Saturday Morning Records: #32 — Deep Purple "Machine Head"

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Mar 07, 2025

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God, I love Deep Purple. I really really do. Well, did. In that I still do, obviously, but as a teenager they were my band. For the longest time. And I couldn’t quite see why they weren’t as revered as Zeppelin or Cream or even The Who. It’s not a competition, but I thought they were just as strong and stronger than those bands, and, alongside Sabbath, the real blueprint and eternal influence for heavy metal.

OTT - Miscellany

Deep Down With Deep Purple

Simon Sweetman

January 8, 2023

I’ve been thinking about Deep Purple rather a lot lately. Probably thinking about them, more than I’ve been listening to them – but that’s only because I almost felt like I did all of the listening to them between the ages of about 13-23. Seriously, for a decade there I thought that Deep Purple was

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OTT - Miscellany

Several Shades of Deep Purple

Simon Sweetman

December 29, 2017

Of course I knew that Deep Purple had that song Smoke on the Water. I knew that at an early age - before I knew anything else about the band, in fact. And like Stairway to Heaven with Led Zeppelin, it's a song that is a classic - has crossed over to the mainstream - but it's not the best example of the band's magic.

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I also just adore their early work as more of a ‘beat combo’. But of course, like a lot of people my age at least, I really first connected to them through Smoke on the Water which is somewhat played out these days, but still classic too of course.

My copy of Machine Head, the album that houses Smoke and features a lot of the band’s other brilliant, signature material (Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin’) is signed by lead singer, Ian Gillan:

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