The improbable existence of this book of scholarly essays on Deep Purple fer fuck's sake made me re-contemplate this band's deep uncompellingness.... how they run a distant third to Led Zep and Sabbath....
And then to wonder what other examples of this clustering and ranking could be found across music history...
The obvious one is Beatles and Stones with The Who trailing some distance in achievement / charisma
In baggy, The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays out front... with The Charlatans far behind (and funnily enough their big hit "The Only One I Know" owes more than a little to DeePurp's "Hush")
(although the Inspiral Carpets could also be a contender for Distant Third)
Britpop is slightly different as there's a Top 3 - Oasis Blur Pulp - with Elastica trailing at fourth (but I prefer them to Oasis and Blur)
Does it work with IDM? Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, and (for me at least) Autechre trailing in third.
For a true parallel with the Led Zep / Sabbath / Deep Purple relationship, there would need to be a sense of redundancy - that there is no function for the #3 band, since whatever it is they are bringing to the table, it's done better in one or others of its facets by the top two preeminent bands.
In other scenarios, the ranking is based less on this idea of overlap-induced redundancy and more about a level of quality and consummate achievement. e.g.
Manchester postpunk - The Fall and Joy Division, with A Certain Ratio coming in third (as a largely unrealised proposition, based on the recordings at least....
Postcard - Orange Juice and Josef K, with Aztec Camera far behind
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There must be "Deep Purples" of funk, of reggae...
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Of course fandom and taste being quirky, you can find yourself perversely more taken with or invested in the bands that are objectively much further down the rankings.... John's Children and The Eyes mean more to me than The Who ever will... Budgie, with just two songs ("Whisky River" and "Hot as Docker's Armpit"), have given me more pleasure than Deep Purple
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Rainbow - as once discussed here I vaguely recall - are a whole other order of inessentialness - no sense of a vacuum being filled, a need supplied
Very much a case of "if they had not existed, it would not have been necessary to invent them"
That said I vaguely recall someone here asserting value and interest for the first two Rainbow albums
And someone else piping up in favor of "Since You've Been Gone"
The origins of the metal magazine name? Barton-birthed in the headline for a Ritchie Blackmore cover story....
More onomatopoeia inside
What a right puddin' he looks
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The Deep Purple delta of undistinguishedness - Rainbow, Ian Gillan, Whitesnake
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I used to have a Deep Purple box set (sent unsolicited by a big record company in those days of major label largesse). And one thing of mild interest gleaned from the sleeve note essay was that Deep Purple were a singles band, unlike Sabbath and Led Zep (who never released a single, right?). Consequently they had a large number of hit singles and appearances on Top of the Pops. And their stuff is quite catchy and also quite groovy - metal as dance music.
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It was the scholarly tome that made me think of the mysterious nullity of Deep Purple (one of those names that you saw scrawled on desks a lot, growing up in the 1970s.... and one of the names that first puzzled me as rock-innocent child... another was Bread... I used to be transfixed by the cover of a Bread album which was in one of those spinners full of LPs in an electrical goods shop on Berkhamsted high street... )
But something else swam into my ken recently that was Deep Purple related... one of the YouTube programs I've been slamming into my veins to keep me sedated through the last crazy weeks...
I don't know why it's Ritchie Blackmore Presenting this on his YouTube channel - since he's not in it, it's Jon Lord repping for DeepPurp.... but what a pleasant laidback sort of conversation on some long ago cable TV rock chatshow .... love the mustachioed ultra-chill presenter... Speakeasy, wot a title!
Ritchie Blackmore is considered one of the Great Guitarists, isn't he? He's included in this book Big Noises by the late Geoff Nicholson, a very entertaining collection of short essays on loud, flashy guitarists
I just can't hear it.
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As mentioned in the comments, Deep Purple have a higher stature in Japan
Many regional music scenes (by genre, at least) can be said to have that "Big Three with a clear bronze medalist" thing:
ReplyDeleteMinneapolis: Husker Du/Replacements...Soul Asylum
Seattle: Nirvana/Pearl Jam...Soundgarden
Detroit: Juan Atkins/Derrick May...Kevin Saunderson
Good point - and particularly the case with Minneapolis, where Soul Asylum run a very distant third.
DeleteAnother one would be postpunk era Liverpool - Echo and Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes, with Wah! in distant third.
Detroit, I agree - although personally I think Kevin Saunderson has more bangers to his name than Juan Atkins.
Seattle I think you are right there in terms of general perception although I personally rate Alice in Chains as second only to Nirvana
Leeds during postpunk... Gang of Four, Mekons, Delta 5 (although I'm personally fonder of those first three D5 singles)
As well as cities, it's probably similar with certain record labels (well I had Postcard already)
DeleteThose are great examples, especially Detroit. Trying to fit Saunderson into the same bracket as Atkins and May always felt like a massive stretch.
DeleteAnother triplet, this time for UK Punk: Pistols/Clash... Damned
What would it be for classic dub? King Tubby/Lee Perry... Augustus Pablo
For funk? James Brown / P-Funk... the Ohio Players
I've always thought it was kind of impressive the way Pete Wylie had the biggest hit of the 80s Liverpool scene - The Story Of The Blues (no.3) - a few places higher than either the Teardrop Explodes or The Bunnymen managed.
DeleteThe paradox is that the song is an anthem for those with only their sense of defeated pride to cling to - a clarion call to underachievers.
I was a big Deep Purple fan as a teenager, but I can't find it in me to take issue with your assessment. Or with Lester Bangs, who famously despised Deep Purple. I think there's a piece on them in 'Psychotic Reactions..'
ReplyDeleteTheir last two 70s albums, 'Stormbringer' and 'Come Taste the Band', where they started getting interested in soul and funk, hold up the best today, I think. They were hated by the fans at the time, of course.
Their one true shot at greatness, though, is 'Child in Time', which is their equivalent of 'War Pigs': hard rock band's attempt to grapple with the era of Vietnam. It doesn't reach the same heights, or plumb the same depths, maybe, but it conjures a uniquely eerie mood for over 10 minutes. Ian Gillan's voice is never the most lovely instrument, but it is awe-inspiringly unearthly here. And even the dreaded Ritchie Blackmore manages to wring some modest amount of soul out of his guitar.
If you have ever seen its use in 'One Day in September', Kevin McDonald's brilliant documentary about the terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics, you will never forget it.
I will give it a go. I suppose the other example of Rock Classic to their name is "Smoke On the Water". The story behind the song I always found somewhat bathetic, though.
DeleteDeep Purple's full catalog, outside of Machine Head and Made in Japan, seemed to live in the cut-out bins of the record shops of my youth (mid-70's.) I much more recently saw someone in print surmising that a certain track on the In Rock album "predicted" Young Gods. I don't recall the track but I've always meant to look into this and for whatever reason never have.
DeleteCould be ‘Into the Fire’. That’s a very Young Gods title, certainly
DeleteAs is "Child in Time", title -wise. "Into the Fire" feels a bit too bloozy for Young Gods. The first few seconds of "Flight of the Rat" are very much in YG territory, though I wouldn't necessarily have made that connection.
DeleteApparently in Germany Deep Purple are considered the No.1 band with Led Zep and the Sabs in a distant joint second. Seems to make sense when you consider German metal, such as The Scorpions.
DeleteAnother great (late) DP song is Perfect Strangers - very sleek and modern sounding,.
Wasn’t ‘Smoke On The Water’ a rip off of ‘Loose’ by The Stooges? Exact riff.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the charts, the Charlatans achieved their biggest successes from 1995 to 1997, when they were considered Britpop, not baggy. That's a big reason why I believe Inspiral Carpets should get the baggy bronze.
ReplyDeleteJust remembered Sam Phillips' Million Dollar Quartet of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. The King, the Killer, the Man in Black, and Carl Perkins.
I suspect fans of second-wave hair metal would rank the bands in the order of GnR, Motley Crue, and any band that wasn't Bon Jovi.
2-Tone - The Specials, Madness, and, er, The Beat? The Selecter? Buster Bloodvessel?
the Charlatans were definitely part of the baggy Madchester moment... their inexplicable persistence and continued popularity is another matter really
Deletei think the cluster/ranking thing is different with 2-Tone because Specials Madness Beat are almost equally great and impactful on the culture. I suppose Specials are ahead cos of Political Epochal Synchronization ("Ghost Town" coming out just when the inner city riots break out - "people gettin' angry" indeed). So in that case it's like 3 nearly-first-equals and then trailing distant fourth, the Selecter, who only really had one fab tune "On My Radio". Then Bad Manners... Bodysnatchers and that's about it.
Hair metal is quite a tight scrum there i think cos you have Poison, you have Def Leppard, Warrant, etc.
I don't think the cultural footprint of The Beat is anywhere near as big as those of The Specials and Madness. Do people still play them on pub jukeboxes? Would Uncut do a feature on them, let alone put them on the cover? This is, of course, not to disparage them in terms on quality, but just to say that, to many people, their only acquaintance with The Beat is as a third entry in the 2-Tone section of a pop-culture documentary.
DeleteI wouldn't put Def Leppard in the category I named, that of second-wave hair metal (likewise, no Van Halen). I think there's an argument for my suggestion, but we'd need to ask aficionados of the genre.
Apparently there is at least one person who rates Deep Purple highest! https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cre12n72nwno?xtor=AL-71-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_format=link&at_campaign_type=owned&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_origin=BBCWorld&at_link_id=F16B344C-3586-11F1-B243-FB2B8148F42A&at_link_type=web_link&at_medium=social
ReplyDeleteThe Charlatans - the cheap vanilla ice cream of indie.
ReplyDeleteTellin' Stories is a genuine 9/10 album, tho.
DeleteOkay I concede "Child in Time" is quite atmospheric. I wish it didn't take off energetically though....
ReplyDeleteThe keyboards thing in Deep Purple is what makes them seem like such a Sixties band...
An organ prominent in the sound is a defining hallmark of psych. Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (and then Atomic Rooster), Brian Auger and the Trinity... The Soft Machine and all that followed.... Steppenwolf.... Zombies, Procol Harum...
Often the keybs are spooky and atmospheric, conjure a feeling of olden times or churchiness
Other times the organ sound is distorted... smoky and rhythmically driving
Glad you (kind of) liked it!
DeleteThe other great organ-based group is ELP. Another big Seventies band that somehow seems more like a Sixties band. Perhaps because they sound most of all like just an extension of the Nice.
There is also Mountain, of Weekend World theme fame.
And then you get that curious phenomenon of keyboard-led bands switching from organ to synth, and instead of being late for the Sixties becoming early for the Eighties. Suicide the classic example. Trevor Horn with Yes. Many such cases.
Not to mention the Stranglers…
/\ That's bait, that is.
DeleteELP as an organ group? Emerson and Palmer played as many instruments as they could. Yes, an organ group, but also a moog group, a piano group, a timpani group, a bell group and a cowbell group. Greg Lake got a Persian carpet just to have something on stage to compete.
DeleteELP are my guiltiest pleasure, but John Peel was right in declaring them "a waste of time, talent and electricity".
I always thought of Black Sabbath as the band who gave birth to everything I like about metal, and Deep Purple as the ones who started everything everyone hates about metal (except metalheads, of course). I could say the same thing about Led Zeppelin, but they have so many good songs and albums I forget about the shrieking, the infinetely long soloing, the Tolkien inspired inaginery, and their attitude. I feel the same way about the Thrash Metal Trinity, with Slayer following Sabbaths footsteps, Metallica going down the Rock Gods path opened by Zeppelin, and, well, you could do without Megadeth, just like with Purple (although actually the only band I really like from that first wave of Thrash is Anthrax).
ReplyDelete