Smoke on the Water: The Deep Purple Story by Dave Thompson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

" [...] this is the story of a band as it forms, develops, succeeds, and survives in a world filled with other bands; a document of the ideas, interactions, and inspirations that, for over forty years, have shaped and sharpened, shattered and shadowed the musicians whose names will forever be associated with the one group that they all have in common."
(From the author's Introduction; note the super cool alliteration!)

Deep Purple would certainly be included in any list of Top 20 bands in the history of rock music, probably in Top 10 lists for many people. Arguably, this is the band which brought the so-called "hard rock" genre into existence, and provided one of the main stimuli for the emergence of "heavy metal."

Smoke on the Water, with its unforgettable guitar riff, is the most famous song by Deep Purple. (The riff is attributed to Ritchie Blackmore, who said that he composed it as an interpretation of inversion of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) While the riff is indeed extremely catchy, and I often subconsciously hum it when in a good mood, I am not a particular fan of this song. I admire Deep Purple mainly for another work, Child in Time, a 10-minute piece of art rock, innovative, dynamic, and exhilarating, one of the best examples of progressive genre in rock. One can watch Deep Purple performing Child in Time live in 1970, in the so-called "official" version, on YouTube. The entire performance is stunningly brilliant, particularly, Ian Gillan's vocals, Jon Lord's keyboard work, and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar.

Dave Thompson's Smoke on the Water. The Deep Purple Story (2004) presents a meticulously researched, extremely detailed history of the band, from 1967 to 2002, and, additionally, individual histories of many musicians that at one time or another were members of the band.

There were eight incarnations of Deep Purple, meaning eight different sets of the band's personnel (they are named "Mark I" through "Mark VIII.") For me - and, likely for the majority of Deep Purple's fans - Mark II was the "real" Deep Purple - the three musicians mentioned above plus Roger Glover and Ian Pace. Deep Purple existed in the Mark II setup three times. First time was the peak period for the band, between 1969 and 1973, when Child in Time , Smoke on the Water, and many other famous songs were recorded. The tensions between Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Gillan caused the singer and Roger Glover to leave the band. They re-joined the band in 1984 but left again in 1987. The second reunion happened in 1993, but it lasted only a few months not only because of the differences in creative and artistic visions but also because of a deep personal animosity between Blackmore and Gillan.

Luckily, the personalities of Blackmore and Gillan do not dominate the author's narrative; he writes in depth about other members of the band, both permanent and temporary. A lot of space is dedicated to Jon Lord, a great keyboardist, and the one member in the band that kept pulling it toward classical music. He was the singular force behind the famous Concerto for Group and Orchestra; he composed the music and persevered in convincing the band to overcome the initial communication difficulties with classical musicians. The concerto was recorded in 1969, and it features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (conducted by Malcolm Arnold), in addition to the band. In 1970, Mr. Lord followed with another merger of rock with classical - the Gemini Suite (this time with London Symphony Orchestra).

Mr. Thompson's biography of the band is superbly informative. In addition to the detailed narrative, it contains the discography of the band, solo discographies, and the list of records, for the total of 80 pages of appendices. I strongly recommend the book, which probably deserves a higher rating than mine. I am only interested in the 1969 - 1973 "progressive period" of the band's musical output. It is a good read, although perhaps too packed with details.

Three-and-a-half stars.



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