Original subtitles

Here we go!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let's make a rock record!

Everybody quiet.

Deep Purple are bona fide rock legends.

Alongside Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin they defined hard rock

and created heavy metal.

Now almost fifty years after they first took to the stage.

they're recording their 20th and possibly their last studio album.

We've been given exclusive access as they Write record and play in Nashville.

I used to be an angry young man. And now I'm fucking furious again.

It's amazing.

This is a group of impeccable, amazing musicians.

We'd be playing away and then It's happening!

With its range of heavy riffs. rock 'n' roll tunes and epic tracks.

Purple are hoping the album will recapture past glories.

There is something I can tell you

that this is the finest album ever been made in the history of recorded music.

December 2015. and Deep Purple arrive for the last gig

of yet another massive World tour.

If you haven't got a pass on, mate, you can't get in.

Almost 18.000 fans are packed into London's O2 arena

to see one of the world's most successful rock bands.

Hey, Barry! How you doing, mate?

The band may all be in their late sixties or, In the case of singer Ian Gillan

and bassist Roger Glover their early 70s. but there's no let up in the pace.

Deep Purple are one of the most influential rock bands on the planet.

but they refuse to rest on their laurels.

They Work by a simple-yet-solid set of rules."

never follow in your own footsteps. never do what's expected

and always put on a great show.

Deep Purple is the best thing that ever happened to me professionally in my life.

It was more than professional too, it's a family.

It's quite something. It makes you think

what is so compelling about this music?

I don't really know, but it compels me and always has.

Many times I get back from doing a gig and all the sound

and the lights are still in my head

And I close the hotel room door and I stand there and go,

'how the fuck did I get here?'

Still amazes me.

We're at a stage in our lives now when we've got to have fun.

All the time just have fun.

Not crazy fun, just fun that makes us happy.

If you make a few thousand people happy every night with you,

that ain't so bad.

Rock 'n' roll is son of definitely in the blood.

I think it's the best way to reach people's soul.

It's great, it's fantastic, I love it.

So what are you going to do now. how do you get down from that high?

I'm saving this one.

I'm going to hang onto this for a week or so.

The echoes of the London gig barely have time to fade

before Purple need to get into the rehearsal studio

to Write their next album.

Nashville. Tennessee. music city.

It's home to some of the great American music legends

and it draws artists from across the globe like a magnet.

Among them - Deep Purple.

Their first stop is Soundcheck studios on the outskirts of town

Where they're booked into a rehearsal room to compose the album.

Albums are old hat, they're old fashioned.

People now put out EPs or a single song.

But to me, we are and always have been an album band.

And albums I think are important to us and the fans

as a kind of snapshot of the state of the band at that particular time.

Just because you go into a studio and you put ten or eleven ideas together

and make them into songs doesn't mean they are actually any good.

You do your best, but if we feel we've got ideas which are valid

and worth people listening to, then you've got an album.

Why are we doing this? It's obviously not going to feed anybody's family.

It's part of, I don't know, why do people paint?

When they see a view of the mountains,

because it's beautiful and they want to make something inspired by that beauty.

Deep Purple is primarily an instrumental band.

So I just basically sit and watch. I'm appreciating it and absorbing it.

But I'm not consciously beginning any writing process.

I'm just soaking it up and enjoying it, just as a fan.

If it's old fashioned, so be it. We don't actually give a shit.

Overseeing everything is veteran producer Bob Ezrin.

His CV includes Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' as Well as classic albums for Alice Cooper.

Peter Gabriel Lou Reed and many more.

I don't know what else there is.

So a thought. When we get to the solos,

I think we should take a little more time. I think they're, for me, too short.

They start off to I mean it's got to start more melodic

and then work it's way up to be more rhythmical.

When his solo's on, when we're doing the guitar,

I would go to a ride and be more jazzy.

Get out of that Tony Thompson thing for a second

and then when he goes, then it's like total Tony Thompson

And just really like this and let him just take off.

That means, Steve, you can't start at a hundred miles an hour.

You have to start slowly and work your way up.

95! - Let's just take our time with it, it's really, it's a fun pocket.

Bob's kept the whip cracking. He's fine tuned, knocked a lot of rough edges off,

the best sound, for me, that Deep Purple has ever had.

Head and shoulders above anything we've ever done before.

You don't need to go straight to

You're already at double time.

Take your time.

Bob isn'tjust a producer. He's a great musician

and he's a writer and he has a great overview of songs.

Part of the thing of working with people that are as experienced as these guys are

and that have been doing this for such a long time,

is first of all we have to establish a trust

and we have to establish a common ground of communication

and,

and it begins with me and my respect for them.

He's not scared of saying that's no good. Don't like it.

It's the respect we have for him to know that if he does stick his oar in,

there's a valid reason for the fact that he's not getting something,

or he thinks something is not as good as it should be.

I would just open it up just like

Once we get started, it's very important with projects like this

that there be a sense of mutuality in the room.

We're all building something, we're building it together.

And with any team you do need a captain or a foreman.

For one of them to step out and be that person

it might be uncomfortable within a group of peers.

So it's always easier for them if somebody was to come in and be that.

That's really cool. Harmonically speaking, that's really cool.

We'll just do them long like this for now

and if we feel like they're too long, we'll cut them down.

I really like going from the jazz to the really tight bit, right?

Deep Purple rode the crest of the tidal Wave of musical innovation

in the late '60s and early '70s.

Back then. guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and keyboard maestro Jon Lord

played alongside Gillan. Glover and Paice.

They were harder than Zeppelin and faster than Sabbath.

But that Purple Wave was never an easy ride.

Despite numerous splits and reformations. by the early 90s.

Ritchie Blackmore decided to quit.

It all came to a head when he tore his Japanese visa up

and said, 'that's it.' it was quite, as you can imagine,

a big moment in the dressing room afterwards.

Nobody made Ritchie leave.

To this day, I really don't know if he meant it or if it was a bluff

and the bluff didn't work. But I just hope he's happy.

I got the feeling that between him and a lot of the old fans,

that without Ritchie Deep Purple couldn't exist.

And that's what really fired us up. No, we're going to carry on.

Basically we said to our Japanese promoter,

'look Ritchie's not coming, we'll still come.

Who would the Japanese people love to see playing with us?

Who's their favorite guitarist at the moment?'

And he said, 'it's very simple - Joe Satriani.'

I got a phone call from my manager who said,

'I've got a crazy one for you, are you sitting down?

How would you like to replace Ritchie Blackmore in Deep Purple?'

And I said, 'that's ridiculous, nobody can replace Ritchie Blackmore.'

I hung up and that was the end of it.

Then of course thirty minutes later I was going crazy, I was thinking,

'wait a minute, I get a chance to play with the original Deep Purple?

That's insane. I should do it, I should do it!'

So I called them back and said, 'you didn't tell them no yet?'

And they were like, 'no we were waiting for you to call us back!'

And that was a great experience. Joe really gave us a big boost

that we could actually work and we were all worth it.

The name of the band was worth it.

Over the course of a few months

the whole joy of music came flooding back into the band.

It was just fantastic.

Then we thought we've proved, as sad as it was,

there's life after Ritchie. And if it's good, people will accept it.

I'm standing next to Ian Gillan now and I'm watching him rule the audience.

It's just amazing how great he was as a performer and a singer.

So I just kind of put on my seat belt

and went for a great ride with these guys. It was great.

It was only two tours, though it was the short Japanese tour

and then the two month tour of Europe in the summer of '94.

Joe couldn’t join us because he had commitments over the year ahead

and by now we didn't want to stop again, we wanted to keep the momentum going.

And so we thought who else?

We can't keep Joe, let's ask the really good guys.

We had a list and the first name was Steve Morse.

'Well, let's ask Steve!'

My manager called and said, 'how do you feel about Deep Purple?'

'I like them, why?'

Very suspiciously - 'why?

Steve Morse had been voted the World's best guitarist five times in a row

by Guitarist Magazine. but had a style of playing

that was vastly different from either Blackmore or Satriani.

I was intrigued by the fact

that they were obviously going outside the mainstream

if they were enquiring about me.

Before he'd even played with us, I met him for a photo session.

He said, 'what do you want from me?' I said, 'I want you to be yourself.

You can't really be in a band if you're pretending to be someone else.

You have to be yourself, you have to be natural.'

And he said, 'yeah, but I play lots of different things,'

and I said, 'great, that's alright, welcome aboard.'

We got to the arena

and had a little son of rehearsal.

And before we even rehearsed, we just started jamming around with something

and I'm playing something.

Then all of a sudden Jon just has it.

I think, 'oh cool!' So I play something again,

he has it and spits it back at me with a little variation.

I think, 'alright, alright that's cool!' We were kind of playing off each other

in a way that reminded me more of an advanced jazz keyboard player

than a guy in a rock band. So I was pretty surprised.

And

Ian Gillan comes up like, 'alright,'

just giving me encouragement, a vocalist giving a guitarist encouragement.

That's usually not done, you know.

From my limited exposure to vocalists

you know, the best place for the guitarist is just off the edge of that stage.

So I was pretty happy with the way things were going

and I was just blown away that the musicianship was high.

Steve's only query about it was

if could he still go on stage in T-shirts and jeans.

And we said, 'yes, you're quite welcome to use T-shirts and jeans.'

It went as good as it could possibly go.

That's how I joined the band.

That's one of the greatest things that happened

when Steve joined the band. Because prior to that

there had been no humor, not since the early 70s.

Just maybe '69, '70 and '71

and then things got pretty dour in the dressing room.

I always wanted to be in a band with five people around

and everyone throwing in ideas and that hadn't happened for a long time

in Purple until Steve joined.

All of a sudden, we were literally standing in a circle

in the studio, everyone contributing,

'how about this,' 'how about that,' 'that's a good idea,' you know.

Wonderful feeling. We were born again.

Guitarists are dime a dozen. They could've had lots of different guitarists

and more flashy guitarists and way better performers.

But the chemistry is super important.

And it was just amazing to see Ian Paice.

His rascally, mischievous, ridiculous sense of humor just emerging again,

he just popped up, the same as Jon Lord did.

Jon blossomed again when Steve joined the band.

It was fantastic.

This footage. shot by Ian Gillan. Is from the writing sessions

for Deep Purple's first album with Steve Morse.

So I thought what we could do is, Steve goes

and I go

Do you know what I mean? - Yes.

That will be the middle 8.

Well, the lyrics that immediately come to mind is,

'tumble dryer, tumble dryer, going round and round.

Tumble dryer, tumble dryer, going round and round,'

and then leave a gap!

'Tumble dryer, tumble dryer, going round and round.'

Tumble

Fantastic! I think we've got something here.

Although 'Tumble dryer' didn't feature on the album 'Purpendicular'.

It went on to be the biggest selling single of 1994 in 'Weirdistan.

I think 'Purpendicular' was one of the happiest albums I've ever made.

It was freeing. I saw everyone in the band grow

and blossom again.

Jon, Paice, Gillan, me, we all grew in stature again.

And that was really the start of the rise back up.

We had to reinvent ourselves.

We couldn't be the same. You can't be the same, it's different personalities.

If you try and recreate what happened once.

It's like going back. You can never go back,

you can never return to your history.

We moved on, put the past behind us.

Back in Nashville. the sun is shining. but it's bitterly cold.

In the rehearsal room. though. things are beginning to Warm up.

Kill that click please. Kill the click.

I was just saying we were going to the ride in the choruses, I think,

and then in all those other sections, whatever you feel is fine.

But I think the part works really well, I like the intro.

My only concern in this one is the keyboard solo.

Those changes don't turn my crank

and maybe I'm wrong about it, but they seem pretty pedestrian to me.

I think it's quite ordinary. That's my feeling.

When we started this project, he said, 'I am the truth,

I'll tell you the truth if something’s working or if it's not.'

But he's amazing at getting performances out of people as well.

We had this

that feel and now all of a sudden we go into like

It smoothes out into blandness. - Yeah, we smooth out

into this old fashioned 50's Doo-Wop song. And I think that we

Oh, I thought that's what you wanted.

I thought you'd be pleased, Bob.

Well, I did put in an order for a Doo-Wop section,

but I didn't mean here.

What we have right now to me is too pedestrian,

it sounds like an old 50s country song.

When it comes out of all this pounding stuff,

I really want it to just lift up. It's almost like

Like just get big and dramatic. Let's just leave it for the moment.

Now is the time, don't you think? - Not necessarily.

I love that.

Wait a minute. - It's a short tune.

I was singing something exactly like that for a solo.

A 'Kingsmen, Louie Louie'. I was going - I love it.

That's what I was just playing, yeah.

Just the other way around.

I love that!

That's kind of cool. The brilliance of it is the quotation,

that's the brilliance of it. it’s just, do the quote,

but not really. Let's go for it!

It's going to be great, it will absolutely be great.

As long as everybody’s playing the same chords, it'll be great.

It's just really playful for a second

and then we take off into the guitar solo.

Law suit! - No, no suit.

I mean you can't copyright that!

How many songs - I don't see a problem with that, really.

Do you hate it? - No, it's alright, it's just not ours, that's all.

Neither was Oh, there's a list!

Yeah, I know, but that is so blatantly fucking obvious!

I thought it was too close. Nobody else did. They said it sounds great.

So I went, 'okay, if that's what you want to do, we'll do it,' and it's there.

We changed it enough, so we wouldn't get sued.

I'll go with it, it's just - Come on, Paice, come on!

Can't we just nick the rhythm and chose some different chords?

How about if you don't do the first of all,

how about if you just go

Something like that, that's a little more non-generic,

a little more us, but the same chords.

You have to trust your instincts.

You lit up when you first heard that. - I did.

And so did I. So let’s just try it. If you don't like it,

we can change it, but we have to settle on something.

We can go round in circles all day, right?

It does sound good. - I like it because it has a sense of humor.

Fantastic solo, Don, fantastic.

If you start to stumble around and things are not going well,

he'll guide you through it.

He'll help you out and get you through it.

The band have just two days of writing left in the rehearsal studio

before they're due to begin recording the album

and they're jamming through a new idea.

When it goes to the A, I feel like it wants to get out of the

It needs to go something like

Something

That percolating thing is a big part of it.

It's been going on for so long,

just feels like it needs to relax from it a little bit.

Sometimes it's purely a jam.

Sometimes somebody will start something and we join in.

And if it's interesting and fun, we'll experiment.

We'll just let it go as far as it can go and that may be 2 or 3 minutes,

it might be 15 minutes.

Not all of those 15 minutes are great,

but you might just have 2 or 3 minutes that light that little bit of fire in you.

Like the intro

You get a jam and, 'actually it's cool the way we did that, let's try that again.'

And that's how it grows.

From jamming you get freedom and that's a good character from Purple.

Steve is a man of ten million ideas.

He can write a melody, a harmony and a bass part all in his head.

I do try to push for certain things, but not too much.

Basically, it works best if I just bring in lots of ideas and suggestions

and then the band kind of picks what suits them.

And believe me, you're not going to get anything done

if 4 out of 5 of the guys like it. It's got to be everybody.

It starts with Ian on the drums. He just seems to go

and he's off and we all kind of follow him.

A couple of rhythm ideas, yeah.

They're not all good because usually they happen late at night

when you think you're being creative, but you're actually just a bit drunk.

From the very moment that we come up with any idea,

Ian has been right there in the room with us,

reacting to it and giving us encouragement to it

or saying, 'I'm not into that.'

I do write a few phrases down here and there in the early days,

but nothing really coherent.

Steve just noodling away, just a little pattern to himself,

and if it's interesting, we join in.

As a keyboard player my job is to, if they need a bridge,

I'll come up with that and an intro or an ending,

'maybe we should have a key change.'

I come up with little bits and pieces to fit in.

I've played perhaps a bigger role in this album than I usually do in most things I work on,

coming up with riffs and quite a lot of the ideas.

Don Airey was no stranger to the rock circuit when he was called upon to join Purple.

He'd been in Rainbow with Roger and Ritchie Blackmore

as Well as playing with Ozzy Osbourne. Gary Moore and Black Sabbath

amongst many others. He was also a Eurovision Song Contest winner.

having arranged and performed on the UK entry in 1997.

He took over from founding member Jon Lord. who quit the band in 2002.

Jon Lord was tired. He wasn't interested in touring much any more.

We saw Jon slowly leaving the band, not on stage,

but he just couldn't deal with the 22 hours a day that he wasn't on stage.

He more and more started feeling like he wanted to express himself through his music.

He wanted to do his orchestral things

and didn't fancy that life on the road with Deep Purple anymore, with a rock band.

Jon became a hugely successful classical composer.

There was only one name on the shortlist to take over his role - Don Airey.

I had never worked with Don. I knew of his reputation,

but the other guys said he's perfect. And he is.

He's just brilliant, absolutely amazing.

Fantastic character, exactly the right person to replace Jon Lord. Exactly.

The 'How does it feel to step into Jon Lord's shoes?' - every press conference.

And eventually I found a pair of shoes in the wardrobe

and I said, 'who's are these?'

And our wardrobe lady said, 'they're Jon's.'

So I put them in a plastic bag and took them to the press conference.

And it was the only one I've ever done when they didn't ask me how it feels.

I was going to say, 'well, let's see!' They were too big for me actually,

but only slightly.

We just need to listen to a minute. it’s just the drums, the drums are extraordinary.

Extra ordinary? - Extra ordinary, yes!

I can see what you mean, it's a great rhythm.

And that solo goes on for 9 minutes. It's absolutely incredible, just a little tune.

That's great, I love that.

What do you want to do with it? Do you want to just add it to the...

Do you want to tag it onto the end of this?

I had an idea of doing - No, I don't like it.

That's not going to work.

There's nothing I could say to follow that!

The idea was that if it's just a quick jam out of time

and we're doing chords back and forth

The next day the band listen back to the jams from the earlier sessions.

Despite liking it during the rehearsals.

one track. called 'Jig'. Isn't quite Working for Bob.

I found it the most boring one of all.

But let's ask the others, I could be wrong.

Ian Gillan, in particular, loved it. He couldn't get it out of this head

and he fought for it and fought for it.

Other members of the band thought, 'I don't know, is it really us?'

But then we go back to - what is 'us'? 'Us' is whatever we play really.

Gillan's enthusiasm for the song soon overcomes Bob's doubts about it.

It's a really good album.

It will make the fans very happy. It's alive, it's got energy, good writing.

I've learned over the years not to try and construct anything too early

because they just change their mind, 'I don't like that,'

or they dump it or rearrange it completely or whatever

I mean my wastebasket was littered with songs that had been dumped.

So I just absorb it as best I can, and then I have to work on it

when they've gone home.

Nashville is music city. There's so many studios, so many great musicians.

Music is in the air. You walk down the street

and you hear every kind of music, not just country.

It's rock and jazz and singer-songwriter, whatever.

It's all there. It's kind of exhilarating.

It's about the only place left. There's nothing going on in New York,

nothing going in Los Angeles, in America.

The music industry has culminated into Nashville.

Everything is geared to music in the town, so it's a logical place to go and do it.

I've made a lot of friends there and there's a great social scene.

You go out jamming with bands and it's fun.

The standard of playing everywhere you go is just phenomenal.

The house is full of people, wanting to hear rock.

So they timidly asked us, 'would you fancy sitting in?'

I said, 'I thought you'd never ask!'

We were there like a shot.

Let's hear it for Don Airey everybody!

And Mr. Roger Glover from Deep Purple!

Roger and Don came to Nashville to record with Bob Ezrin.

You guys worked every day and you still came out to shows

to hang and you still came out to play.

And I'm fairly certain I'm speaking for the entire room

when I say this: I'll never forget these shows as long as I live.

Yeah, guys, thank you very, very, very much.

We're honoured to call you friends,

but it's also an honour to play music with you. Thank you very much.

There's only one reason why we're here and you're looking at them.

These people on stage - what a band.

Aren't they great? Aren't they great?

The great Roger Glover got up on stage, and I could see grown men

with tears streaming down their face.

Seeing something they've grown up with,

seeing the guy who wrote it.

Playing it, and playing it like there's no tomorrow.

He didn't hang back Rog... He never does.

Roger Glover, Don Airey, Deep Purple! Welcome!

Guys, thank you very much!

There are very few places still left that are like this.

This is like stepping back in time

to when every pub in England,

Scotland, Wales had a rock band.

And that's how we played in the 60s. And that's still happening here.

Rehearsals and Writing over. it's finally time for Purple to begin recording the album.

They're moving across town to one of the best studios in the world.

We've done enough albums in weird places, basements of houses,

eleventh-century castles, backrooms of whatever.

For us, I think, it was important this time

that we got a really good sound to the album.

Forget the songs, the sound had to be important as well.

Short of Abbey Road, I can't think of another studio

that has the dimensions and the quality of what we found in Nashville

at the Tracking Room. And for what we're doing

the Tracking Room is even better than Abbey Road

because it's a liver room. And it's even bigger, not as tall,

but it's a bigger room.

One of the things we talked about, as we did it the last time,

we'll get these very properly arranged takes

and get it exactly as we rehearsed it.

And then we'll do some go crazy takes for Paice.

And that's what we did the last time, and I just took the best bits of those, right?

We can do the double bass drum then.

I'd like to hear what it sounds like. - Oh, I think it'll be cool!

When you're working with a band like Deep Purple,

one of the great things about them is the excitement of them playing together.

So we intentionally create a situation in this studio where they can.

They're on the floor together,

we don't cut bass and drums and then add a guitar.

Everybody plays, everybody hears everybody, they see each other.

I really like that. There's something kind of magical about

having the excitement of the moment captured when everybody's playing together.

When you perform live, you feed off each other.

You're not just thinking of your own part,

you hear someone else doing something and you support it.

It's a good process, it's an experimental process if you like.

Here we go!

Ladies and gentlemen, let's make a rock record!

Right, everybody there? - Yeah!

Fantastico.

That was really good. Really good take all round.

Paice, that was really good, a really good take.

Love that. Love that, too.

I love, I love whatever happened there on the ending. That was great!

I think what Bob Ezrin was trying to do

He said, 'I want to capture the sound of four lads playing.'

Well, four lads in our 60s, here we are!

Capturing it in its moment of creation, that's it.

Not trying to do it eighteen times. First two or three takes,

everything comes from that where they're still thinking freely,

and you just go for the best one you've got. Perfect? No. But perfect, yes.

Okay, it all sounds really good and everyone’s playing really well.

So let me ask you a question. Do you guys have one more of these in you?

Oh, I have very many more. - Okay.

Paice, fills everywhere! Just play with the band, you've got your safe track.

Okay, thank you.

Slaving over one track for three or four days,

in the end you go mad, and it usually ends up a crappy track

just because you're so bored of it.

If he's in the control room and he's nodding his head and shaking it,

he'll go, 'got it, move on.' He won't let you mess around.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's my Deep Purple. I love that. Good? - Frightening.

Good, it's supposed to be time for bedlam, it's supposed to be frightening.

Beautiful. Okay, onwards and upwards.

Great playing by the way, Don. - Nice sounding, boys, this is good.

I could listen to some of these things over and over again.

They're amazing, amazing players.

But they have this kind of ensemble understanding

that maintains the Deep Purple sound.

They've got all the textures and dynamics in which the music is routed.

This is a group of amazing musicians.

Just like impeccable amazing musicians.

Every one of them is a virtuoso on his instrument,

and they're all brilliant. They're crazy, but in a wonderful way.

And when you put them all together, you end up with this exciting, dramatic,

but virtuosic kind of performance.

The personalities are very different, but very complimentary.

So you have one of everything you need here,

not just in terms of who plays what instruments,

but in terms of who's the stubborn one, who's the easy going one,

who is the intense one, who's the happy one.

It's like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, isn't it, slightly?

Except they're very tall.

It was during the recording of their last album. at the same studios.

when they learned that one of the founding fathers of Deep Purple.

Jon Lord. had lost his battle with cancer.

He'd been ill for a long time, we knew it was going to happen.

But it was still a shock.

Right before he died, he was emailing me about playing on the Concerto.

Thank God I got to do it, thank God I got to share that with him.

We came here actually and started the record and he sent us all an email,

saying, 'wish you well, I'm terribly jealous,

I wish I was there, but can't be of course.' It was very charming.

We were a week or so into the recording when Paice,

Paice and Jon are married twins, so they're brothers-in-law

Paice came to us and he said, 'by the way, Jon's not doing too well,

he's back in hospital.' Oh dear, no, really?

Right after that he died. We were doing our session in here.

I was twenty feet away when Paice told me.

I let them all know, and it was just

twenty minutes of reflection and, you know, the sadness of it.

It went all quiet for a bit. And then somebody started breaking the ice,

'Do you remember that time when Jon And it was all about the humorous side of Jon.

Then the funny stories started to come out. Jon was a great raconteur.

He could tell a joke with the best professional comedian in the world.

And we ended up laughing our heads off.

The atmosphere lifted and you felt Jon's spirit come right into the room. it was brilliant.

We brought him back to life in the studio for our own peace of mind, you know.

I What is wrong with your nose? - I don't know. I don't know.

I What is wrong with your nose?

I I don't know. I don't know.

Is that spontaneous enough for you?

One of the nicest guys I've ever met. He was an all-round gentleman.

I couldn't say enough good things about him.

Alright, chaps. Here we go, this one's for real.

Everybody quiet.

Go ahead.

Oh, what the hell Okay, stop!

No, when Don does that, it goes right over the click.

And I can't hear the click and he stops. Just don't play a solo with a track.

Every time we come to the solos, it's losing.

Because everybody’s starting to get taken over by the looseness of the solos.

Right. it just feels a little bit lifeless overall to me.

It doesn't have the energy that it had at rehearsals.

Maybe that's just cause we're tired, maybe it's because

Maybe we're just taking it out by thinking about it too much.

We were playing it much slower, actually in rehearsal.

It's two beats down. - It's two beats down which might be more powerful.

I know it's counter intuitive, everybody’s trying to push it ahead.

But I wonder if we slowed it down a little bit. - Let's try it!

I wonder if we can get some of that majesty back.

That's what I'm missing.

Let's take it to 106, one zero six.

If it doesn't work, just stop us. - For sure! One more time.

You know sometimes the best stuff comes as a result of dynamic tension.

I say to my students sometimes,

'What happens when you're flying a kite and you let go off the strings?'

They say, 'it flies away,' and I say, 'no, it doesn't, it falls to earth.'

The thing that keeps the kite flying is the resistance on the string

and the person on the other side that's trying to hold it back.

So having a push and a pull about things is sometimes creatively very productive.

There's a certain frisson, shall I say, to recording

that when you don't really know the piece and you have to record it,

you're all a bit on edge and everybody's watching everybody else.

And you pick up a bit of momentum. That's half the secret - pressure.

There are disagreements.

Never heated in the way they would have been in the past,

but if something is not gelling, then words are said.

But they're not said in an angry way.

They're said in a way that's, 'lets fix this,' you know.

We don't have any polite veneers.

Being a British band, there is a polite veneer, just culturally.

But what I mean is, everybody will just say what they think

There's no filters there, everybody's pretty vocal.

So it's a much more grown up way of doing it.

Somebody getting irate and storming off out of the room,

whacking each other over the head,

that doesn't solve any problems in the long term anyway.

It's a decent take. but neither the band. nor Bob. are completely happy with it.

I like the slower.

I like it slower.

But how about the track, Bob?

I think, it sits, but the problem is,

that everybody tries to get ahead of it. So this is a tough one, this one.

It's harder than it seems.

So, you guys, take the other dudes down,

just really lock in the two of you.

Because when you're sitting, it swings and it's beautiful.

Yeah, we know when it's right, and then you know when it's gone.

And the minute it goes, then you lose your energy,

you lose your concentration and all that stuff.

What are you putting up there? - A 57.

Thank you very much. Okay, lets just take ten minutes.

The character of the band has maybe changed, but the spirit hasn't.

There's a spirit in Deep Purple, there's a spirit of freedom

And we try to challenge ourselves all the time.

I saw that when they were playing live,

and I went to talk to them about doing the album.

When they started to jam in the middle of their show,

the whole audience got out of their seats, they started dancing in the aisles,

turning round and it was so moving and powerful and impressive.

I knew at that moment that's what I wanted to capture on their recording.

Working with Bob he said, 'I'd like to hear you just stretch out

and play as you used to do and play as you do on stage.'

And it was like somebody opened a door,

we went through it and it was just like the old days.

That's a much better track, right? Well done, lads, okay, good.

There was this cool interplay that we had going on in the take,

I walked in on this morning? During the verse

I thought when you mentioned it, I thought I'd better not do that again, then

You know, your normal manner of speaking! - It's funny because it's true.

The take that you walked in on this morning was at 107, this is at 108.

It was just rhythmically, it was like - Can we go play that, please?

Like Ron Wood and Keith Richards doing slightly different rhythm things.

It's those little scoops. It's those little scoops.

And in the F sharp part too there's a little tiny

I think your first solo's great.

I think the second solo you could do a little bit better.

It's a little reminiscent of the first.

We want to redo your solos on this

or lift the one out of the 107

and see if we can push it into, squeeze it into the 108.

That was a great one. That we just time adjusted there.

Actually, if you just keep it at 107, you'll find it'll just fit exactly in.

Because you were rushing?

It's taken ten days to record the basic album tracks.

The next step is overdubs. where solos are finessed and fixes are made.

The first time we actually play the song complete is live in the studio here.

People make mistakes, they might be out of tune,

or then we change the arrangements Various things happen like that.

Mainly I'm worried about my sound now, I'm trying to get the sound I want to hear.

When the band was here, get it down...

Because I don't want to keep them waiting.

But usually it's just repair work. You missed a bit of the riff or something

and you can pop in and put it back.

There's always pressure when you're in a recording studio, yeah.

And we're all feeling it after two weeks rehearsal

and ten days recording.

I'm a bit frazzled. Mind you that could be the margaritas.

Lovely girl.

Both of them.

Okay. So Steve's in a mood to play lead guitar.

So let's put a lead guitar in this puppy. How about that?

Fantastico.

When you get to the modulation and it starts to really take off,

I like it when it gets a little crazy. And you can be repetitive on stuff.

There can be moments where you can hang up on a figure

or a note and repeat yourself. Sometimes that's very effective.

Okay.

Bob is super cutting to the chase.

No more polite, 'no, you're doing this, this and this.'

It's very much like, 'you now do something different. Surprise me.'

'Don't play like yourself, that's what he was saying.

He knows what he's going to get if he gives me a solo. So, yeah,

I'm trying to play not like me. It's harder than it looks.

I think the last bar, maybe, it lost it's way a little bit.

When you go

I would've stayed on that for a while and given yourself some runway

for a nice big melodic Steve ending. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. I mean, shit, I can edit it and make it sound like I want it,

but let’s just try and get that section.

Oh, okay!

You got it, just give me that good last note. Okay, we got it!

Hey, I've got an idea. If we use that high note,

Yes? - just use the slide and get a smooth...

Love that! Oh, that's great!

I love it even with the squeak.

That one.

Love the squeak. - Hope they can take that out.

No, I love the squeak. - But there's a big bonk after.

Oh, the bonk, yeah, don't worry the book's gone.

I've spent fifty years of my life playing with a twisting motion

which allows me to mute these upper strings with my finger

and the lower strings with the heel of my hand

and create a little arch in there where I can pick the string

and let it ring and really have good control

and great leverage for jumping across strings, doing string pickings, string arpeggios

and always with the alternate picking, very intense.

But over the last couple of years it's gotten to a critical point

that some of the bones have advanced osteoarthritis

from playing like this,

thousands of notes everyday for 50 years.

So I'm just kind of dealing with that. It's very painful to practice that way,

so I've been trying to change my technique to this way.

I'm actually supposed to be wearing this.

It's like a cast, to keep from aggravating it anymore.

But I can't really play. I don't think I could record very accurately with it.

I'm still redoing my technique.

So everyday when I go home to practice, I don't practice this way anymore.

It hurts too much, but I practice this way with a real thin pick

for as long as I can. And then I put the cast on

and try finger picking like this

and just try to find positions where I can keep on playing.

It's son of like a huge, huge crossroads in my life, you know.

Going from something you've really took for granted, you know

I always took for granted whatever it was, I could just play it.

And now it's a different deal, you know.

Now I've got to adjust.

During a night of recording

Bob thinks he's discovered some future rock stars to one day rival Purple.

I went to a hockey game.

And in Nashville they have music between periods.

And I looked up, it was like this group of little shrimp boats,

little kids, they were playing really powerful rock!

And the drummer was an 11 year old girl who was no more than 4ft 10.

This tiny, little girl who was just pounding the skins and playing so well.

She’s just grooving, just having a great time. - She's not thinking at all!

After the song I asked, 'Who are these kids?'

And they said, 'well, they're the school of rock kids.'

And I said, 'how would you like to bring them to the studio

to meet the members of Deep Purple?'

I love it!

I love it!

You got it, that's it!

But I - No, there's no but, there's a whole bunch of kids here to meet you.

Okay, sorry. - Come on!

So we set them up with drums, bass and guitar

and let them play 'Smoke on the Water' for Deep Purple!

If you want extra boost during the solo, just hit this.

That bass was on 'The Wall', that bass was used on 'The Wall'.

It's been on Peter Gabriel's first solo record,

it's been on Rod Stewart, it's been on Deep Purple,

it's been on all kinds of stuff.

I love bringing kids into the studio, I like that energy.

You gotta look at her, though!

You're struggling so hard to be great.

Then you have these kids come in who are forty or fifty years your junior

You begin to realise, wow, what we've done all these years

is that important.

Come on in, guys, that was amazing!

I mean we're all giving up right now. This is it!

You've successfully ended our careers as of this moment.

Was that really you playing? - Yes, sir! - That was incredible.

She's got the right temperament and she's got a great ear.

And for whatever reason she's actually got technique.

I don't get how that works after three years on the kit.

That's nuts! But the most important thing for her is to keep playing all the time.

It's all that we all did. We just played and played and played.

That's the only reason they got as good as they were.

Because the music was everything to them.

One of the biggest riffs the band have been working on

has become the song 'Birds of Prey'.

We had a writing session in Portugal

We'd been working all day on some complicated thing.

It wasn't really swinging or hanging together.

Paice came up and he said, 'got any riffs?'

And I said, 'how about this?'

That's what I had.

It's a pretty monumental riff, and it just happened to coincide with something

that when we started working with Bob in Nashville,

he said, 'I want some space.

I want a big, slow groove going on, something like

something like that,' and I went: ah! That riff would fit perfectly over that.

Almost, right? - I'm still working on the voice lead.

Okay, no problem. Take your time, it's beautiful.

Take your time and make it a part you can remember.

Because I will be asking you to double it.

That's gorgeous. So I want you to double it. I'll bring you the instrument.

Here you go!

Cause Ian Gillan always calls guitar players banjo players. He does!

Never mind it as a joke.

I want you to double it, let's double it with the Fender.

Let's get something high and bell like.

That's nice!

Alright, that's beautiful!

Stop, stop, stop, stop.

Just stay with it, be patient.

Stay with it, just keep playing that beautiful top note.

Stay on it until you can't stand to be on it any longer. And then go. - I did.

We've got lots of noodle leads all the way, lots and lots,

but we don't have moments like that. One more time.

Yes!

That's great.

That's all good.

Oh, he's lost it, okay, stop.

He recovered!

That's really good, too. I love that.

That's just great.

That's amazing.

Okay, we're good, we're good.

I wanted to give you some long notes. - That's beautiful.

You gave me so much to work with. That's fantastic.

And he thinks he sucks, that's the most amazing part of it.

Amazing. He's phenomenal.

You do have to put a lot of faith and trust in Bob.

I wouldn't be walking away from this

not having finished copies of everything I've done

or even finished compilations.

But I just know there's enough there where he can

We just did this solo, he's like, 'just give me an ending on that',

and I didn't even listen for a playback.

I just trust him that much.

And that's it. It's all she wrote.

Steve Morse, you're fired! Get out!

Alright. I can do stuff at home, remember.

What part of that was great, don't you get?

I'm sure you're going to listen through to some of the stuff,

and you're going to be like, 'can you do this again, man?'

No, you did it great, you did it great.

I really hope that he knows what he is doing. But he does.

You're amazing, man! Sorry for all the homework.

The only musicians left in the studio now are Roger and Don.

But just as he's warming up for his solo overdubs.

Don gets a surprise call from his son.

My son Colin loves coming out on tour.

And he came out with his girlfriend and said, 'keep Wednesday free.'

And I thought he wanted to do the Nashville tour

because he's very into Johnny Cash and Elvis and the Sun Studios.

And I thought he wanted to go to RCA studio too.

So I thought, well, that will be good.

So he let me know he'd got engaged when he arrived,

and I said, 'so have you set a date,' and he said, 'yeah, Wednesday.'

I said, 'which Wednesday, this Wednesday?'

They'd booked a place out in Tennessee at a farm and out we went.

There's not many times in your life you get to do something like this.

An ad hoc wedding, out of nowhere in the middle of nowhere!

Roger gave the bride away.

I took pictures.

My other son Mike was best man. It was wonderful. It came as a surprise.

Here ended the keyboards. Fuck that.

You are done, my friend. Wonderful, well done.

Is that a new world record today?

Pretty much. - 85 overdubs in 4 hours, that's not bad.

He did really well, didn't he?

The last man standing at the studio. Well. sitting. is Roger Glover.

It's early morning and I'm going to do a few repairs

and then I'm done with this album.

Looking forward to the next stage, I get together with Ian Gillan.

So he and I will go to, I think we're going to Toronto to do the vocals.

Then it will be done, and then I'll know what the shape is.

They all went out to Toronto on the Lake Ontario shoreline

Almost two months after Nashville.

Gillan and Glover have come to Bob Ezrin's home city

to transform the eleven tracks into complete songs.

We look for stories in songs.

And this was a story song that's now called 'Johnny's band'.

And it's the beginning, the middle and the end of a typical band.

They come from nowhere, achieve great success and then they fall apart, get old

and then they're playing in the pub by the end of their life.

Rog and I have brainstorming sessions,

we sit and play the music over and over again.

Hundreds of song titles,

phrases, conversations over coffee and beer and just going, 'how does that fit?'

Ian and I either together or individually come up with ideas

that fit on top as if it was written as a song first,

and then the band performed it.

And that's a big challenge. I don't know many bands that do that.

I don't know any bands that do that really.

I don't know any bands. I don't know how other bands work.

Gillan's always been the same. He comes out of left field with ideas.

His fun with words, the way he likes to mess round with words.

Sometimes it's a double entendre, sometimes it's just very abstract.

Sometimes his lyric's like trying to do a crossword puzzle.

It's so obtuse and so locked-in his psyche,

you have to work him out. Roger brings an element of sanity to that.

Between the two of them they usually end up with something rather nice.

We spend most of the time trying to figure out

what the message of the song is or what's the target of the song,

or what the feeling of the track is what does it suggest.

When we were kids and we started writing,

it always used to be, 'what does this music remind you of?

What does it make you think about?'

A thunderstorm, or is it the sound of a train going by?

Where in the world does it put you? Does it make you want to dance?

Or does it make you want to think? Or go to sleep? Or whatever.

So all of those things, it's got to be compatible with the mood of the song.

And that puts you in the frame to start with,

and you just get the fucker surrounded really until you nail it down.

Yeah, I like that.

I think it's great. - Yeah, it's going to work great. - It will work.

The song we've been working on today has gone through a metamorphosis.

It was always a bit of a jokey song about a bad relationship,

but it's actually taken on a whole new character now.

It's become much more vicious.

'You moan about me staying up and drinking with the boys,

cranking up my rock and roll, making all that noise.

You think you would be better off without me, but in your heart you know that it's not true.

Cause you want me, you need me. Just look at it this way,

you've got me, babe, but all I've got is you.'

I love that, I love it!

Actually it comes from something Ian Paice says a lot to various members of the band.

He says, 'look at it this way, you've got me and all I've got is you!'

And he's been saying that for decades.

And so that suddenly came to us as we were writing this.

That could be a good theme for a song.

In all the years I've been recording and making records with Purple,

I've probably had about half a dozen words to all the lyrics.

So I'd go, 'what about that word?' And they'd go, 'yeah, that'll work.'

He walks out of the kitchen and goes, motorised'.

Write that down, that'll be two shillings'. That's what he says.

A man's got to make a living, you know.

And he claims that he's In this instance, it's just one of his humorous little lines

that he's come up with. That has been mostly forgotten

because he's said it that many times.

But it is very funny, and he's a very funny guy.

But no, he doesn't, he's an annoying fuck actually.

I like everything except, I'm not crazy about the end of this verse.

'Drinking with the boys,' I love it,

'cranking up my rock and roll,' but then, 'making all that noise,'

is just a throw away line for me.

Like 'noise' referring to the riff. - 'Making all that noise.'

Okay. Well, in that case I like that, that's a good idea.

It's okay. It's not killing me.

This is kind of our punch line, right, because we go into the chorus here.

I want to just throw these last two lines out and think about something else.

'Drinking with the gang,' would be alright. 'Drinking with the gang,'

but 'drinking with the lads, drinking with the boys' is - I'd say the guys.

Drinking with the guys - Try that on for size. It's a switch.

Yes! Yes! That's a great last line, 'try that on for size,' right?

That's great, 'you moan and groan about me, staying up and drinking with the guys.'

What if I bring them home instead? Try that on for size.

It's just something that happened and went, 'yes, that's it!'

That is good. Okay, that I like.

'How about I bring them home instead, try that one on for size.'

That was great.

So yeah, we went through it today a bit. It's not always like that.

Sometimes it just flows easy.

Watch me for cue, go ahead.

I'm really happy with this one. I actually like it better than the last one.

Because I think the writing has grown up in a way,

and they're getting more sophisticated if that's even possible,

but more harmonically, melodically sophisticated.

The lyrics are fantastic, they're telling stories

They've been doing that for years,

but I think now there's a kind of maturity and a wisdom

and a sense of humor and a rock,

just balls out rock personality to this thing.

People are going to love this record. It's the best Purple in a very long time.

Deep Purple's 20th studio album 'Infinite' is now complete.

Could this be their last album?

This is a great time to have your 'swan song'

and be proud.

Let's just celebrate what we've done,

but that’s just me.

I have no intentions of stopping, but I don't know.

It's funny when you start knocking on a bit and you think

I walk down the street,

every now and again and I hear a clang on the pavement behind me

and something else has dropped off,

but nothing absolutely essential so far, so it's working pretty good.

When you've got guys in their 70s and late 60s touring

and just, but then again there's an X Factor,

they're British. What is it about the British?

They're like the Energiser bunnies, they don't ever stop, you know.

I think if a bus hit us head on, there would only be one fatality - me!

The other guys would be like, 'did you feel something? Huh. Where's the tea?'

Personally I hope this isn't our last album.

I thought the last one was the last one.

I didn't think we'd have another crack at one.

Purple, they keep coming up with new stuff all the time.

They keep finding ways to express ideas

that are still strong to them after all these years.

They still venture out and do new kinds of music.

And so I would hope they keep making records,

at least until they get bored, then they should go and relax.

We love what we do, so it's difficult to say, 'well, let's end it.'

I think that will evolve with time and I think dignity will play it's part.

There will probably come a point when one of us will get too ill

and can't carry on.

I have aches and pains, but they're not musically creative ones, you know.

They don't affect what I have to try and do on stage.

I understand with the Steve thing, where he's actually got bones rubbing together.

Steve's trying to do everything he can to alleviate that, but it's not easy.

I know the reason I'm real anxious to do this album

while I can I guess.

Steve made a lovely statement.

He said, 'I want to be the last guitarist in Deep Purple.

I may not have been the first, but I want to be the last.'

Still largely ignored by mainstream media.

Deep Purple are probably the World's biggest underground band.

They continue to play sold-out shows across the planet.

Kids are turning up to see us, you know.

It's just a sea of 18 year olds when we go out.

You can see they're absolutely wrapped by it, like that.

How the hell did I get involved in this amazing music?

I'm just a simple songwriter, simple bass player

and yet this music is so powerful and complicated and unpredictable.

And here I am part of it and here I am part of it nearly 50 years later.

That's pretty unbelievable to me.

I have feelings for Ritchie, I have feelings for all the guys that have been in the band.

They're tough guys, they're humorous guys,

they're great characters. And so Deep Purple is my family.

We do something in our format of music that nobody else does and maybe can't do.

So when it does end, there'll be a great void for a lot of people.

Whatever the future for Deep Purple. the band can rest assured

that they have created a legacy of music that will carry on into infinity.