And then I was outside again, and soon learned what had happened to him. It seems he’d gone to the kitchens, which were underground, realizing that some of the kids must have gone through doors that could only have led them that way, until they became trapped in smoke-filled spaces, the whereabouts of which only he knew. One by one, or in small groups, Claude led the youngsters to safety, repeating the journey until he was satisfied that nobody remained . . . .

The emergency services don’t need spectators when they have their work to do, so we drifted back to the hotel, where we met up in the restaurant for a few drinks and a meal, and from there to watch the Casino burn, flames high in the sky, smoke billowing. Some thought the brightness and intensity was caused by the down drought from the mountains, but, whatever the reasons might have been, the flames did lean majestically towards the lake, as the smoke drifted across the quiet water.

After a couple of days, and despite all of his

difficulties, Claude Nobs found Purple an old concert hall in Montreux called the Pavilion that was closed for the

Tod E. Jones

30

season and could be used by the band. What Nobs either didn’t realize or failed to disclose was that this venue was in the heart of a residential district and, therefore, suitable only for daytime use. Well, before Purple got evicted from the premises, they did manage, at least, to come up with a new riff, which—for want of time and imagination—they simply called “Title No. 1.” It was left up to Glover to come up with the title, which he did when he awoke from a dream with the words on his lips, “Smoke on the Water.”

Several days passed, during which they searched throughout Montreux for a suitable location, before finally renting the ground floor of another building closed for the winter, the Grand Hotel Suisse Majestic. The want of padding and soundproofing allowed for the band’s music to echo through its hallways. With many of the songs already worked out, the album came together quickly, and Deep Purple was able to meet its next gig in London on December 15.

The band had no idea that “Smoke on the Water” was going to be a hit. They put their money on “Never Before,” released as a single on March 18, 1972, on the newly formed Purple label, and backed with “Highway Star.” A week later, they released their new album, Machine Head. The LP was favorably reviewed by critics and loved by fans. In April, “Never Before” hit No. 32 on the UK charts, and was quickly followed by Machine Head, which soared to No. 1. In the U.S. it would reach no higher than No. 7, yet it stayed on the US charts for over two years and, in the meanwhile, turned double platinum. To the band’s surprise, “Smoke on the Water” received enormous airplay coast-to-coast in the States and became their

Tod E. Jones

31

biggest hit. Deep Purple’s Machine Head tour in the US began on

March 17 at Kansas City Memorial Hall. Again, they were the headliners in sold-out venues, backed up this time by Buddy Miles (with Nazareth sometimes joining the tour as a second supporting act). On March 28 and 29 they performed at Staten Island’s Ritz Theatre, and then misfortune struck the band once more in the form of hepatitis. This time it brought down Blackmore. With fees of $10,000 coming in for each appearance, Deep Purple were encouraged on all sides to press on without their guitarist. They performed in Flint, Michigan as a four-piece, and then hired Spirit’s lead guitarist Randy California to fill in. The effort, however, was futile. Glover acknowledged, “We all realized we couldn’t work without Ritchie. He was such an integral part of the sound that it was impossible to carry on without him, so we cancelled.” Again, the band dispersed.

Blackmore was still thinking of a solo project, and now, without his participation or knowledge, events were about to transpire that, ultimately, would result in making that project a real possibility. Elf, an American band based in Cortland, New York, had been invited to New York City in April 1972 to audition before a small group from Columbia Records, including Clive Davis. Elf’s manager, Bruce Payne, who was also Deep Purple’s US booking agent, invited Roger Glover and Ian Paice to sit in during the audition. They did, and liked what they heard, especially Ronnie James Dio’s impressive vocals. Elf were offered a recording deal, and Glover, a talented producer, offered to help in the studio. Days later, they all

Tod E. Jones

32

journeyed south to Studio One in Atlanta, Georgia, and Elf’s debut album was released in August. Following its release, Elf was offered the position of a support act for Deep Purple’s upcoming US tour, from late September through early October, and from November through December. Thus began what would become the professional association between Blackmore and Dio.

Who Do We Think We Are

Blackmore was recovered and back on the road with the band by the end of May 1972. But nothing had changed between him and Gillan. On the 26th Purple played at the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio, and from under the crowned arches of the Imperial House motel, Gillan penned a letter to Tony Edwards, saying “I am so depressed with my occupation at the moment, as well as the circumstances and attitudes I have to work with that I felt it necessary to put on record my intentions to leave the group on 30th June 1973.” To make it clear that the reason was not solely his clash with Blackmore, he went on to state, “I suppose I could sum up by saying that I think DP has become a stagnant, boring machine far removed from the fresh, innovative group it once was.” Upon meeting with HEC, Gillan found that the two managers were primarily anxious to ensure he would not leave before the tour dates in Japan. The singer promised to keep his commitments.

One month later, Deep Purple played at the venue where Hendrix had first burnt his guitar, the Finsbury Park Astoria—although new owners had given the old movie theater, now refurbished as a stage exclusively for live

Tod E. Jones

33

bands, a new name, The Rainbow. On June 30, Purple made history here and simultaneously created a new entry in the Guinness Book of Records by being the “globe’s loudest band” at 117 decibels. They held this honorable record for nearly four years, until The Who swept it away with 126 decibels.

From mid-July through the first week in August, the band took some time off the road to regroup and, with the Rolling Stones mobile studio in tow, to work on new material for the next album. They convened at a villa near Rome for the purpose, but they got little work done. Not only were they exhausted, but the hostility, chiefly between Blackmore and Gillan, was palpable. When most of the band did come together to play, Blackmore absented himself, preferring to sit in the studio with recording engineer Martin Birch. The guitarist figured that, if the rest of the band could come up with a good recording, then he would come in afterwards and perform on top of them. There was no absolute need for them to be together in the same room. Not surprisingly, only two tracks were completed during these three weeks, and the first one, “Painted Horse,” was vetoed for some unexplained reason by Blackmore. The only track that would make it onto their next album was “Woman from Tokyo.”

Deep Purple flew into Japan for their first visit on August 9 and were welcomed at the airport with gifts and flowers. They had the freedom to be tourists for several days before performing before three sold-out concerts—at Osaka’s Festival Hall on August 15 and 16, and at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan on the 17th. With Purple’s permission given in advance, the concerts were to be recorded for

Tod E. Jones

34

Japanese release. This was the first live recording agreed to by the band. Gillan stated what had been the predominant viewpoint in the band up until this time: “I’ve never personally been happy about live albums and would prefer to leave that side of things to the bootleggers. The thrill of the moment, and all it implies, means you have to physically be at the show to catch the ‘live’ vibe.” Although the recordings ended up being far above bootleg quality, thanks to the work of Martin Birch, neither Blackmore nor Gillan ever stopped by the studio to listen to the finished product. The band did, however, ultimately give its permission to Warner Bros. for worldwide release.

Five of the seven tracks on Made in Japan are songs that come directly from Purple’s most recent album, Machine Head. These are “Highway Star,” “Smoke on the Water,” “The Mule,” “Lazy,” and “Space Truckin.’” Only one song is from the Fireball period, “Strange Kind of Woman,” and only “Child in Time” comes from In Rock. Why the band decided not to take “Woman from Tokyo” out for a test drive is unknown. The song would later become a favorite among Japanese audiences. The double LP wouldn’t be released until December, but then would climb the UK charts to No. 16. In the US it would attain platinum status, where it rose to No. 6.

After Japan, Purple flew to the US for twelve gigs before returning to the UK. That all was not rosy within the band was beginning to make itself known to the public. For instance, while performing on September 1 at Norfolk, Virginia, near the end of a set that had been supported by Fleetwood Mac and Elf, Gillan attempted to take the lead on the stage, but was being ignored by Blackmore. Finally,

Tod E. Jones

35

the singer allegedly pointed to himself and shouted, “Look at me, you cunt!” Blackmore took the guitar strap off from around his neck, and slammed his Stratocaster onto the stage, leaving it there. He then proceeded to remove himself from the stage and disappear. Roadie Ian Hansford spent fifteen minutes looking for him, but Blackmore, without saying a word to anyone, had gotten a lift back to his hotel.

In the latter part of October, after completing a short tour in the UK and France, Purple journeyed to the village of Waldorf Nord, outside of Frankfurt, West Germany, to make a second attempt at recording their next album. During this time, Gillan and Blackmore completely avoided one another. When one was in the studio, the other would not be. Both men appeared to be merely serving time, looking forward to when they would be unshackled to pursue more enticing affairs. Blackmore, especially, still had his eye on a solo project, either with Phil Lynott or with Paul Rodgers, the bluesy singer for the British band Free. Lynott was now looking increasingly unavailable, as Thin Lizzy had recently released its second LP, and had a hit single with “Whiskey in the Jar.” Free, on the other hand, were having difficulty staying together, and there was a good chance that Rogers soon would be a free agent. Blackmore, thinking of his future, was reluctant to share his best riffs with the rest of the band, wanting to save them for his own later use. Blackmore later admitted, “Everybody refused to write with everybody else. I was even holding back ideas. I’m not going to give Purple this idea, because this is for another thing, so I was turning out shit, and so was everyone else. It was rubbish.”

Tod E. Jones

36

Gillan indirectly expressed his feelings at this time toward Blackmore through his lyrics for “Smooth Dancer.” The dancer in this piece is also referred to as “Black Suede,” a not-too-subtle identification of Blackmore, who is familiarly known as “the man in black.” The whole song is filled with accusation and invective, and it seems quite impossible that Blackmore could have missed the meaning had he but taken a moment to look for it. And had he recognized himself in it, surely he would have refused to allow it in the album. Therefore, it would appear that, in Blackmore’s general disregard towards all that was happening in the studio at this time, he simply didn’t give “Smooth Dancer” a second thought.

“Woman from Tokyo” remained the best thing on this album, but it would be a mistake to dismiss everything else on it as “rubbish.” Critics widely disagree in their reception of this album. In truth, though, the enjoyment value of any rock ’n’ roll song will, ultimately, be determined by the individual listener. What can’t be argued with is how Who Do We Think We Are faired in the charts. The LP, released on January 13, 1973, reached No. 4 in the UK, and No. 15 in the US. Not bad for a band on the rocks!

Burn

Lynott and Rodgers both finally turned down Blackmore’s offer. Thin Lizzy’s star was in the ascendancy, and Rodgers, after the final breakup of Free in February 1973, had promised to stay with drummer Simon Kirke. They were now focusing on putting together

Tod E. Jones

37

a new band of their own. It would be called Bad Company.Purple’s long tour of the US and Canada began on

April 12 in Fresno, California. Throughout that month and the next they would perform nearly every night, supported usually by Fleetwood Mac and Rory Gallagher. The tour continued through June. On June 17 they played at the West Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida, backed by Savoy Brown, Billy Preston, ZZ Top, and Blue Öyster Cult. After this concert, in an uncharacteristic move, Blackmore asked music-scene journalist Jim Esposito to ride with him back to his hotel. The coming departure of Gillan from the band was still being kept secret from the public, but when asked how the rumors about Deep Purple breaking up got started, Blackmore answered, “Because we usually break up every day. We all hate each other. I mean it. We hate each other. We always hated each other. We don’t get on, not even when we play.” When pressed further, Blackmore had this stunning announcement: “Deep Purple isn’t going to break up. It’ll be three certain members staying together. There’ll be two new members, and it’ll still be called Deep Purple.” It was like dropping a bombshell. But Blackmore was known for feeding the press false information, and nobody could or would confirm what he had said. Ultimately, Esposito’s interview would be used for an article published in Creem in September, after the breakup had taken place. It was also later used by the journalist for an article in Circus. The entire interview, however, was left unpublished for many years.

But, you are asking, who is this second person being replaced? Well, according to Blackmore, it was he himself

Tod E. Jones

38

who was going to leave, and he was going to bring Paice along with him; but, then, the drummer asked him, “Well, could anything persuade you to stay, because we’re on to such a good thing. Why mess it up?” When Blackmore answered “No, I can’t handle Gillan,” Paice knew there had to be more, for the singer was already on his way out. “What else is the problem?” asked Paice. Blackmore responded, “There’s just too many changes I would make and that’s not fair for me to say.” Paice persisted in his questioning, and the following day, Blackmore came clean: “Get rid of Roger . . . but I don’t want to. He’s the anchor of the band, such a nice guy. He’s done nothing wrong. I would want another bass player who’s bluesy. But I can’t ask for that, that’s why I want to leave.” Well, he did, in fact, ask for it. And he got what he asked for.

This discussion between Blackmore and Paice probably took place in May, for at the end of the month, on the 30th, the day that Purple was scheduled to play at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden, New York City, Blackmore, Lord, and Paice flew in Glenn Hughes from Texas. Hughes had been performing there with his band, Trapeze. Meeting at the Plaza Hotel, they formally offered Hughes the role of bassist in Deep Purple. Although Hughes had started out in Trapeze as both bassist and singer, a second bassist had been brought into the band so that Hughes could concentrate more fully on his vocal contribution. Now, Hughes was glad to be offered a position in Purple, but he would take the position of bassist only on the condition that he could also serve as the vocalist. The best that Purple could do was to assure him that he would be secondary vocalist. Hughes took the

Tod E. Jones

39

job. In Jacksonville, Florida, on June 15 (two weeks after

the hiring of Hughes and two days before the Esposito interview), Glover says, “I just sensed something was amiss. So I cornered the management and refused to leave his room until he told me what was going on, which he did. He said, ‘Well, Ritchie’s decided to stay in the band . . .’ and I said, ‘Oh, that’s great. . . .’ Then he said, ‘But, only if you leave.’” Upon being told that Lord and Paice stood behind Blackmore, Glover responded, “Okay, I’m leaving then. This is my notice, thank you. I’ll finish the tour; I’ll be a gentleman, even if you’re not.”

From June 23 through the 29th, Purple performed for the second time in Japan, again playing to sold-out arenas in Hiroshima, Nagoya, Tokyo, and Osaka. Before that last show in Osaka, Blackmore spoke for the final time to Glover: “It’s not personal, Roger. It’s just business.” And later, as Deep Purple left the stage, their song-writing team, Gillan and Glover, remained behind to savor the moment when, as members of the loudest rock band in the world, they said their final farewell.

The band, now including Glenn Hughes as bassist, had nearly five months free from touring. With Hughes fully capable of singing while playing the bass, Purple was not in a rush to hire a new vocalist. They were swamped with tapes coming in from aspiring singers, and it would take time to work through them. Their first order of business seems to have been to bring the bassist up to speed and to work on new material. Hughes was invited to Blackmore’s home, where they began working up some new ideas, including the heavy and deeply soulful “Mistreated.”

Tod E. Jones

40

By August 1973 the band had listened to and rejected dozens of tapes from would-be superstars. Very nearly rejected was a tape sent in by a New York City boutique salesman named David Coverdale. “David’s tape was rubbish,” recalled Paice, “except for four bars where he actually sung really hard and I thought there was something in his voice that was really good, so I said let’s get him down here.” The rest is history: “He had these incredibly awful glasses on and this strange, not quite straight hair, and he had an eye that wandered around. I’m sure it was a nervous thing. And he was massively overweight. But we got him in the studio, and he sang very well.” The studio was Scorpio Sound in London, and the first song he sung was a bluesy rendition of “Strange Kind of Woman.” Blackmore was impressed, and Coverdale got the job. “But part of the deal was,” says Paice, “if you are going to come into the band, you’ve got to look a bit different to that—because he looked exactly what he was, a chap from a clothing store who really didn’t give a toss about himself. He agreed to everything because he wanted in and became the glorious David Coverdale that everybody knows and loves today.” So, now we have Deep Purple, Mark III:

David Coverdale: lead vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Glenn Hughes: bass guitar and vocals Jon Lord: keyboards Ian Paice: drums

Tod E. Jones

41

As with Hughes, Coverdale was invited into Blackmore’s home in Surrey to work on new material. Coverdale observed, “I quickly found out that Ritchie was the principal composer in Purple. He played me much of the basic material for what ultimately became the Burn album.” By September the band was ready to get to work rehearsing and recording. To do so, they moved into Clearwell Castle. Located in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, near Monmouth, Clearwell is an eighteenth-century neo-Gothic castle complete with battlements and a basement recording studio. Black Sabbath had recorded part of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath here earlier in the year. Perhaps Purple didn’t care for the sound, but for one reason or another, they decided not to record, even though they had rehearsed every song that was to be on the album, except for the instrumental “A 200.” Instead, they decamped and reconvened in Montreux, Switzerland, to take advantage of the modern Music and Convention Center, which had replaced the Casino. As before, they rented the Rolling Stones mobile studio and brought along their sound engineer, Martin Birch. Here, they successfully recorded their eighth studio album, Burn.

Burn is an album that reveals a more blues-oriented Deep Purple, which is exactly what Blackmore had been wanting to achieve. New also for Purple is the vocal harmonies attained by using two singers, as well as the integration of synthesizers by Lord. Compared to the previous album, Burn clearly shows a rejuvenated Purple and one capable of producing quality material.

Tod E. Jones

42

The new songs, as well as the new line-up, had their debut at Copenhagen. Coverdale would later write, “It was 40 years ago this very day, December 9, 1973, when I had the indescribable honor of walking onstage with the extraordinary talents of Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, and Glenn Hughes at the KB Hallen in Copenhagen, Denmark for the very first time. The ‘Burn’ album had yet to be released, but it showed the balls of the guys in the band to go out and play brand new, unheard songs to a rapturous Danish audience. An unforgettable experience for me.” Eight songs were played, six from Burn—the title song, “Might Just Take Your Life,” “Lay Down, Stay Down,” “You Fool No One,” “What’s Goin’ On Here,” and “Mistreated”—along with “Smoke on the Water” and “Space Truckin.’”

When Burn was released on February 15, 1974, it met with mixed but generally favorable reviews. It climbed as high as No. 3 on the UK charts, and reached No. 9 in the US, a better showing than its predecessor. But for many fans, Burn did not represent the Deep Purple that they had come to love. For them, Deep Purple would always be the Mark II incarnation. They would have to wait until 1984’s Perfect Strangers to hear that band again, and by that time, even the sound of Mark II would have changed.

Stormbringer

In the latter half of January 1974, Purple had five gigs

in France and Germany, and were then scheduled to begin a long US tour. Unfortunately, before the tour could kick off, Lord fell ill and was flown home, where he was rushed

Tod E. Jones

43

into the operating room for an appendectomy. Making the situation much worse, the wound turned septic, and Lord was taken out of commission until March.

The US tour began with a series of twenty-two shows in March, mostly back-to-back, along the East Coast and Midwestern States. At first, their reception was tentative, sometimes even hostile, as fans tried to come to grips with Purple’s new sound. By April, when they arrived on the West Coast, most audiences had already heard pieces from the new album and knew what to expect. On Saturday, the 6th, they performed before their largest audience ever, a crowd of, perhaps—when gate-crashers are counted—400,000 people. Greg Lake, of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, noted, “The audience stretched as far as the eye could see. It was biblical.” This was the California Jam at the Ontario Motor Speedway, a concert lasting from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and featuring, in addition to Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Black Oak Arkansas, Rare Earth, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Seals & Crofts, the Eagles, and Earth, Wind & Fire. The event was being filmed by the ABC for inclusion in their In Concert series.

At the end of Purple’s performance, during a lengthy rendition of “Space Truckin,’” Blackmore decided to smash his guitar directly into the lens of one of ABC’s mobile cameras that was to the left of the guitarist on the stage. That, in addition to setting fire to a row of gas-soaked amplifiers, almost got Blackmore arrested and banned from ever performing again in the US. To understand what had made the guitarist so destructively angry, it is important to review what had occurred before the band took the stage.

Tod E. Jones

44

Deep Purple were the headliners of the event. As such, they had been initially scheduled to appear at the end of the evening. But, having a concert the following day in Tempe, Arizona, they wanted to get on the road before 10 p.m. Also, they wanted to avoid the inevitable traffic jam after the concert. So, they arranged to have Emerson, Lake & Palmer be the closing act. In addition, they stipulated that Purple would take the stage “at sunset.” This was, apparently, agreed upon. Well, the act that preceded Purple finished a full half-hour early, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer insisted that Purple get on with their act immediately, or else they would claim that the terms of their contract had been violated and would take their money without performing. Well, naturally, this greatly upset the event promoters, who then took their turn at making imperious demands: Deep Purple absolutely must take the stage without waiting for sunset, they declared. Now, most of the band, understanding the situation, would have been compliant. After all, whether they were to go on stage immediately or wait around half an hour to go on really didn’t make that much difference to them. And, frankly, they would have been happy to get on the road earlier rather than later. But Blackmore, seeing the way the wind was blowing, retired to his dressing room. Before he could lock the door, a producer entered his space and told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he did not get on the stage by the time he counted to thirty, Deep Purple would be off the show. He puffed out his chest, crossed his arms, and proceeded to count. Blackmore thought, at first, he could just ignore him, and began to tune his guitar, but before the offensive fellow could count to fifteen, the

Tod E. Jones

45

guitarist had quite enough of it, and had one of the roadies physically escort the man outside.

Blackmore himself, talking to Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone, moralizes, “Forget the money we stood to lose, it was a matter of principle. Even Jon Lord came to me in the end and said, ‘Look, will you go on . . . for the band?’ I told him absolutely not and was ready to quit the band then and there. Somebody else from ABC came in and asked me politely if I’d go on stage. I was angry, but because he was nice about it, I went on.” As to why Blackmore decided to smash up one of the TV cameras, he stated, “Actually, I hadn’t planned to go for the camera; I was out to kill this guy who gave me the countdown. I thought he’d be on stage. If he had been, you would have seen more than a smashed camera. I don’t like violence, but I was raving that night.”

Periodically during the show that Purple put on that night, Coverdale looked out into the horizon and enigmatically asked the audience, “Where’s the sundown?”

In July 1974, after a successful tour of their homeland with Elf now in tow, Purple reconvened at Clearwell Castle with the intent of working on a new album. The dynamic of the band had shifted significantly from the summer of ’73, when Hughes and Coverdale were still new and adapting their style to the Purple back catalogue. Now they were confident members of the band, equal at least to Lord and Paice, if not quite equal to Blackmore. What is even more important is that Hughes and Coverdale discovered that, regardless of the music they had been playing, the music that they liked and privately listened to

Tod E. Jones

46

was the same—soul, funk, and R&B, mostly black artists, such as Kool & The Gang, Stevie Wonder, the Ohio Players, and Sly & The Family Stone (“shoeshine music,” Blackmore called it). With each other’s support, they began bringing forward this influence into their ideas and performance. At the same time, Blackmore was growing increasingly interested in baroque, renaissance, and medieval music, the influence of which can be heard in “Soldier of Fortune.” His contribution to the new album can also be heard in “Stormbringer” and “Lady Double Dealer,” hard rockers that he wrote together with Coverdale.

Blackmore increasingly withdrew from the scene. No doubt, a contributing factor was the disintegration of his five-year marriage with Babs, who had finally had enough of his infidelity. At many of the rehearsals, he was absent altogether and thereby almost intentionally loosening his control over the direction of Purple’s music. When he did show up, the mood was often confrontational. He refused to have anything to do with Hughes’s “Hold On,” but when Hughes, Lord, and Paice then refused, in turn, to record “Soldier of Fortune,” Blackmore relented: “I’ll play your funky song if you will play mine.”

Blackmore felt strongly about recording covers of Quatermass’s 1970 song “Black Sheep of the Family” and the Yardbird’s 1965 piece “Still I’m Sad,” but Lord and Paice refused to do them on the grounds that they weren’t Purple songs. Blackmore could hardly believe it, for Deep Purple had begun as a covers band. Yet, it is possible that their rejection of Blackmore’s ideas was simply a reprisal for the guitarist’s reluctance to share his original ideas

Tod E. Jones

47

with them. For they had heard Blackmore practicing riffs, but when they had expressed interest, the guitarist told them that he was withholding them for another project.

In August Purple left Clearwell for Musicland Studio in Munich, and from there to the Record Plant West in Los Angeles. Finally, despite the lack of cohesion and collaboration in the band, Stormbringer was finished. It was released on November 16, 1974, and despite making it to No. 6 on the UK charts, and to No. 20 on the US charts, it was not favorably received by Purple’s long-time fans. Whatever merits the album possesses, it cannot be said that, taken as a whole, it sounds much like any of the previous Deep Purple LPs.

Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow

Just as Stormbringer was being released, in mid-November 1974, Deep Purple began a month-long tour of the US, headlining a show that was opened by Elf and the Electric Light Orchestra. During this time, Blackmore began associating more with Ronnie James Dio, the singer and songwriter for Elf. They would go to clubs and, sometimes, even jam together. Finally, following a show at the Metropolitan Sports Center in Bloomington, Minnesota, on December 9, Blackmore asked Dio if he had any interest in doing “Black Sheep of the Family”: “I really wanted to do this song. I had wanted to do it for the last two years. So, I said to Ronnie—I got him around one night and I got him drunk—‘Do you fancy doing it?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I might sing it.’ He got the song off in about half an hour. Then we went into the studio and we put it

Tod E. Jones

48

down.” Blackmore not only liked the sound, he enjoyed working with Dio, who continues the story: “Ritchie called me one night and said, ‘I’ve got this little idea, can you do anything with it?’ I said, ‘Yes, what do you need, and when do you need it?’ And he said, ‘Tomorrow.’ So I went back to the one room that all the band and the road crew were staying in—they were all partying and playing around—and I was up in the corner trying to write what became ‘16th Century Greensleeves.’ And the first time Ritchie heard what I’d done was the next day at the studio, when we recorded it.” By the time the tour ended in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 18, Blackmore and Dio had put together enough material to nearly make an album.

Aside from one concert on January 25, 1975, at the Sunbury Musical Festival in Melbourne, Australia, Deep Purple were free until their European tour began in mid-March. Elf spent January and much of February in Kingsway Studios with Roger Glover, recording their third album, Trying To Burn the Sun. On February 20, Elf—without their lead guitarist, Steve Edwards—entered Musicland Studios in Munich with Blackmore and his new girlfriend, Shoshana. Shoshana contributed backing vocals to “Catch the Rainbow” and to an otherwise instrumental version of “Still So Sad.” By March 14, despite everyone having had a blast, the new LP was completed. After being released on August 4, it would climb the UK charts to No. 11 and in the US would attain the modest position of No. 30.

On March 16, Deep Purple was back on the road, in Yugoslavia, with Elf again in tow. This European tour was

Tod E. Jones

49

scheduled to end in Paris on April 7, and Blackmore did not waste time letting Edwards and Coletta know that his performance on that date would be his last with Purple. But first, Blackmore approached Dio with the idea of putting a band together: “He came to me one night and said, ‘I want to put a band together, and I want you to be in it—what do you think?’” Dio agreed upon one stipulation—that Blackmore took all of Elf, not including Edwards, the guitarist who had joined Elf in 1973. Dio explains, “Elf had been through so much together—deaths in the band and all that terrible, horrible stuff that happened to us—there was no way I was going to abandon those guys. We’d known each other since we were babies. If he’d said no, I’d have stayed with Elf, because I believed in them. But he said okay, and that was it.” The band was to be called Rainbow, after Blackmore’s favorite Hollywood club, the Rainbow Bar & Grill, it was to be managed by Elf’s manager, Bruce Payne, and although Blackmore denied that Rainbow was to be his solo band, the title of the first album, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, left no doubt as to who was in charge. This was the current line-up:

Ronnie James Dio: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Craig Gruber: bass guitar

Mickey Lee Soule: keyboards Gary Driscoll: drums

We now take our leave of Deep Purple. Blackmore was replaced by the opiate-addicted jazz-rock guitarist

Tod E. Jones

50

Tommy Bolin, who lasted for one studio album. Come Taste the Band was released on October 10 and made the UK and US charts at Nos. 19 and 43, respectively. If anyone imagined that the sound of Deep Purple might continue without Blackmore, this album destroyed those dreams. A four-month world tour followed its release. Bolin made his live debut with Purple in Honolulu, Hawaii, on November 2, 1975.“When Ritchie left,” Paice afterwards reflected, “we were a bit silly. We were determined to carry on and we brought Tommy Bolin in. As good a player as he was in the studio, he was hopeless on stage. When he got on a big stage, he just seemed to freeze up. Instead of playing a solo, he’d end up shouting at the audience and arguing with them.” After the tour ended on March 15, 1976, the band simply dispersed. Another four months would transpire before the dissolution of Deep Purple would become public knowledge. Before the end of the year Bolin would be dead of a drug overdose.

Rising

Blackmore now owned a home in Hollywood, and so the rest of Rainbow relocated to Malibu. They needn’t have bothered. Before they could begin rehearsals, Blackmore delivered his plans to Dio. Soule relates, “Ronnie came to me and said, ‘Well, Ritchie wants to replace Craig Gruber.’ I kind of thought something was coming, but the way Ronnie put it to me at the time—and Gary, our drummer, was there at the time as well—he said, ‘Look, there’s not much we can do about this if we want

Tod E. Jones

51

to keep this going. Let’s make a pact—the three of us, we’re going to stick together. No matter what.’ So we all said, ‘Yeah. OK, great.’ And Ritchie already had someone in mind—he had heard Jimmy Bain playing somewhere, and I guess had talked to him and liked Jimmy a lot. So Jimmy became the bass player. A little bit into the rehearsals, Ronnie came to me and said, ‘Well, Ritchie wants to replace Gary.’ And that really got to me, because Gary was my best friend, and he had been with Ronnie longer than I had. We all felt he was a great drummer. And Ronnie said to me, ‘Well, there’s not much we can do about this. But let’s make a pact—you and I will stick together.’

“‘Right then, I kind of knew that as much as Ronnie may have wanted things to be a certain way, it was all down to Ritchie—what he wanted. And Ritchie was kind of a hard guy to figure out what he wanted. So the decision was made to replace Gary. I was there for the auditions—Cozy Powell came, really played great, and got the gig. Cozy really impressed us.”

Seeing the way things were turning out, Soule supposed it would be best if he decided his own destiny, so before Blackmore could fire him, he gave his notice to quit. He was hoping to put something together with Roger Glover, but instead, in 1976, he replaced Mike Moran in the Ian Gillan Band. As matters stood, Soule may not have needed to quit Rainbow. No keyboards player was standing in line to take his place. But, at S. I. R. Rehearsal Studios in Hollywood, after Soule had resigned, Blackmore heard the twenty-year-old Tony Carey performing with his band Blessings and offered him the

Tod E. Jones

52

position. This, then, is the line-up for Rainbow’s first tour and

follow-up album:

Ronnie James Dio: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Jimmy Bain: bass guitar

Tony Carey: keyboards Cozy Powell: drums

Rainbow kicked off their fourteen-show North

American tour at the Forum in Montreal, Canada, on Nov. 10, 1975. They had a set of ten pieces, including a keyboard solo by Carey and the encore, “If You Don’t Like Rock ’n’ Roll.” Every song that they did during this show they did for the first time before an audience. Three of the songs they performed would appear on the next album: “Do You Close Your Eyes” (the show opener), “Stargazer,” and “A Light in the Black.”

Directly behind the band stood the arch of a massive, 40-foot, computer-operated rainbow, illuminated by 3,000 colored lightbulbs. It had cost the band nearly $100,000. It was Blackmore’s idea, inspired by the wooden rainbow that stretched from end-to-end of the stage in the California Jam. Given the transportation difficulties, the mechanical problems, and the electrical outages that now followed the band wherever they went, their road crew would, probably, have paid handsomely to be rid of the thing. Yet, by all accounts, the illuminated rainbow made an impressive background to the band, and they kept it in use until the autumn of 1979.

Tod E. Jones

53

The tour concluded at the San Bernardino, California, Swing Auditorium on November 30. Afterwards the band flew to Germany, where they set up shop in an old farmhouse near Munich, to rehearse for their next album. By February 1976, they were ready to record and entered Musicland Studios for that purpose. According to Carey, “Compared to making records today, it was effortless, a breeze, it was a piece of cake because we basically did what you are supposed to do when you make a record, but no one does. We just went in and played the fucking thing. And Ronnie came down with his notebook and sung and it all was done. The recordings were completely spontaneous.”

Rainbow’s Rising was released on May 17, 1976, and—even though Rainbow’s final studio album was not recorded until 1995—many fans of the band consider it their best work, even though it climbed only as high as No. 48 in the US charts. Music historian and rock critic Eddie Trunk says of Rising, “It’s an epic record, and it’s a phenomenal line-up of the band. . . . I think a lot of people feel that the Rising record was the definitive line-up. . . . It was a masterpiece of a record. It was deep, it had incredible production from Martin Birth, and even the cover was cool as hell.” The LP went Gold in the UK, reaching No. 11 there in the charts. Those who feel that Rising is the best album that Rainbow ever produced would probably agree that “Stargazer” is the band’s masterpiece. But some may feel, with Doogie White (Rainbow’s singer from 1994 to 1997), “I don’t think with Rainbow Rising you can pick a favorite song. I think you take it as it is.”

Tod E. Jones

54

On Stage & Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll

On June 11, 1976, Rainbow began its tour of the US in Columbus, Ohio, finishing after thirty gigs, on August 7 at the Berkeley Community Theater in California. Aside from some difficulties with their electric rainbow, the tour was a brilliant success. Their set during this time included, in addition to works from their first two albums, “Mistreated” from Deep Purple’s Burn album, and one song, “Kill the King,” that would appear on their next studio LP. Being well-received in the States, they went on to their UK opening on August 31 on the stage of the Bristol Hippodrome. Melody Maker’s Brian Harrington reviewed them: “It was Rainbow’s first concert on British soil, and they systematically blitzed the good citizens of Bristol who crammed into the Hippodrome. . . . I, for one, was overwhelmed.”

Rainbow finished the UK tour at Newcastle City Hall on September 14. In Deep Purple, Lord and Blackmore would often extemporize and try to outdo one another with their virtuosity, but Blackmore would have none of that from young Carey. The keyboards player recalls, “He fired me because I was definitely playing too much. I know that now, but he came over in the middle of the set and said, ‘Why don’t you just leave then.’ . . . He could have come over and said, ‘Play less’ or ‘Stick to the rulebook,’ but he didn’t. That’s not his style. I didn’t even know he was unhappy.”

Rainbow were scheduled to begin the month-long European leg of their world tour in six days, but

Tod E. Jones

55

Blackmore hadn’t considered the difficulty of finding a replacement for Carey in so short a period. He had no choice but to reinstate him.

It is during their European and Japanese tour that Rainbow’s live double-album On Stage was recorded—specifically in Germany at the end of September and in Japan during the first half of December. The album would not be released until July 7, 1977. It would rise to No. 7 on the UK charts, but would climb with difficulty to No. 65 in the US.

Once the year’s touring was completed, in mid-December, Carey was, again, let go. This time Blackmore had a replacement, Joe Vescovi, an Italian keyboards player that the guitarist had met back in 1972. It wasn’t long, however, before Blackmore realized he had made an error. Vescovi’s style was just too different and unsuited to Rainbow’s music. Choking on his pride, Blackmore asked Carey to return, and the latter graciously did. But there was to be a lingering animosity between the two men.

Some of Blackmore’s anger may have been redirected toward his bassist. Not only did Blackmore give no reason for firing Bain, he had Rainbow’s manager deliver the news. Band members have surmised that it was because of Bain’s excessive drinking or because he didn’t complement the style and direction of the other members. For whatever reason, Blackmore called an old friend, former Colosseum bassist, Mark Clark, who had since performed with Uriah Heep and Tempest, before forming his own band, Natural Gas, in 1975. He had just left Natural Gas behind, so he accepted Blackmore’s offer.

Tod E. Jones

56

In March 1977 Rainbow pulled up stakes and flew into Paris. They were to move into the eighteenth-century Chateau d’Hérouville, the left wing of which had been transformed into Strawberry Studios. Here, in 1972, both Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull had recorded albums. And, in the previous summer, Bad Company had used the studios to record Burning Sky. The band members would come to know the manor house as the “Chateau d’Horrorsville,” since Blackmore liked to perform seances here and play frightening practical jokes on the other members.

Tony Carey was the first to quit the band while at the Chateau. Having had quite enough of seances and jokes, Carey packed his bags and flew back to L.A. “I left actually in the middle of the night in a taxi,” he recalled. “‘Get me out of here,’ kind of thing. I fled the Chateau. . . . The last time I saw Ritchie was whenever that was, at about midnight, and two hours later I was gone.” It was this incident that inspired Blackmore and Dio to write one of the first new songs for the upcoming album, “L.A. Connection.” Speaking years later, Carey reflected that there was “a lot of drama, a lot of problems with Ritchie. Ritchie had a lot of problems with himself, I guess. There were people having seances and there were demons being conjured up—all kinds of really silly stuff. . . . It got crazy, it got violent—which I’m not going to go into—but it got to the point where somebody was going to get hurt, and I said, ‘I’m going to leave.’ And I did.”

Next to leave was Clarke. Blackmore wasn’t happy with the fact that Clarke played the bass without the use of a pick, and Clarke wasn’t happy for several reasons. “It’s hard to describe,” he afterwards related. “It was really a

Tod E. Jones

57

harsh environment. Rainbow is not for the faint hearted; let’s put it that way. And it was not what I was used to. I was not in the right situation.”

Being without a keyboard’s player and a bassist, Rainbow left the Chateau without having completed the album and returned to L.A. to hold auditions. Replacing Carey proved to be difficult. None of the musicians that showed up satisfied Blackmore, so he called up Canadian keyboard’s player David Stone, who, in 1976, had contributed to an album by Symphonic Slam. Blackmore had Stone flown in for an audition, and then offered him the job. Replacing Clarke, however, was also proving to be a problem. Blackmore sat in on about forty auditions for the bassist position before finally focusing in upon Bob Daisley, who had just finished recording an album with British hard rock group Widowmaker. The band was in the process of breaking up, and so Daisley was looking for something steady. Instead, Blackmore offered him a job in Rainbow. Daisley hesitantly accepted. Thus, in the mid-summer of 1977, we have this new line-up for Rainbow:

Ronnie James Dio: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Bob Daisley: bass guitar

David Stone: keyboards Cozy Powell: drums

With the band line-up finally stabilized, Rainbow

commenced rehearsals in Pirate Sound Studio in L.A., but they didn’t have enough time to master the set before the US leg on their Rising world tour was scheduled to begin

Tod E. Jones

58

in August. They had little choice but to cancel their US engagements. That bought them time, as the European part of the tour didn’t begin until September 25. But then, hardly had they gotten started with rehearsals, when Blackmore decided that the band needed to move to the East Coast. Of course, the band lost a lot of time getting settled into their new residences, and once settled, they had to pack their bags and head out upon their tour.

One notable incident that occurred on this tour took place on October 18, 1977, at the Weiner Stadthalle, in Vienna, Austria. Blackmore himself tells the story:

“We had a very fanatical audience. In the first row was a girl who totally flipped out but didn’t hurt anyone. The security was made up of policemen, and one of these security guys was hitting her relentlessly with a stick, again and again. So, I kicked out in his direction, hitting his face and breaking his jaw. The guy went down, and within moments all exits were blocked by policemen. During the encore I ran off stage and jumped into a flight case that a roadie had ready for me. The lights went on, cops stormed towards the backstage area, dogs barked—it was like in a film. They wanted to teach me a lesson, and it seemed as though every gun in town was in pursuit of a mass murderer. The crew told them I had run to the railway station, and my pursuers went there on motorbikes. At the same time my roadies rolled me outside and just at the moment they were putting the case onto the truck two policemen came and wanted to check the contents of the case. They opened it, and a few seconds later I had won a nice stay overnight with full board. I was kept there for a full four days. I was kept from sleeping the whole time,

Tod E. Jones

59

fed the worst shit, and so on. I felt like a prisoner of war, and to make it perfect, I had to pay $10,000 for the service.”

Throughout the greater part of November, Rainbow toured in the UK. Hardly had they time to relax, when they had to regroup at the Chateau to finish what would be the band’s third studio album, Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll. Jimmy Bain had already laid down most of the bass on the album, so Daisley was given hardly anything to do. As he recalls, “There were times when there was fuck all to do there; TV was in French, we were miles from any town, so we used to sit in front of the fire and drink, so by the end of the night we ended up legless.” The last song on the album to be taped, with all members of the band and the Vienna Symphony contributing, turned out to be its main attraction, “Gates of Babylon.” Long Live Rock ’n’Roll would be released on 9 April 1978, and although it would not fare well on the charts, ranking lower than the previous two albums, many consider it to be the band’s best album.

Two days before it was released, Ronnie Dio married Wendy Gaxiola in their home in New Canaan, Connecticut. Dio’s love song to her is included on Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll. It is the one song, with its use of flutes, recorders, and violins, that doesn’t fit with the other songs on the album, the ballad “Rainbow Eyes,” what Jerry Bloom identifies as “the first real example of Blackmore’s liking of medieval music.”

Tod E. Jones

60

Down to Earth

Blackmore’s dissatisfaction with Dio began during the recording sessions for Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll. According to Blackmore, this is what happened: “We started slowing down on the third LP. I remember being in the studio, and Ronnie came in with Cozy—I was kneeling down in front of my amplifier, trying to get the sound right—and [Dio] poked me in the back. I’ll always remember it. ‘We’re not standing for this!’ ‘What?’ ‘You’re on the front cover of Circus magazine. We’re not going to be sidekicks!’ I went, ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. I don’t know if I’m on the front page of whatever you’re talking about.’ ‘You’re on the front page of Circus, and it was going to be the three of us!’ And I went, ‘So it’s not?’ ‘No, it’s just you.’ ‘Who said this?’ Wendy just called me.’ ‘Oh, right; thank you, Wendy!’ That was it. I knew that we were finished then because I couldn’t talk to him anymore. I suddenly saw him in a different light. I saw him as this angry, bitter little man. He got very bitter.”

According to Wendy Dio, however, this story is a ridiculous fabrication. What we know for certain is that, after the release of Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll, Blackmore asked Dio to write more love songs, like the ballad he had written for Wendy, and Dio refused. Blackmore, no longer happy with the predominant lyrical motifs of Dio—that is, the dungeons and dragons, swords and sorcery, and damsels in distress themes that Blackmore himself had pushed Dio toward at the very beginning—now hired Roger Glover to work with him as a songwriter. Glover was to become Rainbow’s chief lyricist and to be used as

Tod E. Jones

61

a conduit between Blackmore and Dio, as the former dissociated himself from his singer.

This lyrical transition to love songs is suggestive of a yet broader change. When one thinks of love songs one naturally thinks of songs heard on the radio—commercially acceptable, mainstream music. And this is exactly the direction that Blackmore was now wanting to take Rainbow. What is particularly telling is that, at about this time, Blackmore became a huge fan of the Swedish pop group Abba.

What we also know is that (as was the case with Gillan’s girlfriend, Zoe) Blackmore did not like girlfriends and spouses on tour with the band, and Dio had always brought along Wendy, from the time of Rainbow’s first US tour in 1975. In fact, Blackmore makes no effort to hide his exasperation with Wendy in the above scenario that he himself provided.

By December 1978 Dio was prepared to throw in the towel, but before he could make his resignation official, Bruce Payne called to tell him that Blackmore was breaking up Rainbow and would only be keeping his drummer.

Rainbow’s drummer, Cozy Powell, suggested that Stone’s position be filled with keyboards player Don Airey. So, later that month, Airey auditioned at Blackmore’s home in Connecticut. “The next day,” says Airey, “we went into a rehearsal studio, and I did see Ronnie in the car park, but that was the last I saw of him. Richie had a few riffs and we just kept playing around them. Over three weeks we just worked up the album.” In a couple of weeks after the hiring of Airey, Jack Green was

Tod E. Jones

62

brought in as a bassist. Blackmore, given the difficult task of replacing Dio, actually had the nerve to ask Gillan, but the former singer of Deep Purple politely turned him down. Early in 1979, after listening to a multitude of vocalists, Blackmore decided upon Graham Bonnet—a singer who, together with Trevor Gordon in a duo called The Marbles, had released the UK hit single “Only One Woman” in 1970.

This, then, is the line-up for the new album and the tour that followed:

Graham Bonnet: vocals Ritchie Blackmore: lead guitar Jack Green: bass guitar

Don Airey: keyboards Cozy Powell: drums

At this point, the entire album Down to Earth had been

completed, except for the vocals. So Bonnet and Glover entered Kingdom Sound Studios in Long Island, New York, to finish the recording. From the album, two singles were released, Russ Ballard’s “Since You Been Gone” and “All Night Long.” Blackmore finally had his commercial hits, which reached No. 6 and No. 5, respectively, in the UK charts. The album itself was released on July 28, 1979, and climbed in the UK as high as No. 6.

Powell, Blackmore’s drummer, was uncomfortable with the commercial direction that Rainbow had taken and was particularly unhappy with the single “Since You Been Gone.” “I remember well the first time I heard it,” Powell recalled. “Bruce Payne played it to me at the office in New

Tod E. Jones

63

York, and he said, ‘What do you think about this track?’ I said, ‘Great! It sounds really good.’ It was done by a girl band . . . Clout, and then he said, ‘Well, we’re thinking of doing it for Rainbow.’ I said, ‘You must be kidding. . . . No way is this a Rainbow track; it’s a pop song! . . . I just said, ‘This is ridiculous. . . . We should never be doing these kinds of songs. We are Rainbow, we are leaders in our field of music.’ In the end, I said, ‘I’ll play it, but I’ll play it once and that’s all.’ So Powell turned in his resignation, playing with the band for the last time on August 16, 1980.

Epilogue

At this point we must take our leave of Rainbow. The

band was to go on to complete another four studio albums—three before their dissolution in 1984: Difficult to Cure (1981), Straight between the Eyes (1982), and Bent out of Shape (1983)—and then one after the band’s reformation: Stranger in Us All (1995). With the single “I Surrender” (from Difficult to Cure) Rainbow would attain its highest position on the UK chart, at No. 3.

In 1997 Blackmore dissolved Rainbow to pursue his passion in Renaissance and Medieval music. Together with his musical partner (and later wife) Candice Night, he formed the duo Blackmore’s Night. They have released no less than eleven albums. Although Blackmore revived Rainbow in 2015, the band has yet to release another album.

Tod E. Jones

64

Bibliography

Altham, Keith. “Deep Purple.” Record Mirror 1 May 1971. rocksbackpages.com July 2020.

—. “Rock Is Where We’re At.” Record Mirror 3 Oct. 1970.

rocksbackpages.com July 2020. Barnes, Mike. A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock

& the 1970s. London: Omnibus, 2020. Bloom, Jerry. Black Knight: Ritchie Blackmore. London:

Omnibus, 2008.

—. The Road of Golden Dust: The Deep Purple Story, 1968–76. Bedford: Wymer, 2015.

Coverdale, David. News. 9 Dec. 2013. Deep Purple Tour

Page. purple.de/dirk/purple/tours/1973/73-12-09.php July 2020.

Curl, James. Ronnie James Dio: A Biography of a Heavy

Metal Icon. Sacramento: JC, 2018. “Deep Purple: An Interview with Jon Lord.” Beat

Instrumental Nov. 1970. rocksbackpages.com July 2020.

Esposito, Jim. “An Unpublished Interview with Ritchie

Blackmore.” 17 June 1973. rocksbackpages.com July 2020.

Tod E. Jones

65

Gillan, Ian, with David Cohen. Ian Gillan: The

Autobiography of Deep Purple’s Singer. Music, 1994. Rev. ed., 2016.

Green, Richard. “Deep Purple: Guildhall, Portsmouth.”

New Musical Express 18 September 1971. rocksbackpages.com July 2020.

Pilkington, Steve. On Track . . . Deep Purple & Rainbow:

Every Album, Every Son, 1968–1979. Tewkesbury: Sonicbond, 2018.

Prato, Greg. The Other Side of Rainbow. Greg Prato, 2016. Thompson, Dave. Smoke on the Water: The Deep Purple

Story. Toronto: ECW Press, 2004. Rpt. 2013.

Tod E. Jones

66