Deep Purple - Smoke On The Water (Diffusion Dance Mix)

Remixed by Diffusion / Mastermix

In 1968, the group Roundabout formed in Hamburg, Germany, consisting of Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on Hammond organ , Chris Curtis on vocals, and others.

After only a month of rehearsals, Blackmore and Lord split from the group. The two joined forces with vocalist Rod Evans , bassist Nick Simper and drummer Ian Paice . The new band was named Deep Purple.

In October 1968, the group had tremendous success in the US with its cover of Joe South 's " Hush ," taken from their acclaimed debut album Shades of Deep Purple . In 1969 , two more successful albums followed: The Book of Taliesyn and Deep Purple , the latter of which contained a symphony orchestra on some tracks. After three albums and extensive touring in the States, it was the inclusion of vocalist Ian Gillan (who replaced Evans) and bassist Roger Glover (who replaced Simper) that created the essential Deep Purple line-up. Initially, this line-up released a landmark album in Concerto for Group and Orchestra , a three-part movement written by Lord and performed at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold . It is widely known as the first successful collaboration between a rock band and an orchestra.

Shortly after the orchestral release, the band shocked the music world by creating extremely heavy, hard rock music, and thus becoming a pioneer in the world of heavy metal. Their heaviness was only rivalled by newcomers Black Sabbath . During this period, Deep Purple became one of the most popular hard rock acts in the world, releasing the highly influential and successful albums Deep Purple in Rock , Fireball , and the quintessential Machine Head (the latter featuring their most famous song, " Smoke on the Water "), and the live album Made in Japan , featuring the classics Highway Star , Space Truckin' and Lazy , has long been considered to be one of the finest live rock concerts ever recorded.

The classic line-up continued up through the album Who Do We Think We Are ( 1973 ), featuring the hit single Woman from Tokyo , at which point both Gillan and Glover left. They were replaced by an unknown singer named David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes of the band Trapeze on bass and vocals. This new line-up continued seamlessly into 1974 with the heavy blues/rock album Burn , another highly successful Purple album. Hughes and Coverdale added a funky R&B / soul sound to the band's heavy metal elements, a sound that was even more apparent on the 1974 release Stormbringer . Blackmore was not happy with the results, and as a result he left to form his own band Rainbow .

With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest vacancies in rock. The gap was filled by the prodigiously talented American Tommy Bolin who had established himself as a vividly imaginative guitarist with acts such as Zephyr , James Gang and Billy Cobham , with whom Bolin made his mark on the jazz fusion Spectrum album. On the face of it Bolin was just what the doctor ordered. However the subsequent album, 1975's Come Taste the Band , for all its quality, proved unpopular with die-hard fans and didn't attract any new ones. Bolin himself turned out not to be ready for the daunting job of filling Blackmore's shoes, suffering hostility from some crowds while turning in erratic performances varying from the scintillating to the mundane. Bolin also had a drug habit, heroin , which made matters all the worse. After a particularly traumatic tour to promote Come Taste the Band , the band broke up. Later Tommy Bolin died of a heroin overdose whilst on tour supporting Jeff Beck in Miami.

Subsequently, most of the past members of Deep Purple would go on to have considerable success in a number of other bands including Rainbow , Whitesnake and Gillan , while there were a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 70s/early 80s.

In April 1984 , eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, it happened. It was announced on BBC radio's The Friday Rock Show that the "classic" early 70s line-up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord, and Paice was reforming and recording new material. The band signed a deal with Polydor in Europe and Mercury in North America. The album Perfect Strangers was released in October 1984 and the tour followed, starting in New Zealand and winding its way across the world into Europe by the following summer. It was a tremendous success. The UK homecoming proved mixed as they elected to play just a single festival show at Knebworth (with main support from The Scorpions ). The weather was famously bad but 80,000 turned up anyway.

The line-up recorded and toured The House of Blue Light in 1987 though to lower sales, a live album Nobody's Perfect ( 1988 ) was culled from several shows on this tour. While in the UK a new version of "Hush" was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Ian Gillan was fired from the band, as his relations with Blackmore soured. His replacement was former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner . This line up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters ( 1990 ), and toured in support of it.

With the tour done, Turner was forced to go as Lord, Paice, and Glover wanted Gillan back in the fold. Blackmore relented and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On in 1993 . During an artistically successful European tour during the fall of 1993 , tensions between Gillan and Blackmore came to a head yet again. Blackmore walked out in November 1993 , never to return and leaving the band in a fix. Joe Satriani was drafted in, so the live dates (in Japan ) in December could be completed. Satriani stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994 , was asked to stay permanently, but opted to carry on with his solo career. The band unanimously chose the extraordinary Dixie Dregs guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.

The revitalised band enjoyed success throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the critically acclaimed Purpendicular in 1996 , and Abandon in 1998 . In 1999 , Jon Lord, with the help of a fan, painstakingly recreated the Concerto for Group and Orchestra , and it was once again performed at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1999, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann. The concert also featured songs from each member's solo careers, as well as a short Deep Purple set, and the occasion was commemorated on the 2000 album In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra . Much of the next few years was spent on the road via constant touring. The group continued forward until 2002 , when venerable founding member Jon Lord (who, along with Ian Paice, was the only member to be in all incarnations of the band) announced his amicable retirement from the band to pursue personal projects (especially orchestral work). Rock keyboard veteran Don Airey (Rainbow/Whitesnake, etc.), who had helped Purple out when Lord was injured in 2001 , joined the band. In 2003 , Deep Purple released their first studio album in five years, the highly praised Bananas , and began touring in support of the album immediately. In October of 2005, the band's 37th year, Purple released the progressive and adventurous album Rapture of the Deep , considered to be the group's strongest effort since Purpendicular, accompanied by yet another extensive world tour.

This text is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Deep Purple".