Jon Douglas Lord was born in Leicester, England, on June 9, 1941. His first active contact with music was through the family piano, where he took classical music lessons from a very early age. As a teenager he strayed from the path after being subjected to the charms of jazz organ players such as Jimmy Smith and rock n roll piano-playing pioneers such as Jerry Lee Lewis. At 19, a career in acting beckoned, in the shape of a grant from a leading drama school in London. That was the early sixties, and “Swinging London” was just around the corner. Jon began playing in jazz and rhythm and blues “combos” mainly in pub gigs. The first such band to be documented was the Bill Ashton Combo, a jazz group led by its eponymous, sax-playing leader. So much for thespian aspirations, then… In 1963, Jon joined Red Blood and his Bluesicians and acquired his first electric organ. By the next year he occupied the keyboard spot in the seminal Artwoods, led by Art Wood, brother of future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. The Artwoods struggled for the next three years, releasing several singles and EPs and a now highly collectible album titled Art Gallery. Lack of success led to the Artwoods splitting up, after failing a last attempt at cracking the charts under the alias St.Valentine’s Day Massacre. Ronnie Wood then recruited Jon, Twink and Kim Gardner for a short-lived endeavour named Santa Barbara Machine Head who recorded three instrumental tracks that only surfaced on a various artists’ compilation, the band having failed to secure a recording contract. Pop stardom (of sorts) was just around the corner. The Flowerpot Men, a more or less manufactured pop vocal ensemble, had a psychedelic hit and needed a backing band to help them out on the road. They recruited Jon to complete a band consisting of, among others, bassist Nick Simper (future founder member of Deep Purple) and drummer Carlo Little. The Flowerpot Men’s backing band was called, appropriately enough in those pre-ironic times, The Garden. Then came Chris Curtis and Deep Purple. Between 1968 and 1976 Purple was one of the world’s most popular and creative bands, with Jon occupying a pivotal role both in the studio and onstage, through every permutation of the band’s line up. In between albums and tours, he found time for quite a bit of classically themed solo work, with albums such as The Gemini Suite and First of the Big Bands. When Purple split in 1976, he delivered his finest solo work to date in the shape of the Sarabande album. Shortly after, Jon formed Paice Ashton Lord with Purple drummer Ian Paice and longtime friend and musical collaborator the late, great Tony Ashton. After one album, Malice in Wonderland, PAL split up and Jon went to Whitesnake. During Whitesnake’s down time, Jon guested on albums by Cozy Powell, Graham Bonnet and others, and released another excellent solo album, Before I Forget. Then came Deep Purple’s reformation. Between 1984 and the present, Purple’s career has been a roller coaster ride of six studio albums, literally thousands of live concerts all over the world, five different line ups and album sales in excess of 150 million units. Jon found time to write and record the highly personal ‘Pictured Within’ album and eventually retired from Deep Purple in 2002 to concentrate on his solo work, playing with Deep Purple for the last time in Ipswich, England, on 19th September 2002. That was a highly emotional night, one that signified a new chapter in the careers of both Deep Purple and Jon Lord. “I’m going to have myself a long and vibrant solo career,” Jon said that night, and he’s set his sights on fulfilling that promise. Since then he’s dotted his energies across shows in Australia, Europe and Scandinavia, released one solo album and scored a number of new musical pieces. jonlord.org
Deep Purple has surrendered to the ‘Rapture’; now it’s your turn By Jeff Miers The first time I heard Deep Purple – or perhaps felt Deep Purple is a better way to describe the experience – it was the mid-70s. I was 8, and Ritchie Blackmore’s sinewy, sinister riffing on the “Made In Japan” version of “Child In Time,” coupled with Ian Gillan’s dramatic, gorgeous howling, Jon Lord’s ominous neo-classical Hammond organ, and the dynamic interplay of the Roger Glover-Ian Paice rhythm section, tore the top of my head off. It was unlike anything else I’d ever heard. And it quite literally changed my life. 30 years later, I’m still hearing Deep Purple for the first time. “Rapture of the Deep” is the spot-on moniker for the disc you hold in your hands, and I’ll stand on any classic rock radio programmer’s desk in my cowboy boots and scream it loud, proud and Gillan-esque; “This is the best Deep Purple album there is, dammit! Forget ‘Machine Head’ – that was then; this is most decidedly now!” This is the fourth record created by the revamped and rejuvenated Purple following the umpteenth departure of the mercurial Mr. Blackmore. The guitarist – one of the most significant in British rock history - had ceased to be a contributing force and was in fact draining Purple of its collective spirit when his ship finally set sail for good, a bit over a decade back. Blackmore's exit is, in a sense, where our story begins, for the surviving band members left to pick up the pieces in his violent wake – Gillan, Glover, Lord, Paice – agreed unanimously on only one six-stringer, the soon to be knighted Steve Morse. Hardly scraping the dregs from the bottom of the barrel with that choice, boys. Morse accepted, writing commenced for what would become “Purpendicular,” on-stage work-outs were seized upon with relish, and the band breathed the heady air of rebirth. When “Purpendicular” was delivered, it astonished. Rather than going softly into the long goodnight of “classic rock” middle-age, Deep Purple had reinvented itself. It took no more than a cursory listen to the likes of “Ted the Mechanic,” "Loosen My Strings” and “Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming” to drive this point straight into the skull. Morse brought a funkiness, a depth as guitarist and writer, an unparalleled fluidity as a soloist, a startling aptitude as foil to Lord, and an arsenal of influences – country, folk, jazz, what they’ve sadly labeled “fusion,” and an inherent understanding of blues-based riffs – that meshed effortlessly with the immaculate Glover-Paice sense of swing and Gillan’s seeming capacity to go anywhere at any time, full-throated and eyes ablaze. ”Purpendicular” was a celebration of both remembrance and reinvention. It at once acknowledged Purple’s estimable history and tradition, and a musical wanderlust not content to repeat the past. As such, it laid the template for a new Purple. And it all, it seems, was paving the way for the mighty metamorphosis that is “Rapture of the Deep.” With Morse, Purple toured the world to accolades from the cognoscente. “Abandon” cemented the band’s on-stage prowess on record, and reminded us that Purple was, yes indeed, the heaviest of heavy rock bands. “Bananas,” the first record following Lord’s retirement from touring and his replacement by exquisite ivory-tinkler Don Airey, brought elements of pop to the table, grafted on some of “Purpendicular’s” ambition, and encapsulated the ensemble-riff power of “Abandon.” Tours behind both of these albums revealed this still-young band’s continued growth as a performing unit. By the end of the "Bananas" marathon, Airey had marked his apotheosis, from "replacement" to fully-integrated band-member. ”Rapture of the Deep” marks yet another new beginning, however. And it, more than any other record this side of “Perfect Strangers” and “Purpendicular,” offers a snapshot of the band transitioning into bold, uncharted territory. It’s as if all the pieces fit, not for the first time, of course, but in a manner that reveals a more pure portrait of just what this band is capable of. The whole transcends the sum of its parts, which is fitting for a record that seems to be, in a very real sense, about transcendence. ”As we all know, it’s hard to breathe/When something spiritual has taken place/We don’t know how, we don’t know why/We’ve been transported to a state of grace,” sings Gillan during the album’s title track, and this verse can be seen as indicative of the over-arching ethos behind “Rapture of the Deep.” Lyrically, it speaks of a spirit not content with the status quo in terms of interpersonal, social and political relationships, and this irreverent yearning is matched by the searching nature of the music itself, which also refuses to be ordinary. The album opens with “Money Talks,” a hook-heavy rocker with several twists in its tale, most notably Gillan’s harmony vocals during the chorus, his uber-hip sing-speak during the verses – recalling both “Fireball’s” “No One Came” and his own “No Laughing In Heaven” – and the manner in which the tune flirts with an Eastern modality before erupting into a searing Morse solo. “Wrong Man” slaps the listener in the face straight out of the gate with a strutting riff that can’t miss, as Glover and Paice exploit the pocket for all it’s worth, and Gillan kicks against the pricks in the voice of a character whose greatest crime seems to be having been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Both of these – like their siblings on “Rapture,” elegant and refined rockers steeped in blues and chomping at the bit, with names like “Back To Back,” “Girls Like That” and the hit single in waiting “Don’t Let Go” – are brilliant Purple tunes, estuaries from a river that never seems to run too dry. Ah, but the surprises… they’re many and varied here, and they elevate “Rapture” toward the rapturous upper echelons of the Purple canon. “Before Time Began” takes the form of a threatening march, an abscess dying to burst. Paice offers a dark subterranean shuffle, as the band lays down a series of melancholic chords, and Gillan, in a voice drenched in pathos, bemoans a world in which “Every day of my life I discover/Someone murdering my sisters and brothers/In the name of some god or another.” No mere political polemic, this, however; Gillan’s touch is too light, and he’s a master of “leaving things out,” so that his lyric is suggestive, rather than mere vitriol. “All of those bad ideas became the law/And we’ve forgotten what we’re looking for.” Indeed. And again, the Purple engine room is in full overdrive mode here, as an expansive call-and-response between Morse and Airey - who has made replacing Lord look easy, when we all know it is in fact far from it; Airey has made his mark on Purple, to be sure, by respecting what came before him and having the fortitude and chops to take it all somewhere new and exciting - leaves one feeling breathless and vulnerable. This is “progressive rock” in the most positive sense of that much-maligned term. The centerpiece of “Rapture” also happens to be one of the finest tunes in the band’s history – no small claim, that. “Clearly Quite Absurd” is clearly quite sublime; a piece with a melody that simply hurts to listen to, in the way that first love is painful because it’s ephemeral and fleeting. Thankfully, your disc player has a “repeat” button, so this is a love that will never abandon you. Gillan sings of escaping the snares of the mundane and commonplace, the accepted reality which deadens us to the potential one above and beyond it. Again, harmony vocals – Beatle-esque ones, in this instance – help set the mood, and an ascending chord progression led by Morse spreads its arms heavenward, eventually settling into a circular pattern that becomes one of the more moving codas not just in Purple history, but, yep, in the history of heavy rock itself. This is Deep Purple, 2005 version. Intense, fearless, full of fire, and wit, and passion. Marked by serious virtuosity, but never a slave to it. Still finding new meaning in a medium they all but single-handedly created. Grab ahold of this, and don’t let go. deeppurple.com
'We're as valid as anything by Beethoven," declared Jon Lord of his band, Deep Purple, in an interview with the New Musical Express in 1973. Lord, who has died aged 71 after suffering from pancreatic cancer, was not merely adopting a rebellious stance. An accomplished classical composer as well as rock musician, he believed with some justification that his group's music was as profound in structure and as significant in cultural impact as any work from the symphonic canon. At the time, Deep Purple were among the world's biggest rock bands, having built an enormous fanbase on the strength of their classically influenced songs, which lent further weight to Lord's statement. Born in Leicester, Lord studied classical piano from the age of five. In his teens, the then-new rock'n'roll and R&B movements made a deep impression on him, in particular the music recorded by blues pianists and organists such as Jimmy McGriff and Jerry Lee Lewis. The contemporary combination of Hammond B3 and C3 organs with Leslie speakers appealed to him, and this became an instrumental setup that remained integral to Lord's signature keyboard style for the rest of his career. In 1959, he moved to London to pursue acting, which he studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He played the piano and Hammond organ in clubs to pay the bills, initially with a jazz band called the Bill Ashton Combo and then with Red Bludd's Bluesicians, featuring the vocalist Art Wood. While recording occasional sessions (he contributed keyboards to the Kinks' 1964 hit You Really Got Me), Lord pursued pop success in the Art Wood Combo, who later renamed themselves the Artwoods and appeared on TV. I Take What I Want was the group's only charting single. Lord discovered his trademark sound when he formed Santa Barbara Machine Head, which also featured Wood's brother and future Rolling Stone, Ronnie Wood. The key to this group's success was its powerful, organ- and guitar-driven formula, which pointed at the future musical recipe of Deep Purple, and also the meeting of Lord and the bassist Nick Simper. The duo were the backbone of Deep Purple, who formed when the businessman and manager Tony Edwards invested in the new group and auditioned the cream of London's young talent – the guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, the singer Rod Evans and the drummer Ian Paice among them. This quintet formed Purple's first lineup in 1968. Deep Purple spent the following eight years on a path that took them around the world on several occasions, playing the world's largest stadiums and issuing a series of classic LPs – In Rock (1970), Fireball (1971), Machine Head (1972) and Burn (1974) among them. Personnel came and went, but Lord and Paice remained constant members until the group's dissolution amid a haze of drug addiction and exhaustion in 1976. Of the great British rock bands of the 70s, only Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Stones were able to operate on as grand a scale: unlike any of those groups, Deep Purple took regular time out to indulge in classical projects initiated and directed by Lord. The most notable of these was the live Concerto for Group and Orchestra, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969. It was this equal passion for rock bombast and classical finesse that made Lord such an unusual musician. During Deep Purple's glory days, he often infused the songs with classical influences, as in the song April from the group's eponymous album in 1969. His organ playing, which often counterpointed Blackmore's virtuoso lead guitar, was unique and often copied. After the split, Lord formed a group with the rock singer Tony Ashton and Deep Purple's ex-drummer Paice entitled Paice, Ashton & Lord. They released one album, Malice in Wonderland, in 1977. He then joined Whitesnake, the band formed by Deep Purple's last lead singer, David Coverdale. This group, not to be confused with the 1980s reincarnation that played stadium rock and met with huge success, was an earthy, blues-rock band in which Lord's organ playing was an essential element. His stint in Whitesnake ended when he rejoined a reformed lineup of Deep Purple in 1984 alongside Blackmore, Paice, the singer Ian Gillan and the bassist Roger Glover. Many solo projects and collaborations came during and between Lord's membership of these bands, including Before I Forget (1982), which featured classical piano music; a commission to compose the soundtrack of Central Television's 1984 series The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady; and guest spots on albums by rock luminaries such as Lord's Oxfordshire neighbour George Harrison and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. Eighteen more years of recording and tours followed before Lord felt he had had enough of life on the road. In a letter to his bandmates in 2002, he requested that Deep Purple take a year off. When this request was declined, he amicably left the group. Solo projects followed, including a collaboration in 2004 with sometime Abba singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and the formation of a blues band, Hoochie Coochie Men, three years later. In 2010, Lord was made an honorary fellow of Stevenson College, Edinburgh, and the following year he was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the University of Leicester. guardian.co.
I want to devote the blog to legendary group Deep Purple and to John Lord.The Literal translation of the name of group (is dark-purple)."Deep Purple" it is taken from the song name - to a favourite song of grandmother Ritchi Blekmora. This plate has been written down still by Bingom of Crosby before war. The final decision to be called "Deep Purple" has ripened during the Scandinavian tours. The first plate "Shades Of Deep Purple" ("Shades crimson") has been written down all for 2 days on Saturday and Sunday on May, 11-12th. And on 13th of May on Monday sound producer Derek Lourens has created record and a matrix tape was ready.
Last month on July, 16th, the keyboard player of group John Lord has died. It is irreplaceable loss in the music world. Lately, on a state of health, it could not act, but always was soul of group! Its compositions gave to group the colour and singularity of sounding. My site is devoted to John Lorda's light memory.
