Original subtitles

I beIieve it was Ritchie's grandmother's favourite song,

that's what I think the received wisdom is on that.

However, it did appear and it did seem like a good name for the band.

We didn't have any meaning behind it.

We didn't know, for example,

that it was the name of a brand of acid

that was being soId in the States at the time.

We didn't know that, l swear.

We weren't a drug band,

we were a pint of bitter, Scotch and Coke sort of band.

I'd been a professionaI musician two or three years,

maybe longer - four.

I met a guy who was the drummer with the Searchers...

Remember the Searchers? One of the early Mersey Beat-type bands,

although they were from Manchester.

his guy was called Chris Curtis

and he was introduced to me and it was '67 - 1967.

lt was very '60s by then,

a Iot of kaftans and beIIs and beads and all sorts,

and l had them all, of course.

And it was a gorgeous summer, l remember, delightful,

and his idea was that we were gonna have this band called Roundabout.

It wouId have a nucIeus of him and myself -

he was the drummer and singer and myself on keyboards -

and this great guitarist - quote unquote - that he'd found in Hamburg,

caIIed Ritchie BIackmore, who was in a band called the hree Musketeers.

My fondest memories might have been in '65

when I pIayed in a band caIIed the hree Musketeers, in Germany,

and we used to go on stage dressed up as Musketeers sword fencing.

That was a very good band but we didn't do much work,

l think we worked once a year.

hen Chris Curtis disappeared.

No one at the time knew where he'd gone.

I think certain substances might have had something to do with it,

Iike LSD and aII these wonderfuI things that were available in the '60s.

And I thought that was that, it was nice while it lasted,

carry on and try and earn my Iiving as a session musician.

I then got a teIegram from this guy ony Edwards.

''If you're stiII interested in forming a band,

''wouId stiII be interested in backing said band, please call.''

l thought, ''hank you! hank you!''

So I caIIed him and he had no idea at all of what he wanted,

only that he wanted to do it.

And he called Ritchie

and Ritchie came over - the December of '67.

We certainIy hit it off musically straightaway.

I remember he had an acoustic guitar and he played me some ideas he'd had

and had this IittIe eIectric piano and l joined in

and we messed around for several hours,

wrote two or three numbers, which actually ended up on the first album,

and decided that we'd do it.

But we had a bass pIayer called Nick Simper,

who'd been in the band that l was in at the time,

the backing band for the Flowerpot Men.

I was in a band, we were playing in Hamburg.

We had a three-week crazy stint at the Star club there,

and Ritchie was Iiving in Hamburg then.

He obviousIy Iiked the way I pIayed. He came and said, ''Nice work.''

We finished the job, he was living in Hamburg,

l went back to England with my band.

And about a year after that, the singer in my band, who was Rod Evans,

appIied for the singing job in a new band which was to become Deep Purple

and Ritchie remembered me from Hamburg and said,

''Have you still got the drummer?''

And Rod said, ''Yeah.'' ''Bring him along.''

The PurpIe sound was at the very beginning, and still is,

a combination of Ritchie's guitar work and Jon's keyboard work

with lan's drumming feel.

You can aIways teII that it's Paice on drums,

which is unusuaI as drummers don't usually have a feel that's theirs.

Ian very much has a sound that's his, Ritchie has a sound that's his

and the combination of Ritchie's sound and Jon's organ

with Ian keeping the rhythm is the Deep Purple sound.

Rod Evans, who's very....

He's a IittIe bit Tom Jones, a little bit Engelbert Humperdinck.

But we beat him into shape.

And there we had our first band.

Joe South wrote Hush

but l think a guy called Billy Joe Royal

had the hit in the States with Hush, a minor hit,

and it was being pIayed in a lot of the dance clubs

and disco-type things in England

and we'd heard it and liked it

and so we did a version of it,

which had that long organ solo in it.

To our astonishment, it went top ten in the States.

It happened so quick. We were all taken unawares by it.

At this time we were stiII working back in England,

we were starting to do shows on the road,

some not very big, some a little bigger.

AII of a sudden we're toId that Hush had been chosen as a single in the States

and it was a top five hit,

everybody then starts pIanning for a big tour over here.

lt was a great first time in the States.

We fIew direct from London to Los Angeles

and there we are in the entertainment capital of the world

and there's aII these big Cadillac limousines,

which we've onIy seen in movies before, picking us up,

and the same night we get taken to Hefner's penthouse pad

and we're, ''Hey! We've arrived.''

In 1968 when we started pIaying, we were copying Vanilla Fudge -

l don't know if you know the band.

They were from Long IsIand and that was the type of music we wanted to play,

heavy organ, Hendrix-type of music.

Funnily enough, they liked us.

They thought we were innovators and we were just copying them.

It's amazing what you can get away with and get paid for it.

hat's how we started really.

Ritchie was more and more getting towards what would become hard rock

and when he heard Hendrix, it was a pretty big moment for him.

And we started to move towards more what Ritchie saw.

lt was quite evident that Rod and Nicky

were not the singer and bass pIayer who could get us there.

Ian GiIIan and I were in a band called Episode Six.

He'd been in the band since '65

and '69 came around, we had a couple of different drummers,

one of them was a guy called Mick Underwood.

Mick used to be in a band with Ritchie, years before, called the Outlaws.

I'd never heard of Deep PurpIe - although they had Hush in the States,

they didn't mean anything in England.

And Mick got a caII one day from Ritchie Blackmore

saying he was Iooking for a singer, did he know any,

and possibly a bass player.

So Mick said, ''Come and Iisten to our band. We've got a singer.''

We pIayed Woodford Green and Ritchie and Jon Lord showed up.

Woodford Green, it was a boys' club, a tiny little...

A boy scouts hall, l think it was.

I don't remember much about it - Ritchie did get up and have a jam,

aIthough I never met either of them that night.

ln fact, l didn't like the look of them.

I thought they were dodgy-looking characters,

very dark, and hair and they all had expensive clothes on,

which to me was a sign of ''not one of us'' - we were pretty broke.

The upshot of it was that they offered lan the gig

and it caused pandemonium in our camp cos we were losing our lead singer.

About two weeks later, lan called me up.

Now, I'd been song writing for years, l've always been a songwriter,

and I'd got Ian to join me so we became a partnership

for the Iast two years of Episode Six's life.

And he caIIed me and said, ''Listen, we got some songs,

''Deep PurpIe need songs, I'm gonna go to Jon Lord's flat and play him some,

''do you wanna come?'' l said, ''Yeah, OK.''

We started writing in HanweII Community Centre, outside London -

a big, empty gymnasium, a horrible sound, horrible echo.

l remember the first rehearsal we did,

Ritchie started pIaying Jimi Hendrix's Let Me Stand Next o Your Fire

and he said, ''Wouldn't it be good

''if we had a short riff with words in between?''

and I started pIaying the first thing that came into my head,

which ended up as Speed King.

I have to say that I think the prime mover behind Purple's music for all these years

has been Ritchie Blackmore.

He, aImost invariabIy, is the one that comes up with...

the kerneI of the idea, the little spark, the little riff

that everyone goes, ''hat's good. Let's work on that.''

It wasn't any one song, the whoIe aIbum was in a much harder vein

than even we couId have imagined, cos that was Deep Purple ln Rock.

Every track on that aIbum is a powerfuI statement about one thing or another.

Whether it be a lyrical statement - anti-drugs -

or whether it be a musicaI statement with the virtuosity in the band.

Ritchie said if it's not exciting or dramatic it doesn't belong on the album

and also we were doing gigs at the time,

it wasn't Iike now where you go in a studio and do an album.

In those days, you did a few days in a studio then a few days on the road,

and that's good cos it keeps you fresh.

I think that's what makes In Rock such an uncompromising album.

Deep PurpIe In Rock came out and went huge.

lt stayed in the charts for a year.

We toured in the wake of that pretty extensively around Europe.

It didn't happen in America so we forgot America for a while

and concentrated on Europe.

Then we did the follow up album, Fireball.

As an aIbum, it didn't do anything Iike what Deep Purple ln Rock had done.

l remember going to Germany once

and they had expected it to be goId by the time we got there and it wasn't

but they had the presentation Iined up so they went ahead with it anyway

and presented us with haIf a goId record, actually cut in two.

We didn't know whether to Iaugh or to be insulted.

Machine Head was a conscious effort by us to change the sound.

Thinking about Iive sounds, we aIways preferred the sound of the band live,

in a hall, in a theatre or whatever,

and during the making of Fireball,

we'd experimented with putting drums in the corridor to get that slap-back sound.

Studios were aIways padded and sounded very good for folk music

but rock didn't seem right.

So we took it one stage further

and we decided to go and record the entire album with a mobile studio

in a theatre setting without the audience.

So it'd be like a live album

but we'd have the Iuxury of being abIe to redo songs if we didn't like them.

We Iooked around and we figured we'd do it in Montreux,

where the Casino was a reguIar gig and any European tour,

any seIf-respecting band would have played the Casino.

he day we got there, he said,

''The Iast function before you take over the hall is a Frank Zappa concert.''

''WouId you Iike to see it?'' ''Sure.''

So we went aIong, he made a little special seating section for us

in the middle of the crowd

and we watched Frank Zappa for about an hour and it was great.

AII I remember is peopIe Iooking up at the ceiling and some sparks.

There's a bamboo ceiIing, like a false ceiling.

The music stopped, it didn't Iook Iike much, but the music stopped

and Frank was great, he said, he went up to the mike and said,

''I don't want to aIarm anybody, l don't want to cause any panic but

''fire!''

Within minutes the building was an inferno.

It was stunning, certainIy the most horrendous fire l've ever seen.

It's a huge buiIding, it was about ten or twelve storeys high.

It housed casinos, theatres, restaurants, bars...

lt was a huge complex.

We retired back to the hoteI we were staying at,

a little while down the coast -

it was right on Lake Geneva, a beautiful setting -

and we just watched the fire.

lt raged for hours, all day.

A huge paII of smoke hung over Lake Geneva.

A coupIe of mornings after the fire, l woke up, eyes still closed,

and said out loud,

''Smoke on the water.''

I came awake with a bang, there's no one else in the room, who was l talking to?

l must have dreamed it or something.

And I mentioned it to Ian the next day, or later that day,

I said, ''Sounds Iike a song titIe came to me this morning.

''Smoke on the water.'' He said, ''Sounds like a drug song.''

I said, ''Yeah, it does, doesn't it? Oh, well, it's not for Deep Purple,

''doesn't sound Iike a Deep Purple song.''

Then a few days Iater, we had this riff with no lyrics.

We aIways used to write Iike that, we'd write the music,

then Ian and I wouId get together and figure out what to sing over it.

We were stiII reeIing from what had happened

so I said, ''Why don't we write a song about what happened to us?

''Just put it exactIy as is, don't make anything up.''

l always remember arriving in Japan.

Japanese audiences were very warm, very attentive.

hey sat, arms folded, very neat.

They didn't say much during the songs

but they erupted at the end of songs,

which is unIike European and American audiences

who yeII through the whoIe thing. hey listened a lot.

The Japanese company said, ''We want to make a live album,''

and Iive aIbums in those days weren't the thing to do.

They had a budget kind of feel about them.

So we said we're not interested in doing a live album,

especiaIIy as our shows are so haphazard.

You have the danger of either having a brilliant show or an awful show,

which you're capabIe of if you play on the line like that,

you take chances.

They insisted and we said, ''OK, we'll do it on certain conditions.

''A: our engineer goes over to record it.

''B: we bring the stuff back, we mix it and if we don't like it, you don't put it out -

''if we don't like it, you don't out it out -

''and C: it onIy comes out in Japan, it doesn't come out anywhere else.''

We recorded three concerts, two in Osaka and one in okyo,

and most of the materiaI comes from the second night in Osaka

cos the first night we were on stage like puppets - ''We're being recorded!

''Make sure l don't make any mistakes.''

By the second night, we'd relaxed a bit.

We got back to EngIand a few weeks later and listened to these tapes

and we were just bowIed over by how good they were

and that became Made In Japan.

I think that reaIIy is probabIy the most important album for us

because aIthough the record company were loathe to release it

cos they wanted the new studio album,

we said, ''Yeah, but it's the Machine Head tour,

''it's got to be reIeased right after Machine Head

''otherwise it's gonna be out of date.''

We kinda forced their hand on it and they eventually released it.

Happily for them cos it went platinum

and it dragged Machine Head up with it - that went platinum.

he live version of Smoke On he Water

was reaIIy what made Smoke On he Water happen.

he essence of this band is live.

My roIe was exactIy what l wanted it to be.

I had no concept of being ''the drummer''.

l was the star in the middle of the stage

and Ritchie was the star on the Ieft of the stage, Jon on the right...

We used to have this permanent sort of battle.

Who was gonna steaI the IimeIight from the next guy?

In those days, jamming was everything. Songs would go on for half an hour.

It was a reaI battIe royaI, lots of tricks were pulled, you know,

just to upstage some member of the band.

I had cIassicaI training for one year when l was eleven.

l studied Bach and all that stuff.

It's stiII there a bit, I don't Iike to get into it much, it's a different way of playing.

It's finger styIe and I don't pIay much of that, l keep to the plectrum style.

I keep infIections of cIassicaI music rather than really hard-core classical.

It happened, which was lan and Roger leaving,

because we were working too much.

The year before Ian Ieft - it was '72 or '73, '72 l think -

we did six American tours.

l mean, it was ridiculous.

When Ian did quit, he gave us six months' notice,

a very pIeasant chap, and I reaIIy thought that was the end of it.

I thought, ''WeII, we've had a good run for our money,''

and then I got taken to a restaurant by one of our managers, John Colletta,

and he showed me a copy of BiIIboard.

I think we had 1 1 different entries

in singles, albums, back albums.

We were aII over the pIace, it was exploding.

And that year, 1973, we were the top album-selling artists in the United States.

And he said, ''You can't stop now.''

l said, ''Well, we just did.

''We Iost our singer and our bass pIayer, how much more final can that get?''

He said, ''Replace them.''

And to be quite honest, l hadn't even thought of it.

lt never occurred to me.

I thought, ''We've aIready repIaced them once, we can't do it again.''

So I spoke to Ritchie and he said, ''Well, we could try,''

so we auditioned and sent out a message for tapes to be sent in

and we listened to

thousands and one of them was David Coverdale.

He had a gIorious voice, he did a briIIiant audition so we gave him the job.

WhiIe we were Iooking for a singer, we'd seen Glenn Hughes,

who pIayed in a band caIIed Trapeze, and was sensational.

AbsoIuteIy wonderfuI. Sang Iike a dream, great-looking guy, hair down to here,

pIayed great bass guitar, so we snapped him up.

Not long after David and Glenn joined,

we were over in America doing the California Jam

to estimates of 400,000 people.

lt was huge.

We came in by helicopter

and as we came down over the backstage area and looked out,

it was like a city - it was unbelievable.

And the bill read like a Who's Who,

the EagIes, SeaIs & Croft, that band America,

BIack Sabbath, Emerson, Lake And Palmer,

Earth, Wind And Fire.

here were tons of them.

Ritchie was very Iucky not to get arrested in California Jam.

We had a contract that said that we'll take the first spot

where the Iights are gonna be, you know, impressive.

So we said we will go on at sundown

and so you must gear the show so it runs so when,

you know, haIf-hour changeover or whatever it is,

sundown, we'll be on.

But every big show you ever go to always runs late.

his one ran early.

So about an hour before dusk, they came and said, ''Right, you're on.''

Ritchie said, ''No, we're not,'' and locked himself in his dressing room.

So that kind of stopped us going on.

This guy came and started screaming at us,

this guy from ABC television.

He was livid.

And using a very inventive language.

Of course, the audience are starting to get a bit annoyed

and the next thing the promoters, l think ABC or whoever,

brought the IocaI sheriffs to tell Ritchie he had to go on stage

and Ritchie said, ''No, l'm not gonna.''

They were gonna get a warrant for his arrest unless he went on stage.

We got wind of this and we hid him.

We hid him till the sun went down.

l'm usually kind of a loner on stage,

l get into my own little world.

PeopIe take that as, ''Oh, he's annoyed at the singer,''

but it very rareIy was, l'm just concentrating on my music.

l tend to like my little corner on stage.

Ritchie, of course, wreaked his famous revenge on the television company.

Ritchie told the guy about five times,

''You're getting too cIose. l need my space.''

he guy didn't listen.

He repeatedIy smashed his guitar into the lens of the camera.

For this occasion, he had his roadie put petrol in the back of his amps

but the guy got a IittIe bit overgenerous with the petrol.

He wanted to make a rousing finaIe to this particular number.

You can see on the film of this thing -

it looks like Ritchie's dancing forwards,

he's not, he was bIown forwards by the force of the explosion

and I was way over the other side of this huge stage,

it knocked me back off the organ -

the force of the expIosion when the amps went up.

Frightening.

After David and GIenn joined and we'd made a couple of albums,

we made an album called Stormbringer,

which Ritchie didn't Iike and for him, that was it and he left.

I feIt the band was becoming too bluesy,

not bIuesy, but kind of funky, and l don't like funky soul music.

I Iike bIues, cIassicaI music and hard rock and medieval rock

but I don't Iike funky bIues and that's why l said, ''l'm off.''

He'd had enough and by then, l'd had enough.

I said, ''No more chopping and changing, l'm out.''

Then David came to me, pleading with me to stay on.

He said, ''I've heard a guitarist who will be able to fill Ritchie's shoes,

''called ommy Bolin.''

Tommy was a deIightfuI man, an absolutely lovely, lovely, lost soul.

He was dreadfully into heroin, l believe.

It was such a sad thing when we learnt that ommy had died.

Before he died, Ian Paice and I had both decided we'd had enough.

We came off stage one night,

I think it was the LiverpooI Empire we were playing,

and just Iooked at each other and said, ''l can't do it any more.''

hat was in 1976, March of '76.

And I just became a recIuse. I got out of the business. l didn't do anything.

hen in August of '78,

I started getting the first of many phone calls from David Coverdale.

You know, ''PIease come out to pIay,'' sort of thing

and I said I reaIIy don't want to go back on the road.

You know, l want to start a family...

But he kept on at me so eventuaIIy l gave in and l joined Whitesnake,

in August, September of '78,

and stayed with them until '83.

I thought it was a wonderfuI band but then petty things started creeping in,

they do, it's...

l decided to leave.

So l told David and he said,

''PIease just stick with me for three more months while we get this tour through,''

so I did and during that three months l got a call from lan Gillan.

''What about reforming Purple?''

''Crazy. Ritchie wiII never agree.'' He said, ''lt was his idea.''

It was fantastic. We had the grand reunion of Purple.

First show... A few shows in AustraIia

and then we did Knebworth over here, in the mud.

I've got some great memories of the reunion of Purple.

We sat down and the guys just started jamming

and it sounded Iike the oId PurpIe.

hat period of Perfect Strangers...

After that we got into a bit of a struggle

and the same oId probIems started to emerge.

lt's always worked on stage

and even though Ritchie and Ian GiIIan have no love for each other at all -

I think now it's a Iost cause trying to put those two in the same city

let alone the same band -

they stiII have immense respect for each other on stage.

Ritchie will still say

that nobody ever made him Iaugh like lan did on stage sometimes.

He was hilarious.

This incarnation of Deep PurpIe... hey called me up and said,

''Do you want to have a sing with the band?''

But before I joined the band, there were certain restrictions and conditions

that l felt had to be met.

One was that l'm not just coming in the band

and singing someone eIse's driveI, it's just not me any more

and I wasn't gonna try and emulate lan Gillan

because I've reaIIy no want or desire to emulate lan.

l think he's a great artist but l'm not him

and l don't want to replace him.

People say l've got big shoes to fill

and I say, ''I'm making my own footsteps.''

The pIan is at the moment to get through to 1993 and then see where we stand.

l think you always go forward.

PeopIe say, ''WeII, what direction are you going in?''

You aIways go forward, you're never in a rut

and I practise quite a Iot so l know l'm going forward.

I might not be pIaying scintiIIating soIos but l'm playing to the best of my ability

and it's pIeasing to me, which is the main thing,

and l hope people catch on to that.

I stiII get butterfIies, l still get nervous before a concert.

l hope that continues.

I want to pIay untiI 1993 to see that 25th anniversary, l think that'll be fun.

To stand on stage and say, ''Right, it's 25 years,

''a quarter of a century.''

lt's quite amazing.