I’m a little late to this party/discussion, but I just ran across this video this morning on youtube. Ian Gillan and Jon Lord being interviewed about Abandon. Feels like Ian has called every album his favorite right after it being released. And was there any limit to Jon’s kindness and politeness? Stick around for the final seconds for more confirmation of Jon being a gentleman. While this wasn’t Jon’s best album with Purple, Abandon will still be special to me in that it was Jon’s swan song with Purple.
I guess EMI Germany gave up on Purple once Abandon didn’t sell as expected, i.e. better than Purpendicular. But that’s not the fault of the album, just tough luck.
I’ve dug out my old tour book, and Jon was absent/mostly absent from the initial 3 week writing session in May/June 1997. That session gave several tracks, including Wah Wah (Watching the Sky, though briefly Moth to a Flame), Seven(th) Heaven, Oh Darlin’ Blues (Don’t Make Me Happy), Evil Louie, Talk Radio (Any Fule?) and Last Jam (Almost Human).
The next session started on 9th Sept with the band drifting in over several days. Everyone was in the studio by 19th. The following week saw Freight Train ('69) and F# Trudge (Whatsername) jammed.
In early October, they do Jack Ruby, based on the old HOBL demo Poughkeepsie Jam. Fingers to the Bone follows a couple of days later.
Early November seems to be RG and IG working on lyrics. RGs says he didn’t like Talk Radio so wrote Any Fule Kno That. Unclear is this is a new song, or just new lyrics. I think new lyrics as it says earlier neither thought the Talk Radio lyrics fit the music. Work done on Dirty Water (She Was)
Full band back in studio late November.
Further work in Jan '98 and final overdubs in Feb '98, either side of LA, Mexico etc gigs. Bludsucker possibly done in Feb.
Jon was therefore at all sessions except for part/all of the initial 3-week writing session.
Several other ideas were dropped along the way, including a reworking of The Stallion which would have had a different title.
…once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. That tune was everywhere in the mid 90s - I swear it subliminally made its way into Jon’s head and onto the record!
No - I established Jon wasn’t there when the first batch of very rough ideas were jammed. If you read the full tour book, there’s weeks of going back to these tracks, re-writing, trying different bass/drum/keyboard/guitar/keyboard ideas, scrapping, resurrecting and generally messing around in Pro Tools. Only one track on the album uses material from the initial jam - Seventh Heaven.
from 1972 and a de rigueur dance floor stomper in German rock discos all through the 70s. Birth Control, a West Berlin band, never denied their Purple influence
I am quite familiar with this tune, as I did a reaction to it ages ago back when I was doing a reaction video on my YT channel every week.
I’d forgotten it was such a big hit, and I did not realize that Jon would have been familiar with it - or that this band was influenced by Purple! How fascinating creative connections and influences are! I can definitely hear the connection, although I think saying Jon was subliminally influenced by the Macarena is alot funnier. Perhaps when he heard the Macarena, it brought back memories of Gamma Ray?
We’ll never know, unless we hire a medium or necromancer and I doubt Jon would appreciate that!
I can just imagine his reaction:
“This Canuck lad from THS forums wants to know what now?! Tell the little bugger to kindly toss off!”
I’ve always loved both: Gamma Ray (never mind the pidgin English lyrics, they didn’t know any better) and Macarena. That syncopated organ riff both share is infectious and makes you want to move your butt.
I would imagine that syncopated organ lines are hardly anything unusual in Latin American and Latin-tinged music, if you slow the syncopation down, you quickly arrive at this.
So very likely, the West Berliners hadn’t “invented” that riff either, but picked it up from some Latin American music they had heard.
But I’m a sucker for rhythmic as opposed to string-like or pedal tone keyboards and Jon’s rhythmic Hammond playing was after Little Ian’s drumming always the main provider of Purple’s groove. I don’t miss Jon’s solos, classical influence or arrangement ideas (good as they were, Don can hold his own there, if different in style), but I do miss his sense of rhythm like hell. It was his most substantial yet often overlooked contribution to Purple, and the lack of a Jon Lord (together with the heavy-handed drumming) explains why all Rainbow incarnations sounded so rigid in comparison to the mothership.
I too miss Jon’s rhythm organ playing - he was the master of that!
I don’t agree that Rainbow sounds rigid - I rather like Cozy, and other drummers who are inspired by Bonham, who I know you can’t stand, so on that point, I simply don’t hear it the way you do, and that’s fine.
Re: Latin American influences - I suspect you’re quite right about that!
Flavio, thanks for your kind words! I certainly am - both Ritchie and Steve are big influences on my playing, and if you listen close, you can hear where they influenced me. I get my “balls of steel” from them and a fellow called Robert Randolph, who is a monster pedal steel guitarist.
I actually already gave my thoughts on Larkin Poe, if that’s who you’re referring to, so check back in the threads and see if you can find them!
Be truthful, did Rainbow ever really “groove”? I don’t hear it, they were an extremely straight ahead rock band, lots of Sturm und Drang because Ritchie has a preference for military style marching band rhythms that get on with it as opposed to music that dances and skips around the beat. I mean GILLAN didn’t groove either (too much of that punkish frenzy), but Whitesnake did quite a bit thanks to the Lord-Murray-Paice rhythm trio and of course also IGB, albeit in a more cerebral and airy way.
There is more rhythmic differentiation in that one song than on all Rainbow albums lumped together. Rainbow fans simply didn’t care for that in their preferred music, to them Rainbow’s rhythm section (Driscoll/Gruber excluded) was just a thundering platform for Ritchie and his lead vocalist to build their drama on. Which is all fine if you like that type of music, but don’t call it “groovy”. To me, Rainbow’s rhythms even in the last JLT-incarnations sounded overwhelmingly compartmentalized, four-on-the-floor and stiff/rigid. Even whitebread AOR kings like Journey and REO Speedwagon offered more groove, let’s not even talk about Toto who always had a sophisticated RnB element in their music, sessions-schooled as they were.
What’s next? That ASIA (good band they were in their given field) “grooved”’too?
Yeah Uwe, I am being truthful - Rainbow grooved and Gillan grooved a hell of a lot, imo.
Punkish music absolutely grooves to me - just because you can’t hear the groove doesn’t mean the groove isn’t there, it just means for whatever reasons, you don’t hear the groove, either because you can’t or you don’t want to.
If it makes other people move and groove clearly there is a groove there, it just doesn’t fit into your concept of what grooves or doesn’t.
Considering many people on here find Rainbow and Gillan to have a groove, I’ll be honest in turn with you Uwe - I feel your definition of what grooves is a bit too narrow.
I’d encourage you to do your best to hear what others are hearing - what happens to you may surprise you if you do!
You don’t have to like the music in the end, and, I find it’s a worthwhile exercise - and yes, I have done this before with albums or bands I don’t like myself, including early Led Zeppelin and Slaves and Masters
I’d encourage you to give this approach a shot, as I feel it may be of benefit to you!
Give me some examples of grooves by Journey and REO Speedwagon, because honestly, I’ve never heard a “Little Ian” (Mk I–Mk IV era) style groove in their music during the AOR period from 1978 onwards.
(You can’t count the early albums, when the AOR sound wasn’t yet apparent!)
As for the peak 80s AOR-style Journey, Asia, or the Purple of S&M, I didn’t hear any differences in the groove.
I don’t hear that 70s Paicey groove in any of the three examples.
As for Rainbow, Paicey’s groove evidently wasn’t necessary—neither for the proto-heavy metal style of the Dio era nor for the AOR style of the Bonnet/Turner eras.
To wrap up my thoughts: AoR = drum groove approaching zero.
All the legendary hard rock bands of the '70s that embraced commercial AOR sounds in the early '80s killed their drum groove, without exception.
Even Rush killed the groove, although Neil certainly delivered radically better performances than LittleIan did on S&M.
Punk and Heavy Metal have a beat and that can be contagious too, but for a “groove” I need some micro-movement around the basic beat which I think Mike describes not inappropriately as swing.
Maybe my years as a DJ in the peep show left a mark, I learned there what rhythms speak to people and which don’t.
Maybe my attachment to swing and groove stems from my German ethnicity and I admire it because it is somehow exotic to me?
I have to admit I also dig stuff like this, I find it amazingly musical and it impresses me more than some fast neo-classical runs thrown into a hard rock song:
Julio and Marcelo probably hold their ears now and go: But we have to listen to this stuff all the time, it’s friggin’ everywhere, we’re dying for music that for once does not skip around the beat!
