Awesome Music / Deep Purple

• Even before Gillan and Glover got involved, the Mk.I lineup with Rod Evans and Nick Simper was quite formidable, with their groovy, hard-prog cover tunes earning them the title of "England's answer to Vanilla Fudge".
  • Joe South's "Hush" off the first album, Shades of.., is the Mk.I cornerstone that shows Evans' deep voice in full flight. Adding Gillan would only make it more screechingly awesome. It helps that the album's appended with some awesome jams in "Mandrake Root" and opener "And the Address".
  • Even as a Sophomore Slump, you gotta give credit to The Book of Taliesyn, opening with the crazier grooves of "Listen, Learn, Read On" and "Wring That Neck", with heavy baroque guitar/organ interplay.
  • The self-titled third album is often regarded as their "lost masterpiece", even being rated #3 on DigitalDreamDoor's "100 Greatest Underrated Albums" list. "Chasing Shadows" is a roaring opener with Evans belting surreal lyrics over the band's most paranoid rhythms yet. Searing rockers like "Bird Has Flown" and "The Painter" coexist beautifully with the tender cover of Donovan's "Lalena" and the 12-minute orchestral epic "April".
• "Child in Time" starts out like a quiet ballad with a sad and gentle vocal, which gradually starts to sound a little...ominous. Then after a couple of verses, Gillan begins wordlessly crooning ("Ooooo oooo oooo, oooo oooo oooo...") and it becomes definitely ominous. Then he cycles around again, but higher^note starting on the fifth rather than the minor third, theory fans, and the band starts to get louder, and it's positively unnerving. Then he cycles around again, this time on the octave, screaming wordllessly at the top of his range, and the band is churning away behind him, and it goes into Oh, Crap! territory. Then it goes into a pounding, vocal-less boléro section that sounds like somebody being kicked repeatedly, before galloping off into furious solos which end with frantic unison riffage from the whole band. And then, it starts all over again.
• "Smoke on the Water": the infamous tale of the Frank Zappa show that left the Montreux Casino in cinders. With one of the most famous guitar riffs of all time, you'd never think it was the hastily-written, commercially unviable Black Sheep Hit the band thought it was.
  • The song became a staple of both non-Gillan Purple and solo-Gillan, with Ian even having Black Sabbath play it while touring for the infamous Born Again album.
  • It has also raised a significant quandary in a rock listener's life: "Do I want to hear it played by a thousand musicians, or by an All-Star Cast rockin' out for charity?"^note  Along with Ritchie and Ian Gillan, we have: Bruce Dickinson, Paul Rodgers, Bryan Adams, Brian May, Roger Taylor, Chris Squire, Geoff Downes, Keith Emerson, David Gilmour, Tony Iommi, and Alex Lifeson.
• Space Truckin' truly demonstrates Ian Gillan to be a human banshee, screaming his lungs out over the ending. It has not only the usual guitar solo but also a pounding drum solo. Amusingly, Ritchie was inspired to compose the riff by the 60's Batman theme.
• "Perfect Strangers" from the album of the same name is a spectacular example of 80s Purple which is still a staple of Purple concerts these days, featuring odd time signatures, great guitar riffs, and above all some truly standout lyrics even for Ian Gillan. More recent versions prove in both the guitar line, which has actually been embellished a bit from the album version, and the opening keyboard wails that the band is in good hands with Steve Morse and Don Airey.
  "And if you hear me talking on the wind
  You've got to understand
  We must remain
  Perfect Strangers..."
• Infinite was named the best Rock 'n Roll Album of 2017, and songs like The Surprising will show clearly why that title was well-deserved. The mid-song piano solo in particular is beautiful and serene.
• From live concerts, The Well-Dressed Guitar is a chance for Steve, and indeed for the whole band, to shine.
• Above and Beyond off Now What?! is a beautiful, meditative song, and another example of the band's fine lyrics. Making this a combined Heartwarming Moment and a Tear Jerker? This song was written for Jon Lord after he'd passed on.
  ...tomorrow you'll find
  Your souls had been touched
  Are forever entwined...
• The sheer level of angst present in Fools off Fireball is worth a mention here, as well as the haunting opening chords.
• "Highway Star" from Machine Head (Album) sounds like a perfect song for a Mad Max inspired chase.
• "Bananas", the title track to the album of the same name, is absolutely awesome both from a listening perspective and from a music theory perspective—they're playing in alternating 7:4 and 5:4 time and making it look easy. The wild energy on this song makes it an earworm as well.
• "Man Alive" from Whoosh is absolutely kickass, with a relentlessly menacing feel and gorgeous instrumentation.
• Off of Deep Purple in Rock, there's "Speed King", engineered as a love letter to the rockabilly craze of The '50s. Even with almost all of its lyrics being lifted from '50s rock songs, it manages to be hard-hitting with its pervasive guitar riffs and mid-song synth.

• From the generally neglected 1974 Live in London, the intro to "You Fool No One/The Mule" begins with Jon Lord doing an elaborate quasi-classical Hammond organ solo that gets so hectic, it dissolves into a wash of sheer noise (Lord sending his organ through a ring modulator), and then becomes a nightmarish swirl of raw sound before calming down and turning into the chorale melody from Bach's cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben—which then pauses, modulates into a new chord in a different key, and holds it there for a minute—and then Ian Paice comes in with a furiously galloping, cowbell-enhanced drum part, which continues for a moment—and then an ominous click signifies that Blackmore has turned on his distortion pedal, and then he comes in with the Epic Riff of "You Fool No One". After that intro, the rest of the medley is a bit of an anticlimax.

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