Thursday, 4 September 2014
197 Hello Deep Purple - Black Night
Chart entered : 15 August 1970
Chart peak : 2
Number of hits : 13 ( Deep Purple's 3 live EPs have been counted in this total because each one is comprised mainly of songs that were not previous hits )
We've touched on this lot in previous posts and will be mentioning them in future ones but here is their entrance in the singles charts, the first real heavy rock ( they were always too bluesy, and Jon Lord's organ too prominent , to be "metal") to make an appearance.Deep Purple's is probably the most famous of Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees. It would take a long, long time to cover everything these five guys did before coming to this point so there will be some compression here.
As you may remember from the Goodbye post on The Searchers, Deep Purple eventually emerged from a proposal by their ex-drummer Chris Curtis to keyboard player Jon Lord , who he met at a party, for a group called Roundabout where they would be the core members in a revolving cast of players. Apart from his expectation of a key part in it, that turned out to be a good prediction of the band's history. Curtis's fatal error was to move in with Lord and give him an indication of what life in a band with him would be like.
Jon Lord came from Leicester and was a classically trained pianist. After working in a solicitor's office in the late 1950s he moved to London to study drama with the intention to become an actor. At nights he played with a jazz group the Bill Ashton Combo and then Red Bludd's Bluesicians. He also started doing session work and is on The Kinks' You Really Got Me . In 1963 Jon left the Bluesicians along with singer Art Wood ( brother of Ron ) and drummer Red Dunnage to form the Art Wood Combo, later The Artwoods.
The Artwoods were a tight R & B outfit , like Them with a heavier organ sound, and are still well remembered on the mod scene by people who don't have the slightest interest in Deep Purple. Art Wood could get pretty close to Van Morrison's snarl. For a hitless band they had a surprisingly long recording career ( 1964 to 1967 ) , Decca cutting them plenty of slack because they were a popular live act and Parlophone and Fontana giving them a further chance each. All their singles - "Sweet Mary", "Oh My Love", "Goodbye Sisters" "I Take What I Want" "I Feel Good" and "What Shall I Do" - are worth a listen but they lack a certain pop nous that would have seen them in the charts. After a rather desperate name change to "St Valentine's Day Massacre" for a ( not bad ) version of "Brother Can You Spare A Dime" , all to try and cash in on Bonnie and Clyde's popularity they split up at the end of 1967. Jon accepted the invite to tour as a Flowerpot Man but doesn't feature on any of their recordings. He also formed a very short-lived combo "Santa Barbara Machine Head " with Ron Wood who recorded a handful of tracks for Immediate which were released on a sampler album in 1968.
Much more important were the talks he was having with aspiring rock manager Tony Edwards and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore about setting up the group initially suggested by Chris Curtis. Although four years younger than Jon, Ritchie had a longer recording career having been spotted as a teenage guitar prodigy by Screaming Lord Sutch and then drafted into one of Joe Meek's house bands, The Outlaws, originally set up to back Mike Berry in 1960. Ritchie joined them early in 1963, in time to play ( not very noticeably ) on Berry's number 36 hit "My Little Baby" . As well as playing on singles by some of Meek's other acts including Heinz, John Leyton and Glenda Collins, The Outlaws were allowed to make their own records though their two hits came before Ritchie joined.
Ritchie's debut single with the band was inauspicious ; "Poppin Medley" was an uninspired medley of recent hits, including Telstar , stretched across both sides of the record. For brand protection it was released under the name "The Chaps" and promptly sank without trace. He appeared on four more singles with The Outlaws in 1963-4. "The Return Of The Outlaws" is Telstar with Ritchie's guitar replacing the clavioline and gunshots instead of space noises. "That Set The Wild West Free" is a jaunty country rock number with Chas Hodges before he discovered he was a Cockney doing the vocal. "Law And Order" is an attractive guitar instrumental which they got to perform in the film Live It Up. His final single with them was a version of Little Richard's "Keep A Knockin" which is surprisingly heavy for its time. In 1964 Ritchie moved over to Heinz's band The Wild Boys playing on his last hit "Digging My Potatoes" and the Dylan cover "Don't Think Twice It's Alright". In March 1965 he released a solo single "Getaway" ( a co-write with Hodges ) a raucous instrumental surprisingly dominated by brass and piano. He moved on to Neil Christian and the Crusaders though soon moved on again , back into Screaming Lord Sutch's band in time to play on their last single for Meek ,"The Train Kept A Rollin'". Ritchie continued doing session work for Meek almost to the end although he was in Hamburg with his girlfriend when Meek died. The call from Tony Edwards came soon after.
Jon Lord brought in bassist Nick Simper who had been playing with him in the Flowerpot Men. Ritchie invited Bobby Woodman , an experienced drummer from Vince Taylor and the Playboys. They had auditions for a singer and Rod Evans from The Maze got the job. Ritchie had seen The Maze play in Germany and, realising that Rod's defection would probably break the band up, enquired after their teenage drummer Ian Paice. They arranged an impromptu audition while Woodman went out for cigarettes, not the last time Blackmore and Lord would be cavalier in their treatment of bandmates.
Ian had been playing the drums in his father's dance band at the age of 10. His first post-school band were called The Shindigs , not the same outfit who recorded a couple of singles for Parlophone in 1965. He moved on in 1966 to Rod's band The MI5 . They recorded one single "You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" in September 1966 before changing their name to The Maze. Their first single "Hello Stranger" is a blue-eyed soul number on which Ian's cymbal-heavy drumming seems a bit incongruous. The band got a better reception in Europe and recorded an EP in France headed by a version of "Harlem Shuffle" which gets heavier as it goes along and certainly gives Ian the chance to show off his skills. After releasing an Italian language single in 1967 they returned to the UK to release "Catari Catari" in December 1967, a strange hybrid of Scott Walker balladry, Four Seasons harmonies and hard rock rhythm section. Its failure no doubt prompted Rod's interest in the ad Jon and Ritchie placed in Melody Maker.
With all seats now filled Roundabout went on tour in Scandinavia after which they decided to change their name to "Deep Purple" after the Nino Temple and April Stevens hit which Ritchie's mother liked. Their first album "Shades Of Deep Purple" was released in the US in July 1968. It's very much influenced by the American band Vanilla Fudge , particularly three of the four covers which follow their template of slowing a song down and including improvisational passages although in Purple's case these were more likely to be influenced by classical music than the blues. Their relatively economical version of Joe South's "Hush" was a big hit in America reaching number 4 and they got to perform it at Hugh Hefner's mansion for a TV special. The album reached number 24 in the US but neither single nor album charted in the UK where the band were not well received. In fact nothing released by this line-up made an impression in Britain.
The band were under great pressure from the American label to record more material for a large tour starting in October 1968. Even so, the second LP "The Book of Taliesyn" contains one less cover ( though their version of "River Deep Mountain High" is over 10 minutes long and doesn't become recognisable until 4 minutes in ) than their debut. It's stronger, with more ideas and a more polished sound. "Shield" , a doom-laden psychedelic epic with inventive percussion work from Ian that surprisingly didn't earn him a writer's credit ,is the highlight. Two of the covers "Kentucky Woman " ( Neil Diamond ) and a truncated "River Deep..." were the singles reaching 38 and 53 respectively in the US charts; neither were even released in the UK and the album was released six months after it hit US stores. The album got to number 54 in the US. John Peel was still supporting the band and they performed some tracks that didn't make the cut in a session for his Top Gear programme but he didn't like the album finding it "all too restrained somehow".
When the band returned to England at the beginning of 1969 their UK label Harvest ( in reality EMI ) pressed them for a single and they rather reluctantly came up with "Emmaretta" inspired by a member of the Hair cast that Rod was trying to seduce. The band didn't like the three minute format and Jon's hardly on it ; what's most notable is that Ritchie's playing is decidedly funky, the guitarist taking the opportunity to try on a different hat. It was only a hit in Australia and the band did not include it on their third album simply called "Deep Purple". This included only one cover Donovan's "Lalena" , done as a mournful stoner ballad and not really single material. The album was less eclectic than its predecessors heading in a more hard rock direction closer to how they sounded on stage.
The lack of a hit single and financial problems at their American label Tetragrammaton led to the album peaking at a disappointing 162 in the US charts despite another tour there. This brought tensions in the band to a head. Both Jon and Ritchie agreed that Rod's vocal style, firmly rooted in sixties pop, was not suited to the hard rock sound they were pursuing. Ritchie later said Rod wanted to remain in America. Ritchie also felt that Nick was a passenger who contributed little in creative terms; certainly he has the least writing credits on the three albums. Jon acquiesced in the bumping of his friend and as he later admitted , shamefully delegated the task of letting them know to their manager. Apart from "Hush" and the instrumental "Wring The Neck" from the second LP
the band quickly dropped all previous material from the live set. Only Kraftwerk have had more of an aversion to revisiting ( in their case people even hearing ) their earliest work. Rod Evans revived some of it in his disastrous "Deep Purple" tour of 1980 ; the resulting lawsuit forced him out of the music business altogether . Otherwise fans of their early stuff had to wait until 2009 when, after a low-key career with various bands, Nick started playing sets in Europe based on "The Deep Purple Mark One Songbook" with his band Nasty Habits.
Ritchie hoped to persuade Paul Rodgers or Terry Reid to join the band but neither were interested. Attention shifted to Ian Gillan, the singer with Episode Six ( whose drummer Mick Underwood had been in the Outlaws with Ritchie ). He had been a candidate when the band first formed but scorned Nick's suggestion of an audition. Ian was a well-spoken Londoner who decided to become a rock singer after seeing Elvis films. His first band The Javelins didn't record while his second band Wainwright's Gentlemen ( later to morph into another band we'll be covering soon ) didn't get past the demo stage during his tenure. Impatient for success, Ian accepted the invitation to join the band Episode Six in April 1965 as a replacement lead singer for a bloke who left to get married.
Episode Six were formed a year earlier from a merger of two school-based bands and included Welsh-born bassist Roger Glover . The band had just returned from a short German tour and soon had a record deal with Pye. Like The Artwoods they had a substantial recording career and there is more existing footage of them than there is of the the first Purple line-up. The first single was a Hollies cover "Put Yourself In My Place" in January 1966 which is a decent Who-like beat number carried by Roger's heavy bassline ( he wrote the B-side as well ). In these early days they were befriended and championed by then-pirate jockey Tony Blackburn who would sometimes act as MC at their concerts. Single number two was the jaunty, rather vacuous "I Hear Trumpets Blow" a Tokens cover. In the summer of 1966 , just before doing a package tour with Dusty they recorded a quick cover of "Here There And Everywhere" which is OK although Roger sounds like he's driving it too fast. In November they tried putting their female keyboard player Sheila Carter out front with an orchestra doing Charles Aznavour's "I Will Warm Your Heart" but that didn't work.
In 1967 they hitched their wagon to the psychedelic train and produced their best single to date "Love-Hate-Revenge" a cover of a US hit by The Del-Satins about using a voodoo doll to wreak revenge on an errant lover. They work in some acid-fried guitar, crazy Joe Meek ( who died on the day of its release ) space noises in the middle eight and some jaw-dropping harmonies on the chorus. Perhaps its genuine scariness frightened radio away but it's certainly worth investigating. In June they recorded a version of "Morning Dew" ( just ahead of the Human Beanz version : see the Hello post for Dave Edmunds ) which was a hit in Lebanon of all places. This turned out to be a poisoned chalice for the band as they were forced to do a Christmas season in Beirut as a result. In October they released "I Can See Through You" the first A side written by a group member ( Roger ) which sounds a lot like The Who again until 1:45 when a minute-long prog rock jam kicks in which must have baffled casual listeners in 1967. Its adventurousness was not rewarded.
By 1968 they had to find a new drummer and record label. They landed on MGM and released "Little One" as The Episode. Its loud, brash production ( by ex-Springfield Mike Hurst ) makes them sound a bit like The Sweet in their prime but glam wasn't ready to happen yet. They did a lot of TV to promote it but to no avail. The new drummer was a limelight-hogger who had to go and was replaced by Mick Underwood. Ian still had enough faith in the band to reject Nick Simper's approach and the band resumed operations on Chapter One records. The next single "Lucky Sunday" written by Les Vandyke is all over the place beginning with Sheila singing plainsong and taking in Glen Campbell -ish country rock , late Small Faces whimsy and arranger Les Reed's MOR brass sounds ( which Ian hated ). They limped into 1969 and released the rather desperate "Mozart versus the Rest" which attempted to follow Love Sculpture into the charts with a frantic guitar version of "Rondo a la Turk". It got some radio support but the public decided its appetite for speeded up classical pieces was sated and Episode Six's recording career was over.
Ian was recruited after an Episode Six gig in June 1969. Aware of their need for a new bassist and perhaps wary of going in alone he suggested Roger for the vacancy. Jon and Ritchie were not convinced that Roger offered that much more than Nick but Ian P thought they would work well together as a rhythm section and the others accepted his advice. Both Ian and Roger were recruited before Rod and Nick were told they were out. Episode Six limped on for another five years in some form but even Sheila's brother knew they were finished and took the chance to quit at the same time.
The new guys had little time to find their feet. Harvest again wanted a new single and they quickly recorded a sombre version of Cook and Greenaway's quasi-religious "Hallelujah". It's OK , Ritchie plays some good licks and Ian lets loose a couple of not strictly necessary screams to justify the changes, but it has the feel of a " this will do" effort. The band then had another commitment they had to honour before the next album, playing along on Jon Lord's pompous "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Albert Hall in September. Having inconveniently sacked their chief lyricist Rod Evans before he had written anything for the luckily small vocal portion the burden was passed to the not exactly prolific Ian G who didn't finish them until hours before the concert and they were basically a prolonged whinge about having to do it.
Amazingly the concert was a huge success. Ian G was note perfect , the event was televised , the album released three months later reached number 26 in the UK charts and the group's profile was significantly raised. But there was a cost ; it made Jon the leader of the band in the public's eyes and Ritchie never really came to terms with that. The difficult behaviour that became legendary had its roots in that frustration.
Anyhow we're up to "Black Night" and Lena's enthusiastic take is here : Purple . One thing she doesn't really touch on is how casual its construction was , the product of playing around with someone else's riff after a good session down the pub with the lyrics improvised on the spot. When you consider how much vinyl was expended before these five guys reached this point it's almost comical that such a happy accident would hit the spot but that's the beauty of Pop.
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Hard rock (or metal) has never been my bag, but I'll admit this is a good riff if nothing else. Vic Reeves covered it on his first album, aided by a Sheffield-based synth-popster you'll come across a fair bit down the line.
ReplyDeletePity the riff belonged to someone else- check out Ricky Nelson's "Summertime".
ReplyDeleteI was vaguely aware of some "lifting", but never that is so blatant! Despite that, I think DP do it better though being more economical with the riff, rather than making it core to the entire song.
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