The one album Deep Purple would never have existed without, according to Ian Gillian
Where would the world of rock and roll be without Deep Purple? For starters, new guitarists would have to find another first riff to learn, but, much more importantly, the sound of hard rock and heavy metal would be virtually unrecognisable without their litany of pioneering efforts or the expansive vocal range of Ian Gillan.
Despite their unwavering influence over the hard rock realm, Deep Purple were never a band to stay in one place for too long. In fact, each of the band’s distinct eras offered something entirely different from the last. Their formative age in the late 1960s, for instance, saw the group enter into the mind-bending world of counterculture psychedelia, penning spaced-out hippie anthems which were a far cry from the hard rock-centric sound of their later material.
Ultimately, though, it was during the band’s second generation, with Ian Gillan at the helm, that they truly began to hit their stride both commercially and creatively. It was the Gillan era, after all, which produced Deep Purple In Rock, arguably the band’s defining album and potentially one of the greatest hard rock records ever recorded – particularly with regard to its inescapable influence over the future of the genre.
That 1970 triumph also earned the band a commendable degree of commercial success, too, reaching number four in the UK albums chart upon its release. Despite its infallible quality and pioneering hard rock sound, though, the record struggled to make much of an impact outside of old Blighty. Even in the US, where other hard rock progenitors like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath had begun to make huge strides, the album was considered something of a flop when it first emerged onto the airwaves.
A change was needed in order to bring the sounds of Deep Purple to the global audience they so clearly demanded, and, according to Gillan himself, 1971’s Fireball reflected that transformative period better than anything else. Furthering the band’s flurries into the world of hard rock abrasion, the far too often overlooked record also bears the influences of everything from Gillan’s keen interest in jazz to the band’s psychedelic beginnings.
Not only is Fireball one of the band’s greatest efforts, but it has always been a particular favourite of Gillan’s, owing both to the diversity of its sound and its commercial successes. It topped the album charts in the UK upon its release, and in the US it reached 32 – which, given the commercial failure of In Rock a year prior, was still an impressive feat.
“The reason that Fireball was my favourite album of that period,” Gillan once shared, “was because, without Fireball, we would never have been able to make Machine Head.”
Continuing the trend of Deep Purple’s ever-improving discography, that follow-up album became their biggest commercial success, as well as an inarguable triumph of early heavy metal excellence. “Machine Head was probably the first album that was successful on a huge, worldwide scale,” the singer recalled.
As fate would have it, Machine Head was also the penultimate Deep Purple record of the Gillan era, cementing the Chiswick-born vocalist as being the voice of the band’s most beloved period both musically and commercially.
Without an album like Fireball and the successes it soon led to, though, Deep Purple could very easily have imploded altogether back in the early 1970s, without amassing the extensive and ever-varied discography they boast today.
