How Deep Purple turned a hymn into the biggest hippie anthem of the 1960s: “We toughened it up”
Hymns are about as far away from rock and roll as it is possible to get, what with their inherently pious nature and promotion of Christian values not often adhered to within the realm of rock rebellion. Nevertheless, some of the greatest rock songs of all time have their roots in gospel, religious music, and hymns. Even as it turns out, Deep Purple’s hippie-era masterpiece.
A core aspect of the hippie rebellion was its subversion of mainstream, conservative American values, rejecting the idea of the traditional nuclear family through fast-living, politically rebellious rock and roll music. In essence, it was that rejection of the norm that meant the hippies were so feared and hated by the American establishment, whether it was the older generation of the state itself. Although they hailed from across the Atlantic Ocean, Deep Purple were particularly adept at encapsulating that controversial new age.
Before they had struck upon their ‘classic’ line-up, which saw them become one of the defining hard rock outfits of the 1970s, Deep Purple were part of the hippie age, and ‘Hush’ was their definitive anthem. Released in 1968, the track peaked at number four in the US charts, and didn’t chart at all in the band’s native United Kingdom, where the hippie age hadn’t yet reached its peak.
Despite being their defining track at that time, though, ‘Hush’ was not written by the band themselves. Originally, the track was written in a country-music-come-swamp-rock styling by Joe South a year prior, who himself had taken the foundations of the song from an age-old African American spiritual: “Hush, I thought I heard Jesus calling my name,” being the backbone of that particular hymn.
For their part, Deep Purple didn’t seem to take much notice of the song’s religious background. Jon Lord, who played keyboard on the track, recalled to Mojo in 2009, “Initially we thought it’s a bit too disco, or whatever the word was then. But Ritchie [Blackmore] said it would work if we toughened it up a bit.”
Toughen it up, they certainly did, in doing so changing the spirit of the song from religious piety to pure rock and roll rebellion; it is easy to see why some of the more hysterical, conservative members of the Christian faith in America viewed the emergence of the hippie generation as the work of the antichrist.
Whether they were aware of it or not, Deep Purple perfectly captured the rebellion of the hippie era in ‘Hush’, taking an essence from an older version of the United States and stripping it back to its rawest, most driving parts. Joe South’s version, in a way, did the same thing, but it was Ritchie Blackmore’s toughening up of the track that really made it into a hippie anthem, and a song that struck fear into the hearts of parents, the older generation, and establishment figures across the States.
Although Deep Purple themselves quickly moved on from the song, as their style and line-up morphed from those countercultural days to the hard rock abrasion which was to follow, ‘Hush’ remains an utterly unavoidable classic of the late 1960s, so much so that it is easy to forget that its roots were in Christian hymns.
