“Disaster”: the album that almost destroyed Deep Purple
The stakes are always a bit higher for bands as their careers run the risk of completely imploding if something goes wrong. Richie Blackmore of Deep Purple knows that anxiety all too well, as following his first departure from the band, he formed the insurance choice of Rainbow in 1975, sealing himself a firm future in the sonic scene. But when his old cronies came calling back, he knew he had no option but to rejoin the heavy metal heavyweights.
Although most reunions are hailed as a rock and roll revolution, it’s fair to say that when ‘Mark II’ – consisting of Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Ian Gillan, and Roger Glover – reformed in the mid-1980s, things weren’t exactly always smooth sailing. Indeed, according to Blackmore himself, their efforts became so chaotic that it nearly destroyed the band entirely, threatening to leave the whole Deep Purple dynasty in ruins.
Despite being content with musical pastures new at the time, Blackmore explained his reasons for deciding to rejoin the band in a previous interview. He said: “I was very happy with Rainbow and we were doing quite well, and then Ian Gillan came around and said, ‘Let’s get together.’ He kind of talked me into it, and people were talking about lots of money, and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’”
Initially, things seemed to be going swimmingly, with the release of the album Perfect Strangers in 1984 marking Deep Purple’s first return to the airwaves in some nine years. It shot the band straight back into the golden league of the top five and propelled them on to a massive world tour, proving there was life in the old dog yet.
But on the subject of that mammoth tour, it was there that the cracks once again set in. Blackmore continued: “I do think Perfect Strangers was a good LP. I was comfortable with the band and went, I think we’ll do another one [Nobody’s Perfect, the band’s live album from their 1987 tour], which was a mistake, because I think I played like shit on it.”
Yet, in Blackmore’s opinion, it wasn’t just his efforts that weren’t exactly hitting the mark. He went so far as to claim that: “I don’t think anyone else really got into it; to me, it was a bit of a disaster.” However, as much as this may seem a bit of an exaggerated statement, it did bear some semblance of truth – the album barely made a dent in the charts at all, and only two years later, in 1989, ‘Mark V’ was on the horizon after lead singer Gillan was fired amid rising musical tensions with Blackmore.
It just goes to show that not every band reunion will always go down as legendary. Ultimately, much in the same way as some of the messiest romantic breakups, if there’s a reason you couldn’t work together the first time around, even the healthiest-looking cheques can’t make up for that. As much as Deep Purple were a firm pillar of the holy trinity of heavy metal, their legacy evidently had to involve a lot more legwork than just the music alone.
