Deep Purple – Deep Purple in Rock (1970)

As many of my regular readers will already know, as a preteen I was very much into hard rock and heavy metal. When I grew up a bit, I got interested in the roots of the genre and I was happy to find out my father owned quite a few metal classics from the early 70's on vinyl. One of them was Deep Purple in Rock. It was heavier than probably any other album I had heard from that era and I really loved the album. For a brief while, Deep Purple became maybe one of my favourite bands. Deep Purple In Rock is an aggressive, wild and very masterful album that shows the amazing skills of the band members. The guitars and organs particularly are quite amazing and my favourite moments are those where these two instruments form kind of battles with each other. It was the band's breakthrough album in Europe. The earlier albums had mainly been popular in North America.



Some of the albums I got from my father were not in the best condition. I could see that they had been played in parties and not put back in their sleeves after the use. It's interesting how vinyls were so everyday objects back in those days that people weren't too worried about damage to them. I'm sure some people were, but they were maybe proper music collectors such as the ones today that are really careful about their records. Anyway, my copy of this album is quite scratched, but it still plays beautifully. There's just this great scratching sound on the album that makes it sound wonderfully retro. It's not just that which makes me glad that I have this album on vinyl though. The bass and drum sounds sound way better on vinyl than digitally and I do feel like it really makes a difference listening to this album as it was meant to be listened.

The album starts with explosive guitars and drum rolls that ease into peaceful organ sounds in the song Speed King. When I saw Deep Purple Live, I remember Ian Gillan mentioning during the quiet part that "This is a song I used to sing to my little girl when she was going to sleep" and then they started the song properly. The song has some of the greatest rock yells in the history of music. Bloodscuker sounds more like the previous Deep Purple albums. It has this groovy and heavy rolling rhythm that makes you nod your head along. Child In Time is probably the greatest masterpiece Deep Purple has ever made. It starts off really beautiful with melancholic organ sounds and Ian Gillan's beautiful high vocals, but evolves into amazing fast solo sequences during its over 10 minute length. Flight of the Rat is like a boosted rock n' roll song that recognises the greatness of simple early rock n' roll while pushing the tempo, volume and skills up. Into the Fire has a kind of greasy and raunchy groove and the overdriven guitars in unison with the Hammond organs sound absolutely huge. Living Wreck has its roots in blues, but there are some very soulful rock sequences in the song as well. I have to also mention the amazing bass lines in this song. The album ends with Hard Lovin' Man which has some galloping progressive rhythms that may have influenced many of the 80's heavy metal bands, such as Iron Maiden to come up with their sounds. Around the time of the release of this album, Deep Purple released a non-album single Black Night, which became one of their most popular songs ever. It's interesting how at that time it was not uncommon to leave your best hit out of the album.

I already mentioned before, that I've seen Deep Purple live. I've actually seen them live twice at the Helsinki hockey arena. As a teenager, me and many of my friends just adored this band and it was great we got to see them live even if we were 20 years late of when the band was actually making the music we so loved. I remember John Lord, the keyboardist, in particular from the gig. He seemed so cool with his white long hair playing the full circle of organs in many levels around him. Therefore I think it is fit to post some live footage here. Here's a live recording of Child In Time, that shows just how great the band is performing live. The vocals are just amazing even live!

I haven't listened to Deep Purple that much in recent years, but now that I'm watching the live footage, I must admit that this is probably one of the most skilful bands that ever existed. All the musicians are absolutely incredible in their own instruments. That alone is a reason to listen to them if you are not too familiar with them.

Listen to the album on Spotify.