Trivia / Deep Purple

• Approval of God: John Lennon himself went on record as preferring their cover of "Help" to the original.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Anyone's Daughter", while not exactly a hit, was nonetheless disavowed by the band as a stupid, immature novelty song.
• Breakup Breakout: Funnily enough, for such an influential band, this applies a lot.
  • Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, and Coverdale's Whitesnake are obvious examples, being at least as well-known as Purple.
  • Roger Glover, despite not being a household name carved out an impressive career post-Purple - creating an acclaimed rock opera, as well as producing for bands such as Status Quo, Nazareth, Whitesnake, Elf and most famously, played a huge role in shaping metal history by producing Judas Priest's seminal Sin After Sin.
• Creator Backlash: Ritchie Blackmore disliked "When a Blind Man Cries".
  • Blackmore was also displeased with how Fireball turned out, claiming that the album was rushed out too early. Gillan, however, claims it's one of his favorites.
  • Ritchie Blackmore also disliked the majority of Stormbringer. In particular, he despised Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale's gradual shift toward a more Funk Rock influenced style, which he infamously called "shoeshine music".
  • Most of the band don't have favorable views on The House of Blue Light.
  • Subverted with Come Taste the Band, which most members say is a very good album, just not a Deep Purple album.
  • The band has disowned Slaves and Masters which is widely considered to be the worst album they've ever made.
  • Likewise, most of the band have also distanced themselves from its follow-up The Battle Rages On.... This was in large part due to the the state of the band at the time. Ian Gillan was practically forced back in against Blackmore's wishes after the lukewarm reception that his replacement Joe Lynn Turner had received. Though they did manage to finish the album, nobody was very happy with the end product. In fact, it was the final straw for Blackmore, who derisively called it "The Cattle Grazes On" before abruptly leaving during the album's tour.
  • Everybody disliked the 1993 live album Come Hell or High Water, which was recorded during the tour for The Battle Rages On.... By this point, Blackmore's behavior had become beyond toxic, and he left the band forever less than a month after the album's recording. Not did Ritchie phone in his playing, not even bothering to play half of Highway Star, but he also pulled stunts such as throwing drinks at cameramen, refusing to leave his dressing room and abruptly leaving without saying a word at the end of the show. The situation was so bad that Ian Gillan demanded that two full concerts worth of material be removed from circulation a full decade afterwards.
• Chart Displacement: Their three top 40 hits in the US are "Smoke in the Water", "Hush" (both of which peaked at #4)... and the very lesser known "Kentucky Woman" which just peeked in at #38.
• Creator Breakdown: See Meaningful Name in the main section. Besides that, Mark IV, where Tommy Bolin's drug problems finally made the band's life unbearable enough for Lord and Paice (the two remaining original members at that point) to discuss his dismissal with David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes. When Hughes made it known he'd leave with Bolin, Lord and Paice privately made plans to disband the group following that tour, rather than look for both a new guitarist and bassist.
  • Bolin's drug issues reached their nadir in the Tokyo Concert that was recorded for Last Concert in Japan. Depending on who you ask, Bolin had either accidentally injected heroin directly into a nerve in his left arm, or had passed out after shooting up and spent several hours laying awkwardly on his arm, pinching off a nerve. When they hit the stage that evening, he literally couldn't feel his left hand, which severely affected his playing. Jon Lord had to play all of the main song riffs on his keyboard.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The famously contentious Deep Purple members often gave one another disparaging nicknames. Notably, Ritchie Blackmore is "Ricardo" according to David Coverdale, Coverdale himself was called "Dorothy" by his Deep Purple bandmates, and singer Joe Lynn Turner was "Jolene" to Ritchie Blackmore.
• He Also Did: "Anyone's Daughter" from Fireball is an amusing country & western song, vaguely in the style of Bob Dylan (e.g. "Motorpsycho Nitemare" from Another Side of Bob Dylan.)
• Money, Dear Boy: Blackmore has openly stated that the only reason Mark II got back together for Perfect Strangers was the big pile of money they were offered. When asked in an interview in 1993 why he'd returned to the band only a few years after previously leaving it, Ian Gillan answered that his agent had threatened to quit if he didn't accept the invite.
• Limey Goes to Hollywood: From about 1973-6 the band was living in Los Angles (which indirectly led to the audition of Tommy Bolin)
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Don Airey is a downplayed example. He reportedly saw the band at one point when he was young and was so impressed, he decided to become a rock keyboardist. He's now a longterm member.
  • One with a shorter payoff for Ian Gillan, who's stated he was a fan before being invited.
• Reclusive Artist: Rod Evans. After leaving Deep Purple, he had a short stint with the band Captain Beyond before retiring from music and becoming a doctor. In 1980, he was convinced to participate in a "reunion" of the band with a group of unknown musicians that flopped when his former bandmates took notice and filed a lawsuit. After the debacle, Evans returned to his medical practice and has since dropped all contact with the media or his former bandmates, to the point where he didn't even show up when Deep Purple was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.
• Release Date Change: Whoosh!'s official release was pushed back about two months by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Troubled Production:
  • "Smoke on the Water" recounts some of the more memorable constraints (limited time on The Rolling Stones' mobile studio) and incidents (the band's hotel burning down) that occurred while recording Machine Head.
  • The band's next album, Who Do We Think We Are, was even more troubled. There were no technical problems, but the band was literally sick and tired by this point. Literally, in that they'd been touring and recording for several years nonstop; they were all terribly burned out and several members' health had suffered as a result (Ian Gillan said years later that the band's management should really have made them all take three months off, but was worried they couldn't finish the next album by the contractually obligated deadline). That sick and tired, inevitably, spilled over into being sick and tired of each other, and they stopped talking. Studio time had to be carefully budgeted and planned so that members could record their parts without accidentally running into each other. While the ensuing album yielded one of their classics, "Woman from Tokyo," Gillan left after it was finished and that lineup of the band would not record and tour together again for a decade.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Joe Satriani was asked to fill in for Ritchie Blackmore after he left the band for good in the middle of a tour. The band asked him to formally join, but contractual obligations prevented him from doing so.
  • This period is also the the subject of some slight Creator Backlash, having been the only iteration of Deep Purple to never release a live album. When Ian Gillan was asked why years later, he praised Satriani but said the other members (including himself) were uncertain at the time if they had a future post-Blackmore, were in a very dark place emotionally, and had no desire years later to revisit what they considered the low point of their collective careers to prepare a live album.
  • Tommy Bolin and Glenn Hughes had plans to make an album together. There wasn't much work done on it (Tommy died a few months after the initial jams), and the only song that exists from the collaboration is "Sugar Shack" from "The Definitive Teaser."
  • Paul Rodgers from the band Free was considered for Ian Gillan's replacement in 1973, though that didn't end up happening.
  • There were rumors going around for a while that Ritchie Blackmore was considering joining forces with Phil Lynott and Ian Paice to form some sort of power trio due to his dissatisfaction with the direction Deep Purple was going in early 1973, though Paice ended up talking him out of it and they simply stayed with Deep Purple and fired Roger Glover.
  • They were due to appear at Live Aid from Switzerland via satellite, but pulled out after guitarist Ritchie Blackmore refused to take part.

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