PROTO-PROG

"Strange King of Woman" is the same story. This song will have a HUGE version on "Made In Japan". With a fantastic "call & response" between Ritchie & Ian. So close to the departure of the former. Blackmore was unbearable to Gillan and force to quit soon after their MIJ tour (which I witnessed in Brussels in March 73. I was 14.

And in December, I will see one of the first appearance of Mark III. Same place. But not as crowded than their previous show in March.

It was really overcrowded. Such a concert could NEVER take by now because of so many risks taken..

A similarity with "Black Night", is that the B-side (I'm Alone") is also a very good, powerful and energetic song.

A solid 4* for this excellent single.

4.0

A proposal that, although it no longer has the power and carefree nature of musicians with more than a decade of experience behind them, follows a balanced and well-balanced line, in which two of the singles that supported its release stand out: the intriguing and lascivious "Knocking At Your Back Door" with the tense introductory atmosphere that Lord creates with his Hammonds, and the thick and mysterious half-time of the orientalised "Perfect Strangers" and its nods to Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'; and the melancholic power ballad "Wasted Sunsets" with Blackmore's hurtful guitar solo and Gillan's best vocal performance on the album.

The rest of the songs, oriented towards an agile hard rock adapted to the demands of the convulsive and changing decade of the eighties, maintain a very good level, in which the sound base built from Glover's bass and Paice's spirited drums full of cymbals sustain the riffs and guitar solos that Blackmore intersperses with Lord's arresting keyboard playing on the lively "Under the Gun", "Nobody's Home", "Mean Streak" and "A Gypsy's Kiss".

Finally, "Hungry Daze", with its dancing riffs of Arabic airs and an experimental sci-fi interlude, provides the differentiating touch to an album as unexpected as it was celebrated, which reached fifth place in the UK and seventeenth in the US charts and revived Deep Purple's career.

P.S. The remastered 1999 version includes "Not Responsible" and Blackmore's very interesting and extended experimental jam "Son of Alerik" (B-side of the single 'Perfect Strangers'), which is well worth a listen.

3.5/4 stars

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

And this is where the other major source of confusion comes from as half the selected setlist is made up of songs that were not recorded by this lineup of the band. The hefty but unsuccessful trials of 'Smoke on the Water' (which is relatively acceptable here) and the really tasteless playthrough of 'Highway Star' prove why such recordings should not have been included on the live album. Below-par performances of other classic tracks recorded by the MKIII lineup grace the setlist, like 'Burn' and 'You Keep On Moving', while Bolin even gets to play a song off of one of his solo albums, completely irrelevant here. The only decent recordings seem to be the ones of 'Love Child' and 'Lady Luck', quite expectedly. Just a very poor and confusing live album, far off the excellence and liveliness of 'Made in Europe', for example, released some years prior; perhaps this project should have been abandoned by Deep Purple as it hardly serves them any favour in documenting them as a solid and exciting live force.

During the recording of this album Blackmore/Lord and Paice decided that Rod Evans was struggling with the heavier material and needed replacing. Nick Simper too was declared surplus to requirements and they were subsequently replaced by Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, thus giving birth to one of the greatest ever band in the history of rock. In fact Gillan and Glover were already on board before this album was officially released in the UK.

Rod Evans is often given a bit of a rough deal by fans and press alike presumably because of the so called Deep Purple scam of 1980. However, it is worth pointing out that he was a vital member of the legend that is Deep Purple and his part in the building of that legend should not be forgotten. The early success of Hush in US was due more to his 60's pop crooner delivery than the musical talents of Blackmore and Lord. Without that early success there is no guarantee that Blackmore/Lord/paice would have stuck at it through three commercially unsuccessful albums. It was unfortunate for Evans that whilst Blackmore Lord and Paice were waiting to embrace the heavier sound with open arms he was much more at home with the soon to be outdated sixties sound. It is somewhat ironic that his final Purple album was probably his best individual performance and that his next musical project "Captain Beyond" is still regarded by many as a prog classic. The same can be said of Simper and "Warhorse". With regard to the 80's scam looking back at it now it is difficult to see what the fuss was about. He was after all an original member of the band and there was no other Deep Purple around at the time. I am being purely mischevious here but you would think that a good lawyer would be able to argue that there is as much validity in a Deep Purple which features Rod Evans as the only original member as one which features only Ian Paice from the original line up. As if that would ever happen...

4.99

An album that maintains that explorer and psychedelic spirit sprinkled with traces of classical music of its predecessor "The Book of Taliesyn", in themes that include African percussive elements by the hand of Ian Paice in the tribal "Chasing Shadows", Jon Lord's warm harpsichord notes on the baroque "Blind", Rod Evans' Greg Lake-esque Crimsonian singing on the delicate cover of the Scottish Donovan "Lalena", and schizoid studio tricks using reverse tapes on the brief instrumental "Fault Line"; and also shows Ritchie Blackmore very involved in the composition with a rich display of riffs and distorted guitar solos interspersed with Lord's hammonds, especially in the funky "The Painter", in the bluesy "Why Didn't Rosemary? " (with an alternative thematic approach to Roman Polasky's creepy film "The Rosemary's Baby"), and in the thick, lingering cadence of the narcotized "The Bird Has Flown".

And if there is a song that could summarize the first stage of the band, that would be the mini-suite "April": the interest in experimental atmospheres in the medieval and beautiful introduction of church organs and acoustic guitars, Lord's persistent concern for incorporating classical components with the arrangement of violins in between, and the incipient hard rock still to take off that appeared in the final stretch of the long track.

Given the scarce commercial repercussion of the album and convinced that the band would not have much more future in the cloudy paths of psychedelia and sixties sonorities, Blackmore and Lord then incorporated Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, dispensing with Rod Evans and Nick Simper in the search of hardening their sound, more in accordance with the powerful style piloted by the overwhelming Led Zeppelin. Thus ended the appreciable formative stage of Deep Purple.

3.5/4 stars

On the other hand, "The Book of Taliesyn" also has an important experimental component taken from the psychedelic sixties aesthetics, in tracks like "Exposition", the hyperventilating instrumental intro of the interesting adaptation of the Beatles' classic "We Can Work It Out", in the intriguing "Shield" with Ian Paice incorporating percussive world music sounds, and ventures even further combining it with baroque renaissance elements so admired by Lord who explores with mellotrons, church organs and a violin arrangement in the relaxed "Anthem", and where the robust voice of Rod Evans hits with an Elvis-style imposition, surely the best and most progressive track of the album.

And the cover composed by Phil Spector, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich for Ike & Tina Turner, "River Deep, Mountain High", is the band's excuse to indulge in another experimental lysergic dalliance based on a tenebrous wind blowing and with some nods to The Doors, concluding an album that has few intersections with Deep Purple's seventies works, but is nonetheless extremely interesting.

3/3.5 stars

Rightfully proclaimed one of the first true heavy metal albums, In Rock is one heavy mother. Blackmore moves to the front of the mix, while Lord creeps further below (but still with a strong presence). Let us not forget Gillan's first (and one of his best) appearances. Another must get.

All in all, one of the greatest hard rock albums of all times. It is a landmark of rock 'n roll music. 5.0