Farewell Jon Lord July 19, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Culture.trackback
First album I ever bought was Deepest Purple. That and an Horslips compilation. And I loved those albums. I really did. And although I never quite loved Purple subsequently as much as I did Sabbath and Zeppelin (and in that order too) I always liked them enormously. Deep Purple In Rock and Machine Head are albums that have stayed with me over the years, particularly the somewhat less well known songs such as Flight of the Rat and Pictures of Home.
So I was genuinely sad to hear of Jon Lord’s passing. He was a very very good musician and his keyboard and organ skills underpinned many a Purple track that would have been the lesser for their absence.
And if there was something fairly pretentious about the rock/classical crossover he sought to create, well at least he was pushing the envelope in the context of the time.
But here is a track, an instrumental, that he made his own (though Ritchie Blackmore did a good job of taking it back at the end – natch!).
I liked all those late sixties and early seventies British Rock groups like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Free, Humble Pie and Led Zeppelin. They had a funky blues feel that the later waves of metal bands never had. I guess it stemmed from their knowledge and love of American blues, jazz and R&B. I lost any interest in hard rock music when it became disconnected from black music.
There is something in that. Those bands weren’t afraid to play with jazz and blues form (famously Sabbath’s manager had a jazz connection).
I think we had a similar discussion regarding NWOBHM, which i didn’t like much because I felt it lacked, as per Chet above, a variety of influences.
It’s frankly difficult to take advice on the NWOBHM from people who never did a day’s devil worship in their life.
Damn right.
If you were into Humble Pie, you should check out a rather brilliant piece on them on the And What Will Be Left Of Them site. AWWBLOT is full of interesting stuff actually on music, politics, TV and generally zeitgeisty stuff from the seventies.
Every greasy- haired amateur guitarist at seventies parties thought they could play ‘Smoke on the Water’. Enough to put a person off DP for 40 years.
And that’s the live version off the riff we’re talking about.
When it comes to the Devils music I will take the blues over NWOBHM any day.
Even when I played in a Punk group it was one of the first riffs we played (or could play)! I’m surprised a Punk version was never recored.
deeply sad … there are few better things than Mandrake Roots
Excellent…
Those guitar solos. Hmm. All I can say is that Spinal Tap wasn’t far wide of the mark.
Yes, and Blackmore was in some ways far from the most excessive in that respect.
I was listening to The Stranglers the other night and it made me reflect now much more effective an education in classical music is, for a musician working in another field, if they’re not inclined to put it on display all the time.
You might have a point.