The band Ritchie Blackmore was scared to follow: “I was blown away”
The nature of prog rock means that the entire genre is pretty limitless. When Frank Zappa was talking about this style of music, he highlighted how boundaryless it truly is.
“I would presume that people would accept this definition,” he said when trying to put the sound into words. “Progressive Rock is anything that doesn’t sound like regular Rock. Regular Rock is everything that sounds like itself. All songs which sound the same, everything on MTV, everything on the radio, that’s Rock. Progressive Rock is stuff that doesn’t sound like that.”
The entire prog rock movement is occupied by bands constantly taking advantage of how limitless this sound truly is, and when you listen to bands like Rush, Tool, and Yes, you can hear rock music clearly, but their style isn’t as linear as a lot of other rock bands, because other genres and sounds from around the world are injected into their songs, which keep the listener guessing. If you like to be surprised by music, there is nowhere better to turn.
Deep Purple are a band who have always embraced the limitlessness that comes with this kind of music, and in their earlier records, they embraced more classical elements of music, keeping melody at the heart of everything they did but using string sections and old playing techniques to heighten their sound.
That being said, once Ritchie Blackmore heard how effectively some heavy music could be played while still keeping melody at the forefront, he persuaded the band to pivot and pursue something a touch more intense. This took some real convincing as Deep Purple were happy with the sound they had, but the freedom to make this change led to one of their most famous records: Deep Purple in Rock.
“I remember being in a place in Germany, and Ian [Paice] and I were out drinking together,” said Blackmore, discussing the music that inspired him. “In those days, you could go to a club and listen to the new records in their entirety that had just come out. Paice and I heard ‘Mississippi Queen’, and we both went white! We were thinking, ‘Who the hell is that?!’ It had such a big sound! For three guys, it was incredibly heavy.”
While being a prog rock band comes with a lot of creative freedom, there is also an issue embodied within it, which is that there will always be another band doing something new and innovative. This is great as a listener, but as a band, it can be difficult to keep up. How do you stay on top of a genre that doesn’t have any boundaries?
Finding melody in heavy music was something that Blackmore was incredibly keen on doing, but he found that there was another band who did it more effectively. These were King’s X, a prog rock outfit from Springfield, Missouri, who formed initially in 1979. “I first heard them a few years ago, and I was blown away with the complicated arrangement,” said Blackmore. “But they didn’t take away from the melody.”
Blackmore said that while he was a big fan, he once tried to hire their singer. Additionally, he also felt the band was so good that he never wanted to follow them.
Concluding, “The singer is a fantastic singer too. I think it was in Purple when we were looking for a singer. We actually called him up and said, ‘Would you like to join (the band)?’ He said: ‘No, thanks. I have my own thing going.’ So we actually offered him the job. I don’t think I would like to follow them (King’s X) on stage. They are one hell of a band.”
