Deep Purple Feature: PART ONE
Formed in February 1968, Roundabout, as they were originally known, was the brainchild of former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis. A Merseybeat group whose cover of ‘Sweets For My Sweet’ by The Drifters gave them a Number 1, by 1967 the psychedelic explosion had left Curtis itching to do something new. He’d already had a hit – ‘Let’s Go To San Francisco’ – under the alias of The Flowerpot Men. Now he wanted more. As Jon Lord recalls, Curtis had “this very off the wall idea.” Namely, that he, Lord and a dazzling new guitarist named Ritchie Blackmore should form the nucleus of a band “that other musicians could jump on and off.” Hence, the Roundabout: “a lovely, psychedelic sort of idea.”
Leicestershire-born Lord was a 26-year-old classically-trained, jazz-loving keyboardist and in-demand session musician (he played piano on ‘You Really Got Me’ by The Kinks) who had toured with The Flowerpot Men. Born in Weston Super Mare, in 1945, Ritchie Blackmore was 10 when his father bought him a guitar and paid for classical lessons. A gifted student, Blackmore soon began playing in semi-pro outfits like the 2I’s Coffee Bar Junior Skiffle Group. By 17, he was recording his first single under the aegis of Screaming Lord Sutch: ‘Train Kept-A-Rollin’’, and then soon after with The Outlaws, who released numerous singles and toured backing US stars like Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent. It was then that Blackmore perfected his flint-eyed, Man In Black image. “We were a bit mad,” he recalled. “We’d play at places and really smash them up. We got a lot of bills and not many return bookings.”
By 1967, Blackmore was living in Hamburg, determined to try something different. When the offer to join Roundabout came, he was ready. When Curtis then got cold feet and dropped out, Jon and Ritchie decided to take bassist Nick Simper, hurriedly recruited vocalist Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice (the latter poached from small-time London outfit The Maze) on a string of “practise dates” in Denmark. They also decided to change the name. Ritchie’s suggestion: Deep Purple. The title of an old Nino Tempo soul tune, not everyone was convinced but Deep Purple it stayed. The first of many such occasions when Blackmore would get his way despite what the others thought.
Another idea of Ritchie’s was to record an old Joe South number called ‘Hush’ as their first single: a short, snappy soul tune Purple extended into a rock jam based around a 90-second Hammond solo from Lord. Released in the UK in May 1968, it did nothing. However, it took off in the U.S. where it became a Top 5 smash, selling more than a million copies. Their first album, Shades Of Deep Purple – recorded during the same non-stop 48-hour session that produced ‘Hush’ – quickly followed. And so a pattern was established: the band concentrating on America, where cover version singles such as ‘Emmerata’, ‘Kentucky Woman’ and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ were all Top 40 singles, followed by the Top 20 U.S. album The Book Of Taliesyn and, in 1969, the eponymously titled Deep Purple.
Onstage, however, was where the band’s music first took a new, heavier shape. As Lord told Melody Maker, “We’re much louder live than the records would lead you to suppose,” adding that when Purple opened for Cream on their farewell U.S. tour, they were thrown off “because we went down too well.” 
Blackmore was the star of the show. Now he wanted to take the group’s sound even further out, emulating the U.S. success of British contemporaries like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. But first they would need to make some drastic changes. Exit: Evans and Simper. Enter: Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. Gillan was a 25-year-old Londoner who had formed his first group, Jess Thunder and the Moonshiners, when he was just 15. By 1965 he was fronting Episode Six, which also included bassist Roger Glover, who generously introduced Gillan to Blackmore when he found out Purple were looking for a new singer. “When I first heard them I had never been moved musically so much in my life,” said Gillan of his new compadres. “We don’t plan things. People like Jon and Ritchie just play what they want to play. If Ritchie wants to play a 150-bar solo he’ll play it and no one will stop him.”
The same age as Gillan, Roger Glover grew up in a family-owned pub in Brecon, South Wales. He took up guitar, then bass, while studying art at Hornsey College in London, and joined his first band, the Madisons, in 1963. By 1965, they had morphed into Episode Six. When Gillan went for his audition with Purple, Glover tagged along – and ended up in the band too! The new improved ‘MkII’ line-up began with an album straight out of left-field: the neo-classical Concerto For Group And Orchestra, recorded live at London’s Albert Hall, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, in September 1969. Blackmore loathed the experience, dismissing the violinists who “put their fingers in their ears” while he was playing. But the concert was televised and brought the band to the attention of the public for the first time in their homeland. As Lord said, “Controversy is never really a bad thing, and in our case it was a turning point.”