JON LORD: REST,
IN ROCK (Guest review by Gary Pig Gold((http://www.eaglerockent.com/artist/8DB265/Deep+Purple)
"Just what the world needs: Another record company."
And with those typically snide words, on the Seventh day of
February, 1968, Bizarre Productions was duly incorporated, and two hundred
shares of no par value common stock issued in the State of New York, thereby
creating the first of several record companies Frank Zappa would oversee during
his most colorful life and career.
At this very same point in time, 3500 miles and one ocean to
the east, the world's biggest pop group launched their very own Apple Corps,
whose singles and albums were manufactured and distributed in North America by
that granddaddy of all (once-) indie labels, Capitol Records. Of course, as
they usually were, Capitol's resident Beach Boys were already over a year ahead
of the Fabs in creating their own personal Brother Records imprint, ostensibly
conducting business right out of that iconic Capitol Tower on the corner of
Hollywood and Vine (though, truth be told, most Brother board meetings were
held in Brian Wilson's swimming pool or, if the vibes so dictated, under a tent
in Brian's living room).
Stranger still, right there in the shadow of the Capitol
Tower, 1968 saw the formation of yet another custom record label – this one the brainchild of comedian Bill Cosby alongside
his manager Roy Silver, and most righteously christened with the ineffable
Hebrew name of God, Tetragrammaton. Not surprisingly then, one of its first
signings (besides Mr. Cosby of course) was Pat Boone and his strangely
countrified, recorded-in-a-single-day, produced-by-Zal-Yanovsky-even Departure album. Simultaneously, on the
far, far other side of the
socio-musical spectrum, Tetragrammaton also somehow found itself the American
distributor of none other than John and Yoko's fully-frontal Two Virgins album. Huh! How's THAT for
diversity in establishing a talent roster for an up-and-coming new label, even
by late-Sixties' standards?
Nevertheless, despite the presence
of one of the nation's biggest comedians, slickest Fifties teen idols, and a
naked Beatle to boot, Tetragrammaton is best remembered today as the label that
launched the career of Hertfordshire, England's very own Nick Simper, Rod
Evans, Ian Paice, Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord. More or less better known to
this very day as, yes, Deep Purple.
Now, to say that in 1968 Messrs.
Cosby and Silver had no real idea whatsoever how to handle their newly-signed band
of proto-metalheads would be quite the understatement: Rather than booking the lads into all
the most hep rock halls of the day, the quintet's inaugural tour of the U.S.
centered instead around appearances on television's Playboy After Dark (during which Ritchie Blackmore was seen giving
Hugh Hefner a guitar lesson) and The
Dating Game (wherein the late, extremely great Jon Lord came in third out
of three contestants and didn’t get
the girl. “I was pissed off I wasn't chosen; she was very beautiful," the
Purple patriarch could still be heard complaining a quarter century later).
Despite all of the above and more,
it is a testament then to the solid quality of Deep Purple's early music that
they not only survived, but actually placed a trio of singles into the American
charts during their two-year stint with Tetragrammaton. In the process, they
also produced three more-than-accomplished albums which, to my ears at least,
remain the best they have ever done.
Those albums, Shades of Deep Purple, The Book of Taliesyn, and the eponymous,
Hieronymus Bosch-wrapped Deep Purple
have now been made available again, complete with studio out-takes and BBC
Radio bonus tracks, from the fine folk over at Eagle Rock Entertainment.
Included therein, of course, are the band's initial Top Forty hits (wholly
machine-headed takes on Joe South's "Hush" and even Neil Diamond's
"Kentucky Woman"), a ten-minute-plus roll over Phil Spector's
"River Deep, Mountain High" – somehow via "Also Sprach
Zarathustra" – which I bet even Ike Turner would've approved of, plus two
Beatles and even a Donovan cover. You see, like all vintage-Sixties bands,
British in particular, Purple learned early the value of a carefully crafted
tune …regardless of who wrote or even
claimed the publishing royalties.
Of course this was the same band who, with a Seventies
shift in personnel or two, went on to produce some of that decade's heaviest
slabs of Marshall-powered r-a-w-k (e.g.: the utterly Ramone-tempo'd
"Highway Star" not to mention that riff that launched countless
pyromaniacs, "Smoke On The Water"). Evidence of such delightfully
moronic brilliance can indeed be heard as early as Shades' Jimi-fried "Mandrake Root," and especially the
first five-minutes-thirty of the Deep
Purple album. Conversely though, this was a band which also indulged its
tender moments as well – I'd like to see the Mk. 2012 Purple tackle any Donovan
songs! – and even spent an inordinate amount of Book of Taliesyn concocting fits of druid bombast even Spinal Tap
couldn't, or wouldn't touch. Jon Lord, speaking at the time to Woman's Own magazine, attempted to
explain this, um, approach by making allusions to astral association. Hmmm.
It can perhaps be seen in
retrospect that this very dichotomy between the fanciful and the Neanderthal
doomed this early incarnation of the band; in fact, shortly after the release
of Deep Purple in 1969 bassist Nick
Simper, along with vocalist (and budding Lux Interior) Rod Evans were fired for
flat-out refusing to head in heavier directions, man. At this same time
Tetragrammaton itself went belly up, taking with it all Purple profits they
could legally or otherwise lay their hands on. This freed Mr. Lord to indulge
for the moment each and every Derek Smalls fantasy imaginable on stage at the
Royal Albert Hall via his Concerto for
Group and Orchestra, while Ritchie Blackmore set about retooling a leaner,
meaner Deep Purple for the arena-rocking decade to come.
Most of you know the story from
there. But for the moment, let me direct you instead back to the glory daze
when our heroes were still hangin' with the Cos at Hef's mansion and wondering
why Rosemary never took the Pill; in that halcyon period of The Flower Pot Men
and Their Garden (one of Jon and Nick's pre-Purple combos, I kid you not) and
other such musical madmen who were never afraid to say and play anything and everything that crossed what remained of
their minds.
Accordingly these original three,
thankfully re-issued albums can now be heard again, in all of their deepest,
purplest glory.
But, when asked if he
will still be grabbing a piece of the action, Bill Cosby's only reply was
"….hush!"
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