Second volume of the Deep Purple singles-on-album series: a sensible, coherent collection of the hotch potch selection of 45s the band released over the years, both before and after their break up in ’76; a selection that’ll allow fans to preserve your old battered original copies for last night memories.
And that’s the only reason that this album merits the “Mk II” tag: it also constitutes the final gathering together of all the singles made by the Mk II version of Deep Purple, that is to say the band that contained the all-time classic quartet of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, and which is recognised, quite rightly, as Purple’s, in fact, in the highest echelons of Heavy Metal.
Drawing on material issued as far back as ’71 and as late as ’77, this album is divided into a live side and a studio side. Numbers performed from their “Live And Rare Volume One” make up the “live” side - these blues hurled from the stage as part of Purple’s no-nonsense quest for an irresistible no-prisoners attitude and audience power!
So, Smoke On The Water opens the proceedings, with Blackmore choosing to play his guitar riff straight, minus the clever “clever” snippets of the intro - and more the (legally) available studio version of this number - performed live at the 1973 Japan album.
Smoke On The Water is a graphic tale of the fire that took place during the recording of the Machine Head LP in Switzerland, an event that occurred because of some stupid Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux TV Festival, and saw the DPs found themselves without a place to record.
Ousted from their second choice of the Pavilion by one of the local residents complained about the excessive noise, the band ended up at the sleazy, empty, cold and damp Grand Hotel, and with “a few red lights, a few dolé beds and the Rolling truck Stones thing they proceeded to lay down perhaps the greatest of all their albums.
A breakneck paced Black Night follows (first released as a studio cut on a single in May 1970 - backed by Speed King - this here live rendition originally appeared on ’77s New Live And Rare Volume One EP) and Child In Time concludes the side, a little shorter but basically the same as the version that appeared on the 1972 Made In Japan album.
Woman From Tokyo, surely one of the most underrated of Purple songs, kicks off the studio side of the album and is quickly followed by Never Before and When A Blind Man Cries, respectively the A and B sides of a PUR 102 single as released in April 1972. PUR 102 is one of Purple’s most successful singles, Never Before nonetheless spent six weeks in the charts and reached a highest position of 35. A few years on, When A Blind Man Cries appeared on the New Live And Rare Volume One EP. Ian Gillan’s lyrical preoccupation with blind men - see Child In Time - is most intriguing … but this is no time for philosophical treatise) together with the final Painted Horse track.
Painted Horse made its first vinyl appearance on the Rare disc and country-flavoured song with lots of harmonica work, reportedly recorded around the time of the Fireball album.
So overall, irrefutable Purple-hued evidence that high energy is and never was the exclusive province of frustrated teenagers. Enjoy it.
GEORF BARTON
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