Posted on by Nathan Beaudry

Episode #299 – Deep Purple – inFinite (Part 2)

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Album Tracks:

  1. The Surprising
    • Deep Purple “inFinite” Track By Track – “The Surprising”
    • Deep Purple “The Surprising” Official Music Video
    • Roger:
      • Steve started played this pretty chord sequence, and it sounded great. We all joined in a we jammed around it. I gave it the working title of “The Surprising Mr Morse” because it was a surprising thing he played.
      • They’re Ian Gillan’s words, and I suppose it’s about temptation, but they’re ambiguous, and I like ambiguous words. People can read want they want into it. People will anyway, even when you spell it out. Smoke On The Water is completely literal, and yet a DJ once asked me if we really set fire to an island. You can’t stop people putting their own meaning to a lyric.
  2. Johnny’s Band
    • Deep Purple “inFinite” Track By Track – “Johnny’s Band”
    • Deep Purple “Johnny’s Band” Official Music Video from the album “inFinite”
    • Roger:
      • Johnny’s Band was almost a pop song. Steve came up with the idea, and not all the band liked it at first: Ian Paice thought it was a bit flippant, but Ian Gillan loved it, and eventually we decided to do it. We knew what the meter of the song was going to be, and realised it needed something really strong over the chorus to make it work.
      • I was thinking about VH1’s Behind The Music, and that every band’s story is the same. They start with nothing, then they get some success, then they get huge success, then drink and drugs and women destroy them, then they end up suing each other, then 20 years later they get back together again because they realise it was the best time they ever had. Johnny’s Band is the story of every band. It’s a universal story. But it’s not about Purple! There’s a reference to Louie Louie in the guitar solo that places it firmly in the 60s.
  3. On Top Of The World
    • Tommy Denander – Additional Guitar
    • Tommy Denander – additional guitar (track 8)
    • Deep Purple “inFinite” Track By Track – “On Top Of The World”
    • Roger:
      • It’s based on one of Gillan’s true stories, and it happened to him a long time ago, I think in Kuala Lumpar. He had one of those nights, and ended up on top of a building where all the hookers and street dancers lived. He was telling us this story, and Bob [producer Bob Ezrin] wanted to fit the story into the backing track, but it’s too long, and by the end of the afternoon they’d agreed that it wasn’t working.
      • I had an idea, and condensed the story into a shorter form, but it was still too long for a song. We were just on the point of abandoning it, and I thought, “why don’t we just do something at the end?” And that’s how it came about.
  4. Birds Of Prey
    • Deep Purple “inFinite” Track By Track – “Birds Of Prey”
    • Roger:
      • We stated working on a riff I had in the rehearsal room, and after a brief arrangement we did a first take, and I still love that take. We just had so much fun with it because it was so hard and heavy. On the recorded version the ending goes around two or three times, but on the jam we had it goes on 10 or 12 times. We just couldn’t stop playing it. Steve and Don swap solos, and there’s a lovely sense of freedom about it.
      • People say that they want peace, but it occurred to me that we’ll never have peace. The world has never had peace, and it never will, because the natural state of human beings is conflict. It’s wishful thinking: we’re always going to be at odds with something, and I wanted to say something about that. My first image was 9/11 — hence Birds Of Prey — but it goes way beyond that.
      • One of the things I really like about the song is that it doesn’t repeat itself. It’s not verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo. It takes you on a journey.
  5. Roadhouse Blues
    • Deep Purple “inFinite” Track By Track – “Roadhouse Blues”
    • Roger:
      • This was Paicey’s idea. On Now What?! we didn’t Jerry Lee Lewis’s It’ll Be Me [it featured on the Deluxe Editions] purely for fun, and Bob suggested we pick another old track. We spent about a minute thinking: Bo Diddley? Bob Dylan?
      • Then Paicey related this story about working with tribute bands when he’s off the road, to keep his hand in and to keep fit. They were doing Black Night, and at the end the singer went into Roadhouse Blues. So he suggested it, and Bob said, “that’s it! Let’s do it!” It took less than half an hour, and it’s all live: vocals, harmonica, the lot.

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Bustin’ Out The Spreadsheet

Reception and Charts:

Reviews

  • https://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/73591/Deep-Purple-inFinite/
    • Deep Purple
    • inFinite
    • 3.5
    • great
    • Review by manosg EMERITUS
    • April 29th, 2017 | 77 replies
    • Review Summary: Aging gracefully.
    • What comes to your mind when you think of Deep Purple? Most of you might mention the screams, the guitar pyrotechnics, the wild improvisations, and legendary songs such as “Child in Time” or “Highway Star”. Now think that all these lasted less than 5 years and that the present incarnation of the band is the longest-standing in Deep Purple’s history!
    • Some of you may think that this introduction is irrelevant or wonder how it blends with the Deep Purple of today. Well, it may or may not blend seamlessly but the reality is that inFinite has absolutely no similarities with the golden days of Mark II besides the fact that it is performed by 3/5’s of the classic Deep Purple line-up. In addition, one cannot compare the two eras simply because the two main soloists are very different in style and sound. Therefore, let us remove from our minds any such thought and focus on the present.
    • inFinite – with its Devin Townsend-esque cover art – is an album with flashes of brilliance and pure class but at the same time slightly uneven as it includes a few run-of-the-mill songs and a couple innate deficiencies. As a whole, like previous effort Now What?!, it’s being dominated by Don Airey – who once again has done a marvelous job – and Steve Morse. Their interaction manages to make interesting even the more unremarkable tracks. For example, “Hip Boots” starts off as simple boogie but would border on filler without the two soloists’ contributions and “Time for Bedlam” really takes off during the keys and guitar interplays. Nevertheless, that is not always the case as “Get Me Outta Here” which is based on a slowed-down pattern of “Body Line” from Now What?! feels like it lacks a certain direction, a drive.
    • What is more, Deep Purple were never known for their deep lyrics and inFinite is no exception. However, the stories behind “One Night in Vegas” with its playful barroom piano melody and “On Top of the World” are absolutely hilarious for those of you who care to make some research.
    • Moving on, where Purple’s latest LP really succeeds, is on the slower, more atmospheric and progressive songs; songs you can add to the list of underrated gems along with “Sail Away” and “Strangeways”. It is hard to imagine how a band with so many miles and hours of music on their resume can still write a song like “Surprising”; it begins like a normal slow rock song but at the 2-minute mark turns into a truly evocative and eerie prog beast to the point where it creates a feeling of awe. “All I Got Is You” is one of the most melancholic tracks but at the same time oozes of confidence, quality and features one of the LP’s best performances by Ian Gillan who intentionally is more restrained on this album. Moreover, “Birds of Prey” is the one track where I would be content if it’s proven Purple’s swan song. Listening to Morse’s emotional solo – whose playing is more bluesy and less fusion-y on here – during the song’s final two minutes, evokes images of the band throughout the years, from Montreux to the land of the rising sun. “Roadhouse Blues” might be the real closer but as they say, “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”; for me, if it ends here, it ends with Morse’s solo.
    • For all we know, inFinite may very well be Deep Purple’s final stand and, for what is worth, it cannot be compared with anything that the legendary act released in their heydays. However, try to think of bands that play like Deep Purple and you will probably fail to recognize even one. inFinite with all its limitations, is an apotheosis of character and talent; the work of a group of men who feel comfortable in their own skin and comfortable with each other, which is weird to even fathom when we come to think of the history of the band. At the end of the day, if this is how this story ends, it is a happy end after all.
  • https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/deep-purple-infinite-album-review
    • Deep Purple – InFinite album review
    • Follow-up to 2013’s Now What?! from the last original hard rock behemoths standing.
    • W ith an album titled InFinite and a concurrent live foray called The Long Goodbye Tour, Deep Purple seem to be sending out contradictory messages. Do they intend to go on forever, or as long as physiology dictates (drummer Ian Paice suffered a mini stroke last year), or are they about to call time on their near five-decade career and join Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in the retirement home for priapic rock pioneers?
    • Vocalist Ian Gillan has been unclear in the run-up to the release of their 20th studio album, talking obliquely about metaphysics, the Big Bang and the nature of time. Fortunately, keyboardist Don Airey has been more prosaic on the meaning of InFinite. “It’s a little heavier than the last one,” he said recently. “It’s a bit more prog, as we say in England.”
    • Whatever the truth about their future, the band are certainly on something of a late-period roll, with What Now?! earning largely favourable reviews and charting high – even at pole position – across Europe and Scandinavia. The aim here would appear to be to repeat its success.
    • InFinite, like its predecessor, was tracked in a studio in Nashville, Tennessee and helmed by Bob Ezrin, one of the few producers whose work with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and Pink Floyd genuinely merits the epithet ‘legendary’. The results have been mooted as possibly the most ‘70s’ of any Deep Purple album since 1984’s reunion album, Perfect Strangers.
    • The clues – ‘heavier’, ‘prog’, ‘70s’ – are all there: InFinite definitely won’t disappoint fans of classic Purple. It’s a feast of wanton organ and quasi-classical keyboard curlicues, bolstering bass from Roger Glover and percussive surges courtesy of Paice. Gillan, meanwhile, is in grand over-the-top form, trying a little too hard, perhaps, to keep up with the heavy metal kids, effing and blinding throughout. Elsewhere, he’s ‘three sheets to the wind’ in One Night In Vegas, while On Top Of The World finds him variously lying ‘beside the most beautiful girl in the universe’ and ‘collapsed between the eyes of Morpheus’.
    • It’s colourful and inadvertently comical stuff, but there’s no denying that the music is worth taking seriously, from the rampaging opener Time For Bedlam and exotically textured The Surprising to the Zep-ish Hip Boots and Birds Of Prey. The album closes with a perfunctory cover of Roadhouse Blues, but InFinite works best when Purple do what they do best: extrapolate and alchemise the blues, and take it to new progressive heights.
    • Paul Lester
  • https://www.allmusic.com/album/infinite-mw0003015084
    • InFinite Review by Thom Jurek
    • No one, least of all Deep Purple themselves, expected the success of 2013’s Now What?! It placed at number one on four European album charts and in the Top Ten of six other countries. It also sold exceptionally well: It was certified Gold in Poland, Germany (where it sold over 100,000), the Czech Republic, and Russia — it was the band’s first album to crack the U.K.’s Top 40 charts in 20 years.
    • For InFinite, Deep Purple re-enlisted producer Bob Ezrin. At this point, he is almost a sixth member. This the longest running lineup in their history. InFinite is a heavier and more expansive record than its predecessor, but it’s not as consistent. Ian Gillan is in excellent form — still possessing intense expressive power and range, his falsetto remains intact four decades on. Don Airey‘s organ and keys — so elemental in DP’s musical architecture — is physical, atmospheric, and dynamic. He and guitarist Steve Morse combine brute force with imagination and finesse. Ian Paice, who had a mini-stroke last year, seems to have recovered fully. Roger Glover remains a bassist whose musical signature is so dominant it is only rivaled by Black Sabbath‘s Geezer Butler.
    • Things get off to a great start with “Time for Bedlam.” Despite its slightly corny sci-fi spoken intro with Gillian’s voice put through a processor, it acquits itself with a massive swirling charge worthy of the band’s glory years. It also features Gillan‘s best lyrics — he tends to go over the top elsewhere. It’s followed by the commanding blues-rock boogie of “Hip Boots,” where Gillan‘s swagger rises above a biting mix of snare, kick drum, and dual leads from organ and guitar; but it’s actually Glover who drives the tune. On tracks such as “All I Got Is You” and “The Surprising,” this outfit doesn’t let the listener forget they’re the same band who delivered “Child in Time” and “When a Blind Man Cries.” The latter is downright prog as it melds power ballad to metal in a gorgeous mix that includes wonderfully layered backing vocals and Airey‘s neo-classical keys that evoke the memory of Jon Lord. While the musical attack in “One Night in Vegas” offers a pumping barrelhouse blues piano woven into the hard rock bombast. “On Top of the World” has the craziest Gillan lyrics ever, but again, DP’s crunchy choogle carries them to the finish line. The evocation of vintage psychedelia and Led Zeppelin in “Birds of Prey” makes it one of the more compelling tunes here. Unfortunately, there are two clunkers that sound like filler: the terribly clichéd “Johnny’s Band” and a perfunctory read of the Doors‘ “Roadhouse Blues.” Otherwise, InFinite is a winner; it proves not only that Now What?! was no fluke, but that Deep Purple, even at this stage, still have plenty left to offer musically and creatively.
  • https://www.laut.de/Deep-Purple/Alben/inFinite-106640
    • Still, if this were Deep Purple’s very last record, it would be a brilliant departure. This combination of old virtues with a certain modern harshness and a touch of intangible melancholy: very impressive. With all the diversity of ideas and compositional freshness on this album, it is difficult to believe that the grand masters of hard rock will finally come to an end.
  • https://www.thehighwaystar.com/thsblog/2017/04/05/infinitely-yours-the-highway-star-reviews-infinite/
  • https://progreport.com/deep-purple-infinite-album-review/
    • Review of the new Deep Purple album, inFinite, out April 7th, 2017
    • Not many bands are able to claim to have 20 albums to their name, and in many cases, if they do, the 20th album certainly might not be very good.  Yet, here we have another Deep Purple album, their 20th to be exact, and for a band that continues to play live as good as they ever have, its no surprise that their new album, ‘inFinite’, is their best in years.  Not since the ‘Purpendicular’ album, their first with then new guitarist Steve Morse in 1996, have the Hall of Fame legends put together such a concise, focused, and brilliantly written group of songs from beginning to end.
    • The group’s last effort, 2013’s ‘Now What?!’ was indeed solid and their first with veteran producer Bob Ezrin, who returns for this album.  The decision to go with Ezrin again proves to be a fantastic idea, as it is obvious that the producer knew the second time around which buttons to push and how to build on the good from the previous record.  All around the performances are solid, from the heavy booming rhythm section of Roger Glover and Ian Paice to the organ work from keyboardist Don Airey.  But once again it is the genius guitar work of Steve Morse and the never aging vocals of Ian Gillan that make this material soar.  Morse is more understated on this album than before, but his solos are still something to behold, while Gillan sounds as good as ever.
    • The album opens with the powerful, prototypical Purple rocker, “Time in Bedlam” where the groundwork for the album is laid, while the album’s second track “Hip Boots” is pure groovy roots rock.  But the 3rd track and the lead single from the album “All I Want Is You” is outstanding and one of their best in recent memory. Paice’s perfect timing on the opening slow groove sets the stage for the explosive work from Airey and Morse once the song picks up.
    • Other highlights include the Bossa Nova groove, progressive track, “The Surprising” which is a haunting and captivating track with a brilliantly placed hook that keeps you tuned in, and the track “Birds of Prey” a track that is Deep Purple at its heaviest, with a tremendous close out layered with Morse’s guitar mastery.
    • For anyone that thought this band was done, this album is proof it couldn’t be further from the truth.  Not only is ‘inFinite’ a great Deep Purple album, it is one of the best rock albums you’ll hear this year.

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