Posted on by Nathan Beaudry

Episode #281 – Deep Purple – Now What ?! (Part 1)

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Postcards From The Edge . . . OF CONNECTICUT!

Deep Dive Podcast Network:

Check out our website to find other like-minded shows taking deep dives into individual songs, bands, and albums.

Lead up to the Album:

  • Bob Ezrin stated that Neil Warnock who managed Deep Purple’s booking had approached him about producing the album. He working with Pink Floyd and been a friend of Ezrin’ for a while. At first Ezrin didn’t want to do it because he was working with Alice Cooper and was afraid he was working with too many legacy acts.
  • Ezrin went to see them at Massey Hall in Toronto and was blown away by their improvisational jam. He agreed to do it but said he wasn’t interested in making a contemporary rock album and that they wouldn’t be getting radio play. But he was in if they were interested in making a musician’s album.
  • Ezrin described the band as lacking confidence so he made it his job to help them regain it.
  • Sunday, June 24, 2012. The band assembles in the rehearsal studio to begin work in Nashville.
  • Last day of rehearsals was July 5th.
  • July 7th they get together in Studio Room 2 which Roger describes as “huge but comfortable.”
  • On July 14th they got a call that Jon was not doing well.
  • On the morning of July 16th they got the call that Jon had passed away. Roger said that it was a very sad day. He said they all went into the studio but got very little accomplished. They took the following day off.
  • “Yesterday, I told Bob about an obscure Elvis Costello song called The Hoover Factory that I hadn’t heard since the 70s. So Bob texts Elvis, who immediately emails a version of the song back.  This is typical Bob; instant solutions! “
  • In Late July Roger and Ian go to his home in Portugal to finish up working on lyrics and writing.
  • “RZA changes my iPhone ringtone to Jon’s solo in Ramshackle Man.   Corky mixes the latest versions of several of the songs for IG and I to work on in Portugal.”
  • July 25th:
  • Roger: “Bob suggests a meal and I accompany him to a restaurant called Sambucca, a jazz place.  The air conditioning is a bit much and I am only in a tee shirt, so Bob calls Don, who is soon about to join us, and tells him to bring a jacket for me – another example of Bob solving problems immediately.  The food is good and the band – piano, bass, drums, guitar and trumpet – is very good.  Bob introduces himself and suggests that Don from Deep Purple get up for a jam.  It is a wonderful moment to see these jazzers drop their jaws and bury their misconceptions as Don effortlessly breezes though several standards.  In fact, he is brilliant, I am proud of him.  Bob is as impressed as the band.  Bob picks up the check and it has a 40% musicians’ discount!  Afterwards, we go to see 45RPM, a band featuring some of the finest country musicians in Tennessee. They are superb.  I sit there in a dream as this soothing, beautifully played music envelops me like a warm bath.”


Core Band:

Additional Musicians:

  • Musician [Additional], Backing Vocals, Percussion – Bob Ezrin

Technical:

Album Art & Booklet Review

Recorded at: The Tracking Room, Nashville, TN, USA,

Anarchy Studios, Nashville, TN, USA,

Additional Keyboards recorded at Rainbow Recorders,

Mixed at Anarchy Studios, Nashville, TN, USA,

Mastered at Sterling Sound, New York, NY, USA.

Thanks to: Max Vaccaro, Michael Hedges, Kat Rallis, Sally Day, Jenny DiMauro and Kim Markovchick.

Roger Glover thanks: Vigier Excess RG Custom and Fender Precision bass guitars, TC Electronic Blacksmith amplification & effects, EBS pedals.

Ian Paice thanks: Pearl drums, Paiste cymbals, Remo drumheads, ProMark sticks, Protection Racket softcases, Hardcase hardcases, May mic system, AKG mics, Beyer Dynamic mics & headphones, HK Stage Monitors.

Steve Morse thanks: Ernie Ball, Musicman, Engl. Dimarzio, TC Electronic, Presonus.

Don Airey thanks: Keith Watson at Soundcraft, John Haburay at The Hammond Store, Clive Botterill at Hammond Services, Mike Swains at MLS Electronics, Hughes & Kettner.

This album is dedicated to Jon Lord.

Souls, having touched, are forever entwined.

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Album Tracks:

All songs written by Don Airey, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Steve Morse, Ian Paice, and Bob Ezrin.

  1. A Simple Song
    • Working title was “Glover’s Fifth”
    • Gillan’s notes: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-77.html
      • Breathe in, breathe out; that’s all there is to it really. Oh, now I can walk; left, right, left, right. Look up, down, straight ahead and occasionally behind (just in case). Now, do I go left, right or straight ahead? Follow the crowd or take the scenic route? Conform or rebel?
      • It was all so easy to start with.
    • Steve Morse said the original idea was on the bass brought in by Roger.  He said they tried it a bunch of different ways and that Bob and Roger really liked the melody line he brought in.
  2. Weirdistan
    • Keyboards [Additional Keyboards] – David Hamilton (2)
    • https://hamiltonmusic.net/
    • Keyboardist, composer, arranger based in Nashville.
    • Worked with Shania Twain, John Legend, Josh Groban
    • Worked on this one with Bob Ezrin who helped them come up with a new melody.
    • Gillan’s notes: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-86.html
      • It’s not a country – it’s a state of mind, or rather – many states of mind. Each trying to reach out to the others but held back by convention, taboo and suspicion of the unknown.
      • Then driven forward again by the lust for life.
    • Steve Morse said he liked any Eastern influence mixed with rock music.  He said he didn’t know the phaser sound was going to be in it until he heard the mix but that he loved it.
  3. Out of Hand
    • Working title was “Pint of Heavy”
    • Gillan’s notes: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-81.html
      • A friend wrote to me…’Ian, is this song about the music business?’
      • I replied…’Oh dear, you mustn’t think that…’
      • Of course that’s the problem with being enigmatic, everything is open to interpretation.
      • It seems obvious to me that Francesco del Giocondo’s wife had haemorrhoids when sitting for Leonardo da Vinci and that Eric Cantona’s famous quip – “When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.” – was rhetoric at its finest. The media has never been insulted so cleverly – most journalists publicly chose not to understand it – Ha!
    • Morse says this was inspired by English rockers like Page and Blackmore.
  4. Hell to Pay
    • Roger says in his diary that they tried multiple different tuned down version but end up going back to the original key.
    • Gillan’s thoughts and lyrics: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-84.html
      • Eddie was an armchair revolutionary; always whipping us into a frenzy of anti-establishment activity. When I say activity it was really just animated talk, fuelled by alcohol and the need to impress our fellow revolutionaries. Eddie was ‘All talk and no trousers’. At the first sign of trouble he’d be under the table or out the door like the proverbial rat up a drainpipe. But he had a Che Guevara T-shirt, a wispy moustache and a flinty stare that gave him a manic edge over his impressionable coterie. His hair was never right though, I think his ‘two-tone’ soubriquet came from the comb-over; his pale skull showed through in stripes beneath his greasy barnet (Barnet Fair = Hair; rhyming slang) as the evenings wore on.
    • Morse said: “The choices that the core members made in terms of what sounds too weird, or what works, were very well done. I really like the way I play with Don on this one.”
  5. Body Line
    • Percussion – Eric Darken
    • https://www.ericdarken.com/
    • Worked with Amy Grant, Michael Sweet, Barry Maniolow, and many others.
    • Working title was “The Bubble.”
    • Roger said there was a “slight disagreement” about the main riff but does not elaborate.
    • Gillan’s thoughts and lyrics: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-82.html
      1. When I was a kid we played a game of silhouettes; basically you had to empty your pockets of string, marbles, keys, candles, coins, book matches etc (don’t look at me like that) and throw the contents on a sheet of paper, then draw around the edges of the items creating a single line perimeter inside which you had to use your imagination to create a picture.
      • Roald Dahl’s TV series Tales of the Unexpected had the silhouette of a naked woman dancing in the flames. Well, she seemed to be naked but she may have been wearing modesty items of the sheerest gossamer or possibly a rubber leotard; both of them a risky bet so close to the flames.
      • So, this is an erotic three-dimensional game of silhouettes. Feel free to let your imagination take the reins but don’t get too close to the fire; you’ll lose all perspective.
  6. Above and Beyond
    • Keyboards [Additional Keyboards] – David Hamilton (2)
    • Working title is “Over and Overture” and is referred to as “Steve’s” by Roger Glover. Roger said Ian was confused by it at first and then he loved it.
    • Gillan’s thoughts and lyrics: https://www.gillan.com/wordography-76.html
      • It was during the writing of this song that Ian Paice brought us the news of Jon Lord’s death. Jon was the nearest thing we ever had to a leader and – along with Ritchie and Ian – was the founder of Deep Purple in 1968. Roger and I were the new boys (we joined in ’69). But the house is still standing and here we were in Nashville with Steve and Don, in the summer of 2012. After a period of quiet reflection we shared some old familiar anecdotes about Jon and before long his spirit filled the room. I scribbled the line ‘Souls, having touched, are forever entwined.’ And then he sang these words to us all.

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