In reference to some comments I made regarding my inability to like Deep Purple, even via their vaunted Greatest Hits album, Townsman General Slocum wrote:
Christ sake, Mod. What’s with you guys? Steve, well, he could have been too set in his ways by the time Purple came along, I don’t know. But Machine Head? What’s not great about that record? Meaty! Also, Rat Bat Blue, the Mule, Our Lady the whole Fireball record, really. In Rock is good, too … I’ve been a big fan since Machine Head came out. True, they were one of the bands Spinal Tap was busting on, with the main difference that they all had crazy prowess on their instruments, and didn’t have the zany lyrical sense of, say Uriah Heep. It’s funny that they were far bigger in the rest of the world than Zep, but Zep’s music fits so much better in 1973 rust-belt america. They are so solid, not that they’re in heavy rotation at my house all the time anymore, but it never occurred to me to bust on them. I went through a little Deep Purple phase again not too long ago, and found that they didn’t require the pinch of nostalgia between the cheek and gum that other bands need to sound fun. Please find the “funny” songs you refer to, Mod.
General, I was afraid I’d touch a nerve by admitting that I don’t find much to like in Deep Purple beside the unintentionally funny bits. If I could, I’d list details of what irks me about their music, but all I can think of is 3 or 4 song titles. “Hush” is great, like a lost Steppenwolf song. Their version of “Help” is pretty cool in the way only a rock nerd could love a song. Then I know “Smoke on the Water”, which sounds like Spinal Tap. “Highway Star”, which is too noodly for its rockin’ aspirations (and which also sounds like Spinal Tap). Then there’s another song or two I know fairly well when I hear it from Machine Head, but the title of which is not coming to mind. “Space Truckin'”! That’s the title. Come on, despite the cool riff, you don’t chuckle when you hear that song?
I admire the guitar playing of Ritchie Blackmore. I get a visceral reaction from his solos, and he’s got some good riffs to boot. Jon Lord‘s organ playing is always good, but the singer sounds like David St. Hutchins to me and that drummer–ugh–he’s all open hi-hats that just seem to fill up what little available space is left in their thick arrangements. I really don’t like that drummer. Ian Paice, right?
My problem with Deep Purple is that they’re stuck in some netherworld between song-based heavy rock, which Led Zeppelin excelled at playing, and the noodly, prog-rock showboating of ELP and second-generation prog-rock bands that would follow ELP and Deep Purple, most notably Boston and Kansas. I don’t know, General, I’ve seen some VH1 “making of” Machine Head 3 times in the past few months. I usually watch it all the way through because I’m a bit fascinated by the band’s mix of chops, noble aspirations, and dumb lyrics. They’re understandably excited to play back a dual organ-guitar solo on some song, but the music itself suggests more about the rock ‘n roll that would follow (eg, the second-generation prog bands) than the music that probably inspired Deep Purple.
Can you, General Slocum, or anyone in the Halls of Rock point me in the direction of a dozen Deep Purple tracks worth revisiting, without prejudice? I look forward to your suggestions.
Well, Mod, it doesn’t sound like you need convincing, here. You’ve heard them. You don’t like them. To me, their main weakness is lyrics, which really was not a concern when I was 9. As long as you stayed away from the totally obtrusive, hell, even Uriah Heep didn’t bother me then. Indeed “Demons and Wizards” sounded like a deep album title to my then mind, I don’t wonder. But Space Truckin’ doesn’t illicit any chuckles from me. It is far easier to blow through the fluff lyrics than to force myself to dis the rest of the song.
In fact, what dawns on me here is a more sobering problem than your dislike of one of my old-time fave bands. And that is your fundamental mis-apprehension of all that is funny about Spinal Tap. If Smoke On the Water really sounds like Spinal Tap to you – not just “as dismissable as Spinal Tap” but “sounds like Spinal Tap,” then you’ve got some issues, and I’ll just have to say, “Oh, I like all kinds of music…” and meander back to the open bar.
One issue with a band as pervasive and over the top as Deep Purple, you know, they’re the most Deep Purple you can get – is that before Spinal Tap, and before other bands that took them into more noodly, prog directions, this wasn’t a ‘done’ genre. It’s like hearing Mahler and Bruckner before the age of film noirs from Warner Brothers that milked that language while stripping it of it’s substance. You can’t hear those guys now without picturing Bogie tourniquetting his own arm with his tie before a shoot out.
Anyhow, I’m listening to a bunch of Purple as I’m writing, and it’s rocking just fine. I don’t know who it is you’re comparing Ian Gillan to, but the screechiness bugs me, if that’s what you mean. Mostly a live issue.
As for prog, ELP and whoever else. I love a lot of prog, though ELP never did it for me. But Purple, as John Lord demonstrates in that vid, were usually doing jam solos over very few, or more often one, chord. They have none of those worked-out through-composed meandery bits of the prog fellows. The prog bands, presumably at the urging of their keyboard players, were forever afraid of seeming stupid if a chord, key, beat, or time signature carried on for more than eight measures. DP’s longer songs always owe their length to a big solo that doesn’t even use the changes of the song. So prog seems a hearty miscategorization of them. Ian Paice, I hear what you mean, and it would drive me crazy in a band with him, the open hi-hat. But I love his playing in general. A lot of his busy stuff fits, and goes at least a tenth of the way towards a Keith Moon spirit, even if he’s otherwise too much.
Anyhow, I think I generally put a bit less faith in the Re-Listen With Open Ears method of finding value where you haven’t heard it on a hundred prior listens. But have at it, if you will, and check out Maybe I’m a Leo (Machine Head), No No No (Fireball), Lay Down Stay Down (Burn), Our Lady (Who Do We Think We Are.)
General, I loves ya. You know that. As much as I’m sorry that I’ve touched a nerve, I’m equally glad. It was a nerve that needed touching. Think about the reaffirmation of your deep, purple faith that I’ve helped provide.
What I’m most concerned about is my use of the term “prog” in describing how I hear them. I tried to stress that it was second-generation prog, the stuff of Boston, Kansas, et al, that I hear them inspiring. I know, I know, you can’t hold the messiah responsible for his flock, but I heard the big hits of Deep Purple as a kid, before Boston and Kansas hit my radar, and I didn’t like them then. I’m aware Deep Purple isn’t prog like a real prog band, but they seem to take their 1-chord vamping to a level more complicated than any blues-based bands from the late-60s, no?
I’ll check out the songs you suggest. I don’t dislike Gillian; I just don’t like him. Paice I really don’t like. Open hi-hats really annoy me; ask my man Sethro – and there’s not a drummer I love more than my man Sethro, but some day I’m going to weld his hi-hats so that they can’t open more than an eighth of an inch.
Mod, if you can’t get past the sinister “laugh” break in “Speed King,” there’s no way any of us could convince you of anything on the topic of The Purp. True believers recognize that to be one of the rockin’est moments in the band’s rollin’ history.
And lay off Ian Paice! That dude kicks mo-fo ASS.
Yours sincerely,
HVB
Who’s with me that Ian Paice is a buzz killer in Deep Purple? Is there a drummer in the house?
Funny that the general would suggest that my being set in my ways was keeping me from hearing Deep Purple. He sounds like my mother — “You’re like an old man, Steve, set in your ways,” she used to say. She used to call me Grandpa when I was like 5 or 6.
Anyway … I don’t know what to say, except to remind you that I don’t even really like Zeppelin, though I’ve developed a grudging respect for them. They at least have some blues in their music. Bands like Deep Purple just seem way too white for my taste. All rock and no roll, and classical pretensions in the guitar playing.
That kind of leather-lunged singing turns my stomach. I don’t know whether screeching “come OWN!” is worse than intoning lyrics about wizards, but I’ll pass on both.
Metal is just not my thing. I gave up on heaviosity when I was about 16.
“Bands like Deep Purple just seem way too white for my taste. All rock and no roll, and classical pretensions in the guitar
playing.”
Couldn’t agree with you more, BigSteve. There’s something downright reactionary to Deep Purple; they’re like the Charlie Daniels of England or something.
Dr. John, mad props for raising the anti-Purple stakes! Let’s hear it from Purple fans. What are we missing?
Mr. Steve confirms:
Funny that the general would suggest that my being set in my ways was keeping me from hearing Deep Purple. He sounds like my mother — “You’re like an old man, Steve, set in your ways,” she used to say. She used to call me Grandpa when I was like 5 or 6.
Metal is just not my thing. I gave up on heaviosity when I was about 16.
Can I at least get props for prescience. Not the Zep album, the mental acuity. However, if comparing DP to Charlie Daniels (does that make sense to any of you hatas?) constitutes “raising the anti-Purple stakes,” I shall just have to say I can’t hear you because my stoopid Deep Purple record is on too loud. I will have to accept that the song Lazy, while far too blues-based to be in my own canon, just doesn’t “roll” to you all, and sounds classical (?!?) We are, for all I can tell, speaking different languages. Feel free to continue your dislikes, and carry on as you were. Mr. Mod, you’ve got some healing to do.
Don’t you worry, Slokie, this all points to a profound healing moment! I will say that you have conducted yourself in a manner most fitting of a true fan of the Purple. Other so-called Purple fans have been surprisingly quiet. I’m going to have to give Sethro a call and ask him to log on so that he can share his opinions on Ian Paice. That’s really what most concerns me regarding this band. I like Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar playing enough that I recall thinking Rainbow was pretty good “for that kind of music.” Was that a cool opinion to have held?
I’m certainly not a big Deep Purple fan, but I certainly don’t have any dislike of them. Some of that long soloing is pretty unbearable, but everything on Deepest Purple is plenty cool enough for me. I don’t need anything really profound lyrically, and Deep Purple isn’t any dumber than any other quasi-metal band.
I think Ian Paice is pretty cool, too. Isn’t he the one constant in the band? I like his snare sound, and I like on Highway Star when he pulls out his hidden third hand and goes from the speed of sound on his snare to Warp Speed. They may not be the best at bringing The Power and Glory of Rock, but they definitely bring it.
I think one needs to kind of make up their mind just which of the heavy bands it is they’re going to like. They walk a real fine line between good and laughingly bad because that’s what that heavy genre is. Deep Purple is usually on the right side of that line for me.
Boy, general, you go from a declaration that the genre Deep Purple was working in was being constructed in the act of their musc making (nice Derridean deconstruction, there, or perhaps an allusion to Bourdieu’s Rules of Art) to a juvenile kiss-off in the space of two posts.
Well, if DP are a guilty pleasure (ie the dumbness doesn’t get in the way of your listening enjoyment), fine, but you have quite a bit of work arguing that DP are not not a kind of musical infantile
regression. And that is what Spinal Tap was really making fun of.
Also, general, remember that my knowledge of DP doesn’t really extend much beyond Smoke on the Water and My Woman from Tokyo (Hush and Kentucky Woman don’t count, right?). If I’ve ever heard more I’ve blocked it out. I wouldn’t have listened to their albums on principle at the time, and I would have changed the station if they came on the radio.
I will say that they have the perfect surnames for an English hard rock band — Blackmore, Paice, Lord, Gillan, and (smell the) Glover. Too bad about the two Ians, and ‘Ritchie’ is all wrong.
Tasty riffage! They rawk!
This from a college professor who thinks that infantile regression is part of what makes rock and roll great and who is spending today grading too many papers.
“My Woman from To-kay-o” – another Spinal Tap number! I forgot about “Kentucky Woman” – that’s another semi-winner, just because I like almost any song that swings back and forth on the I and IV chords as a primary hook.
You’re onto something with the surnames, BigSteve. This may be their hidden talent. I disagree with the “Ritchie,” though. The unnecessary t is spot on.
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I have an urgent question — work-related, believe it or not. Is there a drummer equivalent version of the guitarist-specific term “shred-meister”?
Let me hear your suggestions ASAP!
Thanks —
HVB
Sorry about my schizophrenic art-theory/loogy hocking responses. The former was a defense of the music. The latter was all I could come up with to answer the bizarre allegations of Charlie Danielsism. And this is what happens when one lone Townsman is expected to hold up a whole side of an issue. Who knew that of all the oddball crap I’ve ever championed, I would have such a lonely time sticking up for one of the biggest rock bands of all time. Even the Eagles had a little coterie of mobius-shaped-ashtray owners to vouch half-heartedly for them.
I will easily put myself in the town pillory as one who believes Deep Purple to be other than infantile. I have to argue to one charge that they are “classical” in the guitar playing by saying they do long noodly solos on blues-based changes, if any, and then I have to answer that their long solos are boring.
As for the genre-defining, I wasn’t saying so much that they invented a genre as that they *didn’t* invent prog.
You’ve all heard my bit. I now, with no rancor, infantilism, or subtergfuge, return to my Purple-liking ways. Anyone else is welcome to step up and defend, but I warn you. It is solitary, unrewarding work.
Hey, Slokie — I’m on Team Purple, for sure! For once, mwall has the reasons why *down*: mighty, mighty riffage, and balls-out rock power. Interesting how I would use the same definition for AC/DC, though it’s hard to imagine two bands more different, in many ways. Anyhow, point is: you can count on me, brother, whether you like it or not.
HVB
I’m surprised some indie hipster band hasn’t written a song called “Space Truckin’ Highway to Hell.”
Hey hrrundi, can you e-mail me off-blog? I’m invading your district next week and want to hook up with whomever is available
Somehow all of the terms for hott drumming sound like bad porno nicknames.
My suggestion is Vishnu, the Hindu deity who is often depicted as having multiples pairs of arms.
And isn’t the crazy drummer on the Muppets called Animal?
I’ve already admitted that my impressions of Deep Purple are not based on deep familiarity. My claim that they’re not bluesy is based partly on my memory of an interview with Blackmore from long ago and also on his current infatuation with Renaissance music. Wikipedia says: “In his soloing, Blackmore combines blues scales and phrases with minor scales and ideas from European classical music. His resulting style has been referred to as “neo-classical” and has been emulated by many modern heavy metal guitarists.” And it must be true, or else they couldn’t put it on the internet.
Why isn’t there a glossary entry for “healing moment”?
Good question, Saturnismine. Let me know if you want to write it up. I’m hoping to prepare a healing balm sometime later this afternoon.