COME TASTE THE BAND

The departure of Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in 1973 had struck at the inner core of Deep Purple, and when Ritchie Blackmore also stepped aside after the release of "Stormbringer" to form Rainbow, it looked like the end of the band. However, the surviving members decide that there are still more battles to fight, and they call upon the talented Tommy Bolin, an overflowing and overwrought American guitarist, who at only 24 years of age gets involved in the new and risky adventure of the English band, "Come Taste the Band" (1975), Deep Purple's tenth album and the only one of the Mark IV.

An injection of vitality is what Bolin brings with him to a very tired band at that time, differentiating himself from Blackmore's corrosive and toxic guitar playing for more versatile and uninhibited ones, as in the explosive "Comin' Home", in the aggressive "Dealer" (great slide guitar) and "Drifter", and in the Zeppelin-like "Love Child", songs full of refreshing hard rock where the young guitarist displays his virtuosity in a carefree way, and shows a surprising point of maturity in the powerful "You Keep On Moving" accompanied by the melancholic hammonds of a Jon Lord, strangely relegated, and the marked bass of Glen Hughes in an apt duet singing with David Coverdale, surely the best song on the album.

On the other hand, the influences that Hughes and Coverdale shared from long ago, are manifested in the extremely funky "Gettin' Tighter", in the motown sonorities of "I Need Love", and in the soul of "This Time Around", songs that, in spite of having a solvent performance by the band and an excellent production work, move away from the characteristic sound of the glorious Purplelian hours.

And precisely because of that and the reluctance to accept a guitarist different from the iconic 'man in black', "Come Taste the Band" failed to transcend and faded away, undeservedly in my opinion, amidst fan disinterest. Discouraged, the band split up in mid-1976 and sadly, towards the end of the same year, Bolin died under the effects of an overdose of drugs and alcohol.

Deep Purple thus enters a long and uncertain hiatus, only interrupted in 1984 with the reunion of Mark II for "Perfect Strangers".

3.5 stars

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