Deep Purple's drummer: How we made the ultimate live album

Telegraph

a day ago

It says rather a lot about the music industry that when Deep Purple travelled to Japan for the first time, in August 1972, the band's members were in economy class while their managers reclined in luxury in the expensive seats at the front of the plane.
For the musicians in cramped quarters, though, time has had the last laugh. While few know the names of the group's managers, Purple's trip became a landmark occasion. As well as establishing them as an evergreen favourite of Japanese audiences, the quintet's three concerts in the Far East – two at the Festival Hall, in Osaka, and one at the sacred Nippon Budokan in Tokyo – heralded the concert record Made in Japan, one of the most revered and enduring live albums in the annals of rock music.
Recorded in unusual circumstances and originally released in December 1972 – remarkably, fewer than three months after the conclusion of the short tour – the LP is being re-released in suitably lavish form. Whereas the original album featured just seven tracks, the new version (remixed by the ubiquitous Steven Wilson) contains 37 songs. Confusingly, the group are calling it a '50th Anniversary Edition'. Last year, they did the same for their studio album Machine Head, which was also released in 1972. From this, I can only conclude that Deep Purple aren't very good at maths.
Asked to explain the appeal of an album that helped set the template for the modern live LP, Ian Paice, the band's drummer, answers without hesitation.
'There's never been a better recorded live show'
'Of its genre, of that type of rock and roll music, there's never been a better recorded live show,' he tells me. 'Simple as that. It's not just listening to what's going on, you can feel the atmosphere … you're there, you're a part of it. And I think that's the magic the album has. If you shut your eyes, you can be with us in the hall.'
On a gloomy Tuesday in the middle of summer, Paice – the only constant member amid the swirl of Deep Purple's numerous line-up changes – speaks to me from a room in his home near Henley-on Thames. Before he's said even a word, the signs that this is a rock star from a more gilded age are on full display. With his laptop positioned at an unusual angle, for one thing, I can see elaborate adornments – ornate cursive, almost, but swirls rather than letters or words – on the high ceiling of what can easily be imagined is a reassuringly plush pile.
'I'll tell you who did that for me,' Paice says. 'It was done years ago by a good friend of ours … Larry Smith [the drummer] from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. He was staying at George Harrison 's place, which is two miles down the road. He had a couple of weeks to kill so I thrust money in his fist, and he laid on his back like Michelangelo and did the ceiling. The contraption [on which he laid] was 16ft or 17ft high. We buggered off on holiday and let him get on with it.'
Upon arrival in Tokyo, Paice recognised the band's digs, at the New Otani Hotel, as being the site of a scene from the James Bond film You Only Live Twice – but that was about it. During their short stay, the quintet encountered food they'd never seen before, and fans who handed them unwieldy packages bearing gifts as they prepared to board trains and aeroplanes.
They also encountered audiences that are guaranteed to bamboozle every Western band visiting Japan for the first time. At the end of each song, venues resonate with cheers and applause that quickly gives way to silence. Not just calm, but perfect pin-drop serenity. By comparison, even Deep Purple's fabled appearance at the Royal Albert Hall, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, seemed noisier than the poll tax riots.
'You think you're doing something wrong,' Paice tells me. 'But after the first night we spoke to one of the local promoters who told us 'this is what we do. Once we've said thank you we wait for you start again without wanting to get in your way'. 'Oh right!' They were incredibly polite. Their whole society is like that, so why would going to a concert be any different? But you have to get your head around it … If you finish the tune and they don't applaud, then you know you've done something wrong.'
'A marriage between four or five people'
Initially, Made in Japan was only intended to be sold in the UK. But when import copies became a sought-after item in the US, at the princely price of $10 for each disc, the album was granted a wider release. This isn't the only thing that makes Made in Japan seem like a curiously perfunctory exercise. Remarkably, the entire LP was recorded using just eight tracks, two of which were for the audience. Unlike many live albums from the 1970s, according to Paice, there aren't even any overdubs.
'Luckily, it didn't need anything else,' he says. 'The sound was just on the tape, which was just us. Once we got through everybody's egos saying that their bit should be a bit louder than everyone else's, we got it right.'
Perhaps inevitably, the intermittently fractious Purple were themselves split on the merits of their influential creation. Keyboard player (the late) Jon Lord agreed with his drummer that the record represented the group at their best; singer Ian Gillan, meanwhile, expressed dissatisfaction at the quality of his vocal performance.
Which isn't surprising. In 1972 alone, Deep Purple performed 127 concerts across three continents. Despite their singer requiring three months' rest and recuperation after contracting hepatitis, in New York City, they also released two albums.
'Back in those days, if a band lasted for four or five years, that was a miracle,' Paice says. 'There aren't very many bands who can get through that first decade. It's very, very difficult. You have to liken it to a marriage between four or five people, not two. The possibilities of it all going terminally bang are much greater. As they often do, and as we have done in the past.'
As it turned out, Deep Purple didn't make it through that first decade. The line-up featured on Made in Japan (already the group's second iteration) lasted just one more year, until the Who Do We Think We Are album, after which Gillan and bassist Roger Glover were replaced by David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes respectively. After disbanding following a famously subpar concert at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, in 1976, Purple returned in 1984 with their classic line-up – completed, of course, by Ritchie Blackmore on guitar – with the Perfect Strangers LP. An appearance at a rain-soaked Knebworth House followed a year later.
'When you're kids, of course, everything is incredibly important,' Paice tells me. 'Even if it's not important, it feels like it is. Later in life you understand that your bandmates might not see the world like you do. And when you're a kid you may have an argument that might come to fisticuffs. But later [in life] you can see it differently. 'That's okay, we disagree, now let's go and play some music.' When you're a kid, that's the last thing that happens. Everything's a problem.'
Holy trinity of British heavy rock
Today, alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple are one third of a Holy Trinity of British heavy rock bands. On this very subject, in fact, Paice offers a reminiscence of the last time he saw Ozzy Osbourne, 20-odd years ago in the Swiss skiing town of Zermatt. With drinks having been taken, the Prince of Darkness suggested the three bands undertake a world tour in which each played for just 20 minutes a night. The money would be so outstanding, he reasoned, that they'd only have to do it the one time.
The idea came to naught, of course, and now it's moot. But on the day that Osbourne was laid to rest, Paice tells me that 'I think our generation of musicians is at the age where, when you turn on the news, you almost expect another one of us to have gone … But I will say this about Ozzy: he was a much smarter bloke than a lot of people gave him credit for. His persona of this bat-eating maniac had nothing to do with the truth at all.'
He adds that Osbourne 'was much more of a cerebral man than people painted him as. He was very clever. He was thinking of stuff all the time.'
There is a difference between the three bands, though. While in the 21st century Sabbath and Zeppelin have managed to harvest an army of younger listeners, overwhelmingly Deep Purple's audience has been by their side for decades. For all their musical accomplishments, the group's legacy has not been very strategically marketed.
A win-win situation
But that may be about to change. In the wake of the first trailer for the keenly awaited fifth and final series of Stranger Things, unveiled last month, the internet was aflame with people enquiring about the identity of the loud song featured in the clip. The answer: an enhanced version of the Deep Purple classic Child in Time, from 1970.
If the effect of this anointment by television's hottest show is anything like that enjoyed by Kate Bush, whose 1986 single Running Up That Hill appeared in season four, Purple might be about to tap into the youth market for the first time in half a century.
'That's the real value of these things being taken and put in front of massive, massive audiences,' is the drummer's view. 'They're hearing something that they would never have looked for themselves, so that's a win-win situation. Occasionally stuff gets put in a TV show or a movie and you find that the record royalties take a little upward leap the next time round, and there's nothing wrong with it.'
How much was he paid by Netflix? 'I haven't got a clue,' he shrugs. 'Somewhere in the future I'll get a piece of paper saying you've got this or you owe this.'
Whether or not their audience changes, the band themselves will keep (space) truckin'. Despite their drummer being afraid to turn on the news lest he learn that he's just died, this most resolute of national institutions aren't done yet. Not only do they plan to return to the road, but there's even talk of heading back to Japan, the country which provided the setting for a live album that helped cement a reputation that endures today.
'I think we've said no to a farewell tour so often that it would be very difficult to now say yes,' Paice tells me. 'I generally have a feeling that when we play our last concert, no one will know that it's our last concert. I think that's the reality of it. Financially it's a ludicrous decision, and I'm not saying it won't happen, but my gut feeling is that one day one or two people [in the band] will just say, I don't want to do it anymore. And that'll just be it.'