Sabado, Marso 17, 2012
Miyerkules, Marso 14, 2012
Linggo, Enero 29, 2012
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit is an American rock band. Their work is marked by abrasive, angry lyrics by vocalist Fred Durst and guitarist Wes Borland's sonic experimentation and elaborate visual appearance, which has included face and body paint, masks and uniforms,
as well as the band's elaborate live shows. They have sold over 33
million records worldwide. The band consists of Durst, Borland, Sam Rivers, John Otto and DJ Lethal.
Formed in 1994, Limp Bizkit became popular playing in the Jacksonville, Florida underground music scene in the late 1990s, and signed with Flip Records, a subsidiary of Interscope, which released their début album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ (1997). The band achieved mainstream success with their second and third studio albums, Significant Other (1999) and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000), although this success was marred by a series of controversies surrounding their performances at Woodstock '99 and the 2001 Big Day Out festival.
Borland left the group in 2001, but Durst, Rivers, Otto and Lethal continued to record and tour with guitarist Mike Smith. Following the release of their album, Results May Vary (2003), Borland rejoined the band and recorded The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) (2005) with Durst, Rivers, Lethal and drummer Sammy Siegler before going on hiatus. In 2009, the band's original lineup reunited and began touring, culminating with the recording of the album Gold Cobra (2011), after which they left Interscope to record independently.
Fred Durst grew up in Gastonia, North Carolina, where he took an interest in breakdancing, hip hop, punk rock and heavy metal music. He began to rap, skate, beatbox and deejay. While mowing lawns and working as a tattoo artist, he developed an idea for a band that combined elements of rock and hip hop.[1]
Durst played with three other bands, Split 26, Malachi Sage, which were
unsuccessful, and 10 Foot Shindig, which Durst left to form a new band.[2] Durst told Sam Rivers, the bassist for Malachi Sage, "You need to quit this band and start a band with me that's like this: rappin' and rockin'."[2] Rivers suggested that his cousin, John Otto, who was studying jazz drumming at the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and playing in local avant garde bands, become their drummer.[2] Durst, Rivers and Otto jammed and wrote three songs together, and Wes Borland later joined as a guitarist.[2]
Durst named the band Limp Bizkit, because he wanted a name that would repel listeners. According to Durst, "The name is there to turn people's heads away. A lot of people pick up the disc and go, 'Limp Bizkit. Oh, they must suck.' Those are the people that we don't even want listening to our music."[2] Every record label that showed an interest in the band pressured its members to change its name.[2] Unbeknownst to the band, the phrase "limp biscuit", known alternatively as "soggy biscuit", is a phrase used in the United Kingdom and Australia for a game in which teenage boys stand around a biscuit or a piece of bread masturbating; the player who ejaculates last has to eat the bread.[2]
Limp Bizkit developed a cult following in the underground music scene, particularly at the Milk Bar, an underground punk club in Florida. The band's local popularity was such that Sugar Ray, who had a major label contract, opened for a then-unsigned Limp Bizkit at this club.[2] The club's owner, Danny Wimmer, stated that Limp Bizkit "had the biggest draw for a local band. They went from playing [for] ten people to eight hundred within months. Fred [...] was always marketing the band. He would go to record stores and get people involved, he was in touch with high schools."[2] However, the band knew that to achieve national success, they would have to distinguish themselves in their live performances.[2] Attracting crowds by word of mouth, the band gave energetic live performances, covering George Michael's "Faith" and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up", and featuring Borland in bizarre costumes.[2] Borland's theatrical rock style was the primary attraction for many concert attendees.[2]
Durst unsuccessfully tried to attract attention from A&R representatives at various labels by pretending to be the band's manager.[2] Later, when Korn performed in town as the opening act for Sick of It All, Durst invited Korn to drink beer and tattoo them. Although Durst's tattoos were unimpressive, he was able to persuade Reginald Arvizu to listen to a demo, consisting of the songs "Pollution", "Counterfeit" and "Stuck". Korn added a then-unsigned Limp Bizkit to two tours, which exposed the band to a new audience.[2][3] The band attempted to expand their sound by auditioning an additional guitarist, but Borland soon determined that another guitarist was not the answer, and DJ Lethal, formerly of the hip hop group House of Pain, joined the band as a turntablist after a successful practice performance. Joining the band gave Lethal an opportunity to experiment with his turntable technique in ways that hip hop had not allowed him to do, helping shape the band's style. However, Borland left the band over creative differences.[2]
Following the release of Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, vocalist Fred Durst was appointed Senior Vice President of A&R at Interscope.
After their performance opening for Korn at the Dragonfly in Hollywood was well received, Limp Bizkit signed with Mojo, a subsidiary of MCA Records.
While heading to California to record their first album, the band
wrecked their van. As a result of the near death experience, Durst made
amends with Borland, who rejoined the band.[2] After a dispute with Mojo, Limp Bizkit signed with Flip, a subsidiary of Interscope Records. Arvizu persuaded Ross Robinson
to listen to the demo. Robinson neglected to listen to it until it was
appraised by his girlfriend. Impressed by the band's motivation and
sound, Robinson produced Limp Bizkit's debut, which was recorded at
Indigo Ranch. Durst's problems with his girlfriend inspired him to write
the song "Sour".[2]
The mood and tone set by Robinson in the studio allowed the band to
improvise; a recording of the band improvising appeared as the last
track on the album, "Everything".[2]
Despite the success of live performances of the band's cover of the song "Faith", Robinson was opposed to recording it, and tried to persuade the band not to play it on the album. However, the final recording, which incorporated heavier guitar playing and drumming, as well as DJ scratching, impressed him.[2] Robinson also bonded with Borland, who he perceived as not taking the band seriously.[2] The progressive metal band Tool provided a strong influence in shaping the album's sound, particularly in the song "Nobody Loves Me", which contains a breakdown in which Durst imitated the singing style of Maynard James Keenan.[2] Durst was also inspired by Church of Realities, an EP by the punk band Hed PE, which he listened to during the production of Limp Bizkit's debut.[4]
Continuing the band's policy of using names that would repulse potential listeners, the band named the album by using part of the phrase "queer as a three dollar bill" and adding the word "Y'all" for Florida flavor, naming the album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$[2] The completed album featured an abrasive, angry sound which Limp Bizkit used to attract listeners to their music.[2] After the band completed recording, they toured with Korn and Helmet. Critics reacted unfavorably to performances of Korn and Limp Bizkit; Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel music critic Jon M. Gilbertson criticized Durst's performance, stating "The one attention-grabbing moment of Limp Bizkit's rap/thrash show was when the lead singer expressed a desire for gay men to be 'stomped'. Which isn't remotely rebellious. It's just puerile."[2]
Interscope proposed to the band that the label pay $5,000 to
guarantee that a Portland radio station play the song "Counterfeit"
fifty times, preceded and concluded with an announcement that the air
time was paid for by Interscope.[5][6] The paid air time was criticized by the media, who saw it as "payola".[5][6] The band's manager Jeff Kwatinetz later termed the plan as a "brilliant marketing move".[5] Durst stated, "It worked, but it's not that cool of a thing."[5] Following the release of "Counterfeit" as a single, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ was released on July 1, 1997, and was met with minimal response. Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine
wrote, "They might not have many original ideas [...] but they do the
sound well. They have a powerful rhythm section and memorable hooks,
most of which make up for the uneven songwriting."[7] However, Robert Christgau panned the album.[8] Despite the minimal response to his band's album, Durst was appointed Senior Vice President of A&R at Interscope.[9]
Limp Bizkit joined the Warped Tour, performing alongside the bands Pennywise, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Sick of It All, Lagwagon and Blink 182.[5] Preceding their first tour with DJ Lethal, Otto became familiar with Lethal's contributions to collaborate with him better on stage.[5] In addition to touring with Primus and Deftones, Limp Bizkit headlined the Ladies Night in Cambodia club tour, which was intended to diversify the band's fanbase, which was largely male, by offering free tickets to female attendees. This plan successfully increased the band's female fanbase.[5]
In 1998, Limp Bizkit toured with Soulfly and Cold on Soulfly's first European tour.[5] Touring consistently increased Limp Bizkit's success, and the second single from Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, "Faith", became a radio hit, leading to a slot on Ozzfest, a tour organized by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.[5] In July, Snot singer Lynn Strait was arrested after he emerged nude from Limp Bizkit's prop toilet, and was charged with indecent exposure.[5][10] Because Limp Bizkit's fans would often break through the barricades, the band was almost kicked off the tour after two days.[5] In August, John Otto spent the night in jail in Auburn Hills, Michigan, on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon, after allegedly firing a BB gun and being arrested for carrying a switchblade.[5]
After completing Ozzfest, Limp Bizkit took a break from performing, and later performed on Korn's Family Values Tour. Durst also directed a music video for the band's single "Faith" in promotion for its appearance in the film Very Bad Things, but was unsatisfied with it, and directed a second video which paid tribute to tourmates like Primus, Deftones and Mötley Crüe, who appeared in the video.[5] Borland stated in an interview that George Michael, the writer of the song, hated the cover and "hates us for doing it".[5]
Beginning with Significant Other (1999), DJ Lethal expanded his role as sound designer for the band.
Following the radio success of "Faith", the band was determined to
record the follow-up to their first album in order to show that they
weren't a Korn ripoff or a cover band; the band began writing an album
which dealt with issues deriving from their newfound fame.[11] Terry Date, who had produced albums for Pantera, White Zombie and Deftones, was chosen to produce the album.[12] The band allowed Durst and Lethal to explore their hip hop origins by recording a song with Method Man. The song was originally titled "Shut The Fuck Up", but was retitled "N 2 Gether Now" for marketing purposes.[12] Durst also recorded with Eminem, but the collaboration, "Turn Me Loose", was left off the album.[12] The album also featured guest appearances by Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, Korn's Jonathan Davis and Staind singer Aaron Lewis, and interludes by Les Claypool and Matt Pinfield.[12]
Significant Other saw Limp Bizkit reaching a new level of commercial success; the band was featured on the covers of popular music magazines, including Spin, and now found themselves repeatedly mobbed for autographs; the band was allowed to interact directly with their fans on a website established by Dike 99.[13] Durst also moved from Jacksonville to Los Angeles. However, the band continued to be highly criticized by the media; an article profiling the band in Spin and discussing Significant Other claimed that "Limp Bizkit had yet to write a good song", and musicians Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor criticized the band.[13]
The band promoted the album by playing unannounced concerts in
Detroit and Chicago, as radio stations received a strong amount of
requests for the album's first single, "Nookie".[9] Significant Other climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 643,874 copies in its first week of release.[9] In its second week of release, the album sold an additional 335,000 copies.[9] On the opening night of the band's Limptropolis tour with Kid Rock,
Sam Rivers smashed his bass in frustration over the venue's poor sound,
cutting his hand. After his hand was stitched up at a hospital, Rivers
returned to finish the set.[9]
On July 12, Durst allegedly kicked a security guard in the head during a
performance in St. Paul, Minnesota, and was later arrested on assault
charges.[9] Further criticisms of the band appeared in Rolling Stone and The New York Times.[9] New York Times
writer Ann Powers wrote, "DJ Lethal used his turntables as a metal
guitar, riffing expansively and going for effects instead of rhythm.
John Otto on drums and Sam Rivers on bass never even tried to get funky,
instead steering hip-hop's break-beat-based structure into a backbone
for power chords. This makes for a hybrid that would be more interesting
if the band did not constantly mire itself in boring tempos, and if Mr.
Durst had any talent as a singer".[9]
In the summer of 1999, Limp Bizkit played at the highly anticipated Woodstock '99 show in front of approximately 200,000 people. Violent action sprang up during and after their performance, including fans tearing plywood from the walls during a performance of the song "Break Stuff". Several sexual assaults were reported in the aftermath of the concert.[9][14][3] Durst stated during the concert, "People are getting hurt. Don't let anybody get hurt. But I don't think you should mellow out. That's what Alanis Morissette had you motherfuckers do. If someone falls, pick 'em up. We already let the negative energy out. Now we wanna let out the positive energy".[9] Durst later stated in an interview, "I didn't see anybody getting hurt. You don't see that. When you're looking out on a sea of people and the stage is twenty feet in the air and you're performing, and you're feeling your music, how do they expect us to see something bad going on?"[9] Les Claypool told the San Francisco Examiner, "Woodstock was just Durst being Durst. His attitude is 'no press is bad press', so he brings it on himself. He wallows in it. Still, he's a great guy."[9]
Durst saw the band as being scapegoated for the event's controversy, and reflected on the criticisms surrounding the band in his music video for the single "Re-Arranged", which depicted the band members receiving death sentences for their participation in the concerts. The video ended with angry witnesses watching as the band drowning in milk while performing the song.[9] Durst later stated that the promoters of Woodstock '99 were at fault for booking his band, due to their reputation for raucous performances.[9] Despite this controversy, Significant Other remained at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and the band headlined the year's Family Values Tour.[9] Durst directed a music video for "N 2 Gether Now" which featured Method Man and Pauly Shore, and was inspired by Inspector Clouseau's fights with his butler, Cato Fong, in the Pink Panther film series.[9]
In June 2000, Limp Bizkit performed at the WXRK Dysfunctional Family Picnic, but showed up an hour late for their set.[16] An Interscope spokesman stated that there was confusion over the band's set time.[16] During the band's performance, Durst criticized Creed singer Scott Stapp, calling him "an egomaniac".[16] Creed's representatives later presented Durst with an autographed anger management manual during a later appearance on Total Request Live.[16] In the summer, Limp Bizkit's tour was sponsored by the controversial file sharing service Napster. Durst was an outspoken advocate of file sharing.[3]
During the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, Durst performed a song from the upcoming album, "Livin' It Up", as a duet with Christina Aguilera. In response to the performance, Filter frontman Richard Patrick called Durst a "pop-lovin' piece of frozen dog shit" and claimed that "Fred getting onstage with Christina Aguilera embarrassed us all."[17] In response to the negative reactions to the performance, Durst remarked, "I already told you guys before, I did it all for the nookie, man."[17] In response to Durst's remark, Aguilera commented, "He got no nookie."[18]
Released on October 17, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water set a record for highest week-one sales of a rock album with over one million copies sold in the U.S. in its first week of release, with 400,000 of those sales coming on its first day, making it the fastest-selling rock album ever, breaking the record held for 7 years by Pearl Jam's Vs.[19] Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water was certified Gold, Platinum and six times Multi-Platinum.[20] The album received mixed reviews,[21] with Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing, "Durst's self-pitying and the monotonous music give away that the band bashed Chocolate Starfish out very quickly -- it's the sound of a band determined to deliver a sequel in a finite amount of time."[22] Entertainment Weekly writer David Browne named it as the worst album of 2000.[23]
During a 2001 tour of Australia at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney, fans rushed the stage in the mosh pit, and teenager Jessica Michalik died of asphyxiation. In court, Durst testified he had warned the concert's organizers Aaron Jackson, Will Pearce and Amar Tailor and promoter Vivian Lees of the potential dangers of such minimal security.[24] After viewing videotapes and hearing witness testimony, however, the coroner said it was evident that the density of the crowd was dangerous at the time Limp Bizkit took the stage, and that a cage was put up around the band.[25] Durst stated that he was "emotionally scarred" because of the teenager's death.[26]
After holding a nationwide audition for a new guitarist, called "Put Your Guitar Where Your Mouth Is",[28] the band recorded with Snot guitarist Mike Smith, but later scrapped their recording sessions with Smith.[29] Durst told a fan site that he had a falling out with Smith, saying "We are the type of people that stay true to our family and our instincts and at any moment will act on intuition as a whole. Mike wasn't the guy. We had fun playing with him but always knew, in the back of our minds, that he wasn't where we needed him to be mentally."[30]
After recording another album without Smith, the band scrapped the new sessions and assembled a new album combining songs from different sessions.[29] During the album's production, the working title changed from Bipolar[29] to Panty Sniffer,[29] and was completed under the title Results May Vary. Under Durst's sole leadership, the album encompassed a variety of styles,[31] and featured a cover of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes", which differed from the original's arrangement in its inclusion of a Speak & Spell during the song's bridge.[29]
Results May Vary was released on September 23, 2003, and received largely unfavorable reviews.[32] Allmusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine panned the album, writing, "the music has no melody, hooks, or energy, [and] all attention is focused on the clown jumping up and down and screaming in front, and long before the record is over, you're left wondering, how the hell did he ever get to put this mess out?"[29] The Guardian reviewer Caroline Sullivan wrote, "At least Limp Bizkit can't be accused of festering in the rap-rock ghetto [...] But Durst's problems are ever-present - and does anybody still care?"[31] Despite criticisms of the album, it was a commercial success, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200.[33]
In August 2004, Borland rejoined Limp Bizkit, which began recording another album, The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1).[30] In March 2005, Limp Bizkit participated on the Summer Sanitarium Tour, headlined by Metallica.[35] At the tour's stop in Chicago, IL,
attendees of the concert threw items and heckled Durst from the moment
he walked on stage. With the crowd chanting "Fuck Fred Durst" and
continuing their assault on him, Durst threw the mic down after six
songs and walked off stage, but not before heckling the crowd back.[35] An article in the Sun-Times stated that the hostility was started by radio personality Mancow.[36]
In May, The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) was released. Sammy Siegler took over drumming duties for the band for much of the album, which featured a more experimental sound, described by Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine as "neo-prog alt-metal".[37] At Durst's insistence, the album was released as an underground album, without any advertising or promotion.[38][39] Borland disagreed with the decision, suggesting that it was "self-sabotage": "Maybe he was already unhappy with the music, and he didn't really want to put it out there."[39]
The album received mixed reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the music, calling it "a step in the right direction -- it's more ambitious, dramatic, and aggressive, built on pummeling verses and stop-start choruses." However, he felt that the band was being "held back" by Durst, who he called "the most singularly unpleasant, absurd frontman in rock."[37] IGN writer Spence D. similarly gave it a mixed review, as he felt that the album lacked direction, but that showed potential for the band's musical growth.[34]
The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide, peaking at #24 on the Billboard 200.[40][33] Following the release of the band's Greatest Hitz album, the band went on hiatus.[39][41] Borland stated that it was unlikely that a sequel to The Unquestionable Truth would be produced and that "As of right now, none of my future plans include Limp Bizkit."[39][42]
In 2009, the original lineup of Limp Bizkit reunited and launched the Unicorns N' Rainbows Tour.[43] Durst announced that they had begun to record a new album, which Borland titled Gold Cobra.[44][45]
Borland said that the title does not have any meaning, and that it was
chosen because it fit the style of music the band was writing for the
album.[45] The band recorded a spoken intro written by Durst and performed by Kiss member Gene Simmons for the album, but it was left off the completed album.[46][47] The band also recorded additional "non-album" tracks, including "Combat Jazz", which featured rapper Raekwon.[47] "Shotgun"
was released as a single on May 17, 2011. The song is noted for
featuring a guitar solo by Borland, something that the band is not known
for.[48] "Shotgun" received favorable reviews, with Artistdirect writing, "['Shotgun'] feels like Bizkit approached the signature style on Three Dollar Bill Y'All and Significant Other
with another decade-plus of instrumental experience and virtuosity,
carving out a banger that could get asses moving in the club or fists
flying in the mosh pit."[49]
Gold Cobra was released on June 28 and received mixed to positive reviews.[50] Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "a return to the full-throttled attack of Three Dollar Bill Y'All.[42] IGN writer Chad Grischow wrote, "Though far from their best work, Limp Bizkit's latest at least proves that their 2005 Greatest Hitz album may have been premature."[51] Metal Hammer writer Terry Bezer appraised the album, writing "Aside from the odd duff moment, Gold Cobra throws out the hot shit that'll make you bounce in the mosh pit over and over again."[48] The PopMatters website ranked Gold Cobra as the fifth worst album of 2011.[52] It sold 63,000 copies in the United States, peaking at #16 on the Billboard 200.[33][53] In December, Durst announced that the band was leaving Interscope to record independently.[53]
Durst wanted Limp Bizkit to be a "megaband" which could cross over into as many different styles of music as possible.[2] Limp Bizkit's music has predominately been described as nu metal.[54][55][56][57] Their music is noted for "kinetic, frenzied energy".[7] Otto is adept in drumming in a variety of styles ranging from Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music to bebop and funk.[2] DJ Lethal functions as a sound designer
for the band, shaping their sound. According to Lethal, "I try and
bring new sounds, not just the regular chirping scratching sounds. [...]
It's all different stuff that you haven't heard before. I'm trying to
be like another guitar player."[2]
Borland's guitar playing is experimental and nontraditional, and he is noted for his creative use of six and seven-string guitars.[58] Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ features him playing without a guitar pick, performing with two hands, one playing melodic notes, and the other playing chord progressions.[2] His guitar playing has made use of octave shapes, and choppy, eighth-note rhythms, sometimes accompanied by muting his strings with his left hand, creating a percussive sound.[59] Borland has also made use of unevenly accented syncopated sixteenth notes to create a disorienting effect, and hypnotic, droning licks.[59] The song "Stuck" uses a sustain pedal in the first bar, and muted riffs in the second bar.[59]
Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that their album, Significant Other, contains "flourishes of neo-psychedelia on pummeling metal numbers" and "swirls of strings, even crooning, at the most unexpected background".[60] The band is generally opposed to the use of solos. However, during the recording of Significant Other, they allowed drummer John Otto to perform an extended solo in the middle of the song "Nobody Like You".[12]
Durst's lyrics are often profane, scatological or angry.[22][42] Much of Durst's lyrical inspiration came from growing up and his personal life.[2] The song "Sour", from the album Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, was inspired by Durst's problems with his girlfriend.[2] His breakup with her inspired the Significant Other songs "Nookie" and "Re-Arranged".[11] The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) focuses on darker lyrical subject matter, including Catholic sex abuse cases, terrorism and fame.[37]
Richard Cheese performed a lounge rendition of the songs "Nookie" and "Break Stuff" on his debut album, Lounge Against the Machine.[69] "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Angry White Boy Polka" medley included Limp Bizkit's song "My Way".[70] The Vitamin String Quartet recorded a tribute album called The String Quartet Tribute to Limp Bizkit: Break Stuff, which contains reinterpretations of the band's songs performed by a violinist backed by cellos, synthesizers, and keyboard percussion.[71] Girl Talk sampled "Nookie" and "Break Stuff" in the song "Friends-4-Ever", which appears on his album Secret Diary.[70]
Guitarist Wes Borland is known for his visual performance style, and often performs wearing costumes or body paint.
Borland is known for performing in costumes and body paint during concerts, appearing in bunny and kung fu suits,[2]
and painted as a skeleton and what he describes as a "burnt match".
Describing the character, he stated, "I go onstage wearing almost
nothing. I have underwear and my boots on, and I paint my whole head
black—from the neck up—and I have the black contacts. All you can see is
these glowing teeth."[58] Borland's black contacts were customized for him by a company noted for making contacts for the science fiction TV series Babylon 5.[58]
In addition to Borland's visual appearance, the band has also used elaborate stage setups in their performances. Their Ladies Night in Cambodia club tour visually paid tribute to the film Apocalypse Now, with an elaborate stage setup which featured an empty Jeep, camouflage mesh and palm trees.[5] During the band's tour with Primus, Limp Bizkit took inspiration from Primus' trademark self-deprecatory slogan "Primus sucks": Durst, Borland, Rivers, Otto and Lethal took the stage with middle fingers raised. According to Borland, "they finger us back — and you know what that means to us — that they love us. It's kind of like saying something is bad when you really mean good. Les Claypool came out the first night of the tour and got a big kick out of it. We figured it was the right idea. It makes hecklers go 'huh.'"[5]
During the band's sets at Ozzfest, audience members at the tour heckled Limp Bizkit, leading the band to use a 30 foot toilet as a stage prop, which they would emerge from during each performance; the band punctuated their sets by "flushing" cardboard cutouts of pop stars like Hanson and the Spice Girls.[5] During their appearance at the first Family Values Tour, Limp Bizkit performed on a set which the Los Angeles Times described as "a mix of The War of the Worlds and Mars Attacks". The band emerged from a spaceship during the tour, and Borland continued to experiment with visual appearances.[5] During the band's Halloween performance on the tour, each of the band's members dressed as Elvis Presley at various stages in his career.[5]
Formed in 1994, Limp Bizkit became popular playing in the Jacksonville, Florida underground music scene in the late 1990s, and signed with Flip Records, a subsidiary of Interscope, which released their début album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ (1997). The band achieved mainstream success with their second and third studio albums, Significant Other (1999) and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000), although this success was marred by a series of controversies surrounding their performances at Woodstock '99 and the 2001 Big Day Out festival.
Borland left the group in 2001, but Durst, Rivers, Otto and Lethal continued to record and tour with guitarist Mike Smith. Following the release of their album, Results May Vary (2003), Borland rejoined the band and recorded The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) (2005) with Durst, Rivers, Lethal and drummer Sammy Siegler before going on hiatus. In 2009, the band's original lineup reunited and began touring, culminating with the recording of the album Gold Cobra (2011), after which they left Interscope to record independently.
History
Formation and early years (1994–1996)
Durst named the band Limp Bizkit, because he wanted a name that would repel listeners. According to Durst, "The name is there to turn people's heads away. A lot of people pick up the disc and go, 'Limp Bizkit. Oh, they must suck.' Those are the people that we don't even want listening to our music."[2] Every record label that showed an interest in the band pressured its members to change its name.[2] Unbeknownst to the band, the phrase "limp biscuit", known alternatively as "soggy biscuit", is a phrase used in the United Kingdom and Australia for a game in which teenage boys stand around a biscuit or a piece of bread masturbating; the player who ejaculates last has to eat the bread.[2]
Limp Bizkit developed a cult following in the underground music scene, particularly at the Milk Bar, an underground punk club in Florida. The band's local popularity was such that Sugar Ray, who had a major label contract, opened for a then-unsigned Limp Bizkit at this club.[2] The club's owner, Danny Wimmer, stated that Limp Bizkit "had the biggest draw for a local band. They went from playing [for] ten people to eight hundred within months. Fred [...] was always marketing the band. He would go to record stores and get people involved, he was in touch with high schools."[2] However, the band knew that to achieve national success, they would have to distinguish themselves in their live performances.[2] Attracting crowds by word of mouth, the band gave energetic live performances, covering George Michael's "Faith" and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up", and featuring Borland in bizarre costumes.[2] Borland's theatrical rock style was the primary attraction for many concert attendees.[2]
Durst unsuccessfully tried to attract attention from A&R representatives at various labels by pretending to be the band's manager.[2] Later, when Korn performed in town as the opening act for Sick of It All, Durst invited Korn to drink beer and tattoo them. Although Durst's tattoos were unimpressive, he was able to persuade Reginald Arvizu to listen to a demo, consisting of the songs "Pollution", "Counterfeit" and "Stuck". Korn added a then-unsigned Limp Bizkit to two tours, which exposed the band to a new audience.[2][3] The band attempted to expand their sound by auditioning an additional guitarist, but Borland soon determined that another guitarist was not the answer, and DJ Lethal, formerly of the hip hop group House of Pain, joined the band as a turntablist after a successful practice performance. Joining the band gave Lethal an opportunity to experiment with his turntable technique in ways that hip hop had not allowed him to do, helping shape the band's style. However, Borland left the band over creative differences.[2]
Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ (1997–1998)
Despite the success of live performances of the band's cover of the song "Faith", Robinson was opposed to recording it, and tried to persuade the band not to play it on the album. However, the final recording, which incorporated heavier guitar playing and drumming, as well as DJ scratching, impressed him.[2] Robinson also bonded with Borland, who he perceived as not taking the band seriously.[2] The progressive metal band Tool provided a strong influence in shaping the album's sound, particularly in the song "Nobody Loves Me", which contains a breakdown in which Durst imitated the singing style of Maynard James Keenan.[2] Durst was also inspired by Church of Realities, an EP by the punk band Hed PE, which he listened to during the production of Limp Bizkit's debut.[4]
Continuing the band's policy of using names that would repulse potential listeners, the band named the album by using part of the phrase "queer as a three dollar bill" and adding the word "Y'all" for Florida flavor, naming the album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$[2] The completed album featured an abrasive, angry sound which Limp Bizkit used to attract listeners to their music.[2] After the band completed recording, they toured with Korn and Helmet. Critics reacted unfavorably to performances of Korn and Limp Bizkit; Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel music critic Jon M. Gilbertson criticized Durst's performance, stating "The one attention-grabbing moment of Limp Bizkit's rap/thrash show was when the lead singer expressed a desire for gay men to be 'stomped'. Which isn't remotely rebellious. It's just puerile."[2]
|
||||
Limp Bizkit joined the Warped Tour, performing alongside the bands Pennywise, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Sick of It All, Lagwagon and Blink 182.[5] Preceding their first tour with DJ Lethal, Otto became familiar with Lethal's contributions to collaborate with him better on stage.[5] In addition to touring with Primus and Deftones, Limp Bizkit headlined the Ladies Night in Cambodia club tour, which was intended to diversify the band's fanbase, which was largely male, by offering free tickets to female attendees. This plan successfully increased the band's female fanbase.[5]
In 1998, Limp Bizkit toured with Soulfly and Cold on Soulfly's first European tour.[5] Touring consistently increased Limp Bizkit's success, and the second single from Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, "Faith", became a radio hit, leading to a slot on Ozzfest, a tour organized by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.[5] In July, Snot singer Lynn Strait was arrested after he emerged nude from Limp Bizkit's prop toilet, and was charged with indecent exposure.[5][10] Because Limp Bizkit's fans would often break through the barricades, the band was almost kicked off the tour after two days.[5] In August, John Otto spent the night in jail in Auburn Hills, Michigan, on a misdemeanor charge of carrying a concealed weapon, after allegedly firing a BB gun and being arrested for carrying a switchblade.[5]
After completing Ozzfest, Limp Bizkit took a break from performing, and later performed on Korn's Family Values Tour. Durst also directed a music video for the band's single "Faith" in promotion for its appearance in the film Very Bad Things, but was unsatisfied with it, and directed a second video which paid tribute to tourmates like Primus, Deftones and Mötley Crüe, who appeared in the video.[5] Borland stated in an interview that George Michael, the writer of the song, hated the cover and "hates us for doing it".[5]
Significant Other (1999–2000)
Significant Other saw Limp Bizkit reaching a new level of commercial success; the band was featured on the covers of popular music magazines, including Spin, and now found themselves repeatedly mobbed for autographs; the band was allowed to interact directly with their fans on a website established by Dike 99.[13] Durst also moved from Jacksonville to Los Angeles. However, the band continued to be highly criticized by the media; an article profiling the band in Spin and discussing Significant Other claimed that "Limp Bizkit had yet to write a good song", and musicians Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor criticized the band.[13]
|
||||
In the summer of 1999, Limp Bizkit played at the highly anticipated Woodstock '99 show in front of approximately 200,000 people. Violent action sprang up during and after their performance, including fans tearing plywood from the walls during a performance of the song "Break Stuff". Several sexual assaults were reported in the aftermath of the concert.[9][14][3] Durst stated during the concert, "People are getting hurt. Don't let anybody get hurt. But I don't think you should mellow out. That's what Alanis Morissette had you motherfuckers do. If someone falls, pick 'em up. We already let the negative energy out. Now we wanna let out the positive energy".[9] Durst later stated in an interview, "I didn't see anybody getting hurt. You don't see that. When you're looking out on a sea of people and the stage is twenty feet in the air and you're performing, and you're feeling your music, how do they expect us to see something bad going on?"[9] Les Claypool told the San Francisco Examiner, "Woodstock was just Durst being Durst. His attitude is 'no press is bad press', so he brings it on himself. He wallows in it. Still, he's a great guy."[9]
Durst saw the band as being scapegoated for the event's controversy, and reflected on the criticisms surrounding the band in his music video for the single "Re-Arranged", which depicted the band members receiving death sentences for their participation in the concerts. The video ended with angry witnesses watching as the band drowning in milk while performing the song.[9] Durst later stated that the promoters of Woodstock '99 were at fault for booking his band, due to their reputation for raucous performances.[9] Despite this controversy, Significant Other remained at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and the band headlined the year's Family Values Tour.[9] Durst directed a music video for "N 2 Gether Now" which featured Method Man and Pauly Shore, and was inspired by Inspector Clouseau's fights with his butler, Cato Fong, in the Pink Panther film series.[9]
Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000–2001)
In 2000, Durst announced that the band's third studio album would be titled Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. The press thought he was joking about this title.[15] The album title is intended to sound like a fictional band; the phrase "Chocolate Starfish" refers to the human anus, and Durst himself, who has been frequently been called an "asshole".[15] Borland contributed the other half of the album's title when the band was standing around at a truck stop, looking at bottles of flavored water, and Borland joked that the truck stop didn't have hot dog or meat-flavored water.[15]In June 2000, Limp Bizkit performed at the WXRK Dysfunctional Family Picnic, but showed up an hour late for their set.[16] An Interscope spokesman stated that there was confusion over the band's set time.[16] During the band's performance, Durst criticized Creed singer Scott Stapp, calling him "an egomaniac".[16] Creed's representatives later presented Durst with an autographed anger management manual during a later appearance on Total Request Live.[16] In the summer, Limp Bizkit's tour was sponsored by the controversial file sharing service Napster. Durst was an outspoken advocate of file sharing.[3]
During the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, Durst performed a song from the upcoming album, "Livin' It Up", as a duet with Christina Aguilera. In response to the performance, Filter frontman Richard Patrick called Durst a "pop-lovin' piece of frozen dog shit" and claimed that "Fred getting onstage with Christina Aguilera embarrassed us all."[17] In response to the negative reactions to the performance, Durst remarked, "I already told you guys before, I did it all for the nookie, man."[17] In response to Durst's remark, Aguilera commented, "He got no nookie."[18]
Released on October 17, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water set a record for highest week-one sales of a rock album with over one million copies sold in the U.S. in its first week of release, with 400,000 of those sales coming on its first day, making it the fastest-selling rock album ever, breaking the record held for 7 years by Pearl Jam's Vs.[19] Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water was certified Gold, Platinum and six times Multi-Platinum.[20] The album received mixed reviews,[21] with Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine writing, "Durst's self-pitying and the monotonous music give away that the band bashed Chocolate Starfish out very quickly -- it's the sound of a band determined to deliver a sequel in a finite amount of time."[22] Entertainment Weekly writer David Browne named it as the worst album of 2000.[23]
During a 2001 tour of Australia at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney, fans rushed the stage in the mosh pit, and teenager Jessica Michalik died of asphyxiation. In court, Durst testified he had warned the concert's organizers Aaron Jackson, Will Pearce and Amar Tailor and promoter Vivian Lees of the potential dangers of such minimal security.[24] After viewing videotapes and hearing witness testimony, however, the coroner said it was evident that the density of the crowd was dangerous at the time Limp Bizkit took the stage, and that a cage was put up around the band.[25] Durst stated that he was "emotionally scarred" because of the teenager's death.[26]
Departure of Borland, Mike Smith and Results May Vary (2001–2003)
In October 2001, Durst released a statement on their website stating that "Limp Bizkit and Wes Borland have amicably decided to part ways. Both Limp Bizkit and Borland will continue to pursue their respective musical careers. Both wish each other the best of luck in all future endeavors."[27] Durst also stated that the band would "comb the world for the illest guitar player known to man" to replace Borland.[27]After holding a nationwide audition for a new guitarist, called "Put Your Guitar Where Your Mouth Is",[28] the band recorded with Snot guitarist Mike Smith, but later scrapped their recording sessions with Smith.[29] Durst told a fan site that he had a falling out with Smith, saying "We are the type of people that stay true to our family and our instincts and at any moment will act on intuition as a whole. Mike wasn't the guy. We had fun playing with him but always knew, in the back of our minds, that he wasn't where we needed him to be mentally."[30]
After recording another album without Smith, the band scrapped the new sessions and assembled a new album combining songs from different sessions.[29] During the album's production, the working title changed from Bipolar[29] to Panty Sniffer,[29] and was completed under the title Results May Vary. Under Durst's sole leadership, the album encompassed a variety of styles,[31] and featured a cover of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes", which differed from the original's arrangement in its inclusion of a Speak & Spell during the song's bridge.[29]
Results May Vary was released on September 23, 2003, and received largely unfavorable reviews.[32] Allmusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine panned the album, writing, "the music has no melody, hooks, or energy, [and] all attention is focused on the clown jumping up and down and screaming in front, and long before the record is over, you're left wondering, how the hell did he ever get to put this mess out?"[29] The Guardian reviewer Caroline Sullivan wrote, "At least Limp Bizkit can't be accused of festering in the rap-rock ghetto [...] But Durst's problems are ever-present - and does anybody still care?"[31] Despite criticisms of the album, it was a commercial success, peaking at #3 on the Billboard 200.[33]
Borland's return, The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) and hiatus (2004-2008)
|
||||
In May, The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) was released. Sammy Siegler took over drumming duties for the band for much of the album, which featured a more experimental sound, described by Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine as "neo-prog alt-metal".[37] At Durst's insistence, the album was released as an underground album, without any advertising or promotion.[38][39] Borland disagreed with the decision, suggesting that it was "self-sabotage": "Maybe he was already unhappy with the music, and he didn't really want to put it out there."[39]
The album received mixed reviews. Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the music, calling it "a step in the right direction -- it's more ambitious, dramatic, and aggressive, built on pummeling verses and stop-start choruses." However, he felt that the band was being "held back" by Durst, who he called "the most singularly unpleasant, absurd frontman in rock."[37] IGN writer Spence D. similarly gave it a mixed review, as he felt that the album lacked direction, but that showed potential for the band's musical growth.[34]
The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide, peaking at #24 on the Billboard 200.[40][33] Following the release of the band's Greatest Hitz album, the band went on hiatus.[39][41] Borland stated that it was unlikely that a sequel to The Unquestionable Truth would be produced and that "As of right now, none of my future plans include Limp Bizkit."[39][42]
Reunion and Gold Cobra (2009 onward)
|
||||
Gold Cobra was released on June 28 and received mixed to positive reviews.[50] Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "a return to the full-throttled attack of Three Dollar Bill Y'All.[42] IGN writer Chad Grischow wrote, "Though far from their best work, Limp Bizkit's latest at least proves that their 2005 Greatest Hitz album may have been premature."[51] Metal Hammer writer Terry Bezer appraised the album, writing "Aside from the odd duff moment, Gold Cobra throws out the hot shit that'll make you bounce in the mosh pit over and over again."[48] The PopMatters website ranked Gold Cobra as the fifth worst album of 2011.[52] It sold 63,000 copies in the United States, peaking at #16 on the Billboard 200.[33][53] In December, Durst announced that the band was leaving Interscope to record independently.[53]
Style and legacy
Music and lyrics
|
||||
Borland's guitar playing is experimental and nontraditional, and he is noted for his creative use of six and seven-string guitars.[58] Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ features him playing without a guitar pick, performing with two hands, one playing melodic notes, and the other playing chord progressions.[2] His guitar playing has made use of octave shapes, and choppy, eighth-note rhythms, sometimes accompanied by muting his strings with his left hand, creating a percussive sound.[59] Borland has also made use of unevenly accented syncopated sixteenth notes to create a disorienting effect, and hypnotic, droning licks.[59] The song "Stuck" uses a sustain pedal in the first bar, and muted riffs in the second bar.[59]
Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that their album, Significant Other, contains "flourishes of neo-psychedelia on pummeling metal numbers" and "swirls of strings, even crooning, at the most unexpected background".[60] The band is generally opposed to the use of solos. However, during the recording of Significant Other, they allowed drummer John Otto to perform an extended solo in the middle of the song "Nobody Like You".[12]
Durst's lyrics are often profane, scatological or angry.[22][42] Much of Durst's lyrical inspiration came from growing up and his personal life.[2] The song "Sour", from the album Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, was inspired by Durst's problems with his girlfriend.[2] His breakup with her inspired the Significant Other songs "Nookie" and "Re-Arranged".[11] The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) focuses on darker lyrical subject matter, including Catholic sex abuse cases, terrorism and fame.[37]
Awards and recognition
Limp Bizkit have been nominated for and won several awards.[61] In 1999, the band won the Maximum Vision Award at the Billboard Music Video Awards for their music video "Nookie".[62] At the 2000 and 2001 Blockbuster Awards, the band won the Favorite Group (Rock) award.[63][64] That year also saw the band winning a MuchMusic Award for Best International Video, honoring their video for the song "Break Stuff".[61] At the 2001 ECHO Awards, the band won the Best International Metal Band award.[65] At the 2009 Kerrang! Awards, the band won the Hall of Fame award.[66] Further expanding upon the group's achievements and popularity, they were also the first group inducted into MTV's Total Request Live "Hall of Fame" on May 26, 2001.[67][68]Richard Cheese performed a lounge rendition of the songs "Nookie" and "Break Stuff" on his debut album, Lounge Against the Machine.[69] "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Angry White Boy Polka" medley included Limp Bizkit's song "My Way".[70] The Vitamin String Quartet recorded a tribute album called The String Quartet Tribute to Limp Bizkit: Break Stuff, which contains reinterpretations of the band's songs performed by a violinist backed by cellos, synthesizers, and keyboard percussion.[71] Girl Talk sampled "Nookie" and "Break Stuff" in the song "Friends-4-Ever", which appears on his album Secret Diary.[70]
Live performances
In addition to Borland's visual appearance, the band has also used elaborate stage setups in their performances. Their Ladies Night in Cambodia club tour visually paid tribute to the film Apocalypse Now, with an elaborate stage setup which featured an empty Jeep, camouflage mesh and palm trees.[5] During the band's tour with Primus, Limp Bizkit took inspiration from Primus' trademark self-deprecatory slogan "Primus sucks": Durst, Borland, Rivers, Otto and Lethal took the stage with middle fingers raised. According to Borland, "they finger us back — and you know what that means to us — that they love us. It's kind of like saying something is bad when you really mean good. Les Claypool came out the first night of the tour and got a big kick out of it. We figured it was the right idea. It makes hecklers go 'huh.'"[5]
During the band's sets at Ozzfest, audience members at the tour heckled Limp Bizkit, leading the band to use a 30 foot toilet as a stage prop, which they would emerge from during each performance; the band punctuated their sets by "flushing" cardboard cutouts of pop stars like Hanson and the Spice Girls.[5] During their appearance at the first Family Values Tour, Limp Bizkit performed on a set which the Los Angeles Times described as "a mix of The War of the Worlds and Mars Attacks". The band emerged from a spaceship during the tour, and Borland continued to experiment with visual appearances.[5] During the band's Halloween performance on the tour, each of the band's members dressed as Elvis Presley at various stages in his career.[5]
Band members
- Current members
- Fred Durst – lead vocals (since 1994)
- Wes Borland – guitars (1995–6, 1997–2001, 2004–2006, 2009–present )
- Sam Rivers – bass guitar (since 1994)
- John Otto – drums (since 1994)
- DJ Lethal – turntables, keyboards, samples, programming (since 1996)
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968.[1] Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members claimed that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre.[2][3][4][5] They were once listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the loudest pop group",[6] and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide,[7][8][9][10] including 7.5 million certified units in the United States.[11] Deep Purple were ranked #22 on VH1's Greatest Artists of Hard Rock programme.[12]
The band has gone through many line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus (1976–84). The 1968–76 line-ups are commonly labelled Mark I, II, III and IV.[13][14] Their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Roger Glover (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards), Ian Paice (drums), and Ritchie Blackmore (guitar). This line-up was active from 1969 to 1973, and was revived from 1984 to 1989, and again in 1993, before the rift between Blackmore and other members became unbridgeable. The current line-up (including guitarist Steve Morse) has been much more stable, although Lord's retirement in 2002 has left Paice as the only original member never to have left the band. As of 2012, the band has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[15]
The first recruit was the classically-trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, who had most notably played with The Artwoods (led by Art Wood, brother of future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, and featuring Keef Hartley).[17] He was followed by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who was persuaded to return from Hamburg to audition for the new group. Blackmore was making a name for himself as a session guitarist, and had also been a member of Screaming Lord Sutch's The Savages. Curtis' erratic behaviour soon forced him out of his own project, but Lord and Blackmore were keen to continue, and carried on recruiting additional members.[18]
For the bass guitar, Lord suggested his old friend Nick Simper, with whom he had played in a band called The Flower Pot Men and their Garden (formerly known as The Ivy League) back in 1967. Simper's claims to fame (apart from Deep Purple) were that he had been in Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and the car crash that killed Kidd. He was also in a group called The Delta Five which played the same circuit as The Savages, and it was then that he had first met Blackmore.
Bobby Woodman was the initial choice for the drums, but during the auditions for a singer, Rod Evans of the Maze came in with his drummer, Ian Paice. Blackmore had seen Paice on tour with the Maze in Germany in 1966, and had been impressed by the 18-year old's drumming. While Woodman was out for cigarettes, Blackmore quickly arranged an audition for Paice. Both Paice and Evans won their respective jobs, and the lineup was complete.[19]
The band began in earnest in March 1968, rehearsing at Deeves Hall in South Mimms. After a brief tour of Denmark and Sweden that April, in which they were still billed as Roundabout, Blackmore suggested a new name: Deep Purple, named after his grandmother's favourite song.[18][20] The group had resolved to choose a name after everyone had posted one on a board in rehearsal. Second to Deep Purple was "Concrete God", which the band thought was too harsh to take on.[21][22]
Jon Lord in Hannover, Germany, 1970
In May 1968, the band hit the studio to record its first album, Shades of Deep Purple, which was released in July. The group had success in North America with a cover of Joe South's "Hush", and by October 1968, the song had reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US and number 2 on the Canadian RPM chart.[23][24] That same month, Deep Purple was booked to support Cream on their Goodbye tour.[23]
The band's second album, The Book of Taliesyn (including a cover of Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman"), was released in North America to coincide with the tour, reaching number 38 on the Billboard charts and number 21 on the RPM charts, although it would not be released in their home country until the following year. Early 1969 saw Deep Purple record their third album, simply titled Deep Purple. The album contained strings and woodwind on one track ("April"), showcasing Lord's classical antecedents such as Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov, and several other influences were in evidence, notably Vanilla Fudge. (Lord and Blackmore had even claimed the group wanted to be a "Vanilla Fudge clone".)[25] Not satisfied with the possibilities for singles off this album, the band also recorded a single called "Emmaretta", named for Emmaretta Marks, then a cast member of the musical Hair, whom Evans was trying to seduce. This would be the last recording by the original lineup.
Unfortunately, Deep Purple's troubled North American record label, Tetragrammaton, delayed production of the Deep Purple album until after the band's 1969 American tour ended. Thus, the album sold poorly, finishing well out of the Billboard Top 100. Soon after this third album's eventual release, Tetragrammaton went out of business, leaving the band with no money and an uncertain future. (Tetragrammaton's assets were assumed by Warner Bros. Records, who would release Deep Purple's records in the US throughout the 1970s.) During the 1969 American tour, Lord and Blackmore met with Paice to discuss their desire to take the band in a heavier direction. Feeling that Evans and Simper would not fit well with a heavy rock style, both were fired that summer. Said Paice, "A change had to come. If they hadn't left, the band would have totally disintegrated."[19]
In search of a replacement vocalist, Blackmore set his sights on 19-year-old singer Terry Reid, who declined a similar opportunity to front the newly forming Led Zeppelin only a year earlier. Though he found the offer "flattering", Reid was still bound by the exclusive recording contract with his producer Mickie Most and more interested in his solo career.[26] Blackmore had no other choice but to look elsewhere.
The band hunted down singer Ian Gillan from Episode Six, a band that had released several singles in the UK without achieving their big break for commercial success. Gillan had at one time been approached by Nick Simper when Deep Purple was first forming, but Gillan had reportedly told Simper that Deep Purple would not go anywhere, while he felt Episode Six was poised to make it big.[27] Six's drummer Mick Underwood – an old comrade of Blackmore's from his Savages days – introduced the band to Gillan and bassist Roger Glover. This effectively killed Episode Six and gave Underwood a guilt complex that lasted nearly a decade, until Gillan recruited him for his new post-Purple band in the late 1970s. This created the Deep Purple Mark II line-up, whose first release was a Greenaway-Cook tune titled "Hallelujah", which flopped.
The band gained some much-needed publicity in September, 1969, with the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a three-movement epic composed by Lord as a solo project and performed by the band at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold.[23] Together with Five Bridges by The Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra. This live album, Concerto for Group and Orchestra was their first album which made chart success in the UK.[28] However, Gillan and Blackmore especially were less than happy at the band being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras" at the time; what they had in mind was to develop the band into a much tighter, hard-rocking style. Despite this, Lord wrote the Gemini Suite, another orchestra/group collaboration in the same vein, for the band in late 1970. Roger Glover later claimed Jon Lord had appeared like a leader of the band in the early years.[29]
Ritchie Blackmore in Hannover, Germany, 1970
Shortly after the orchestral release, Deep Purple began a hectic
touring and recording schedule that was to see little respite for the
next three years. Their first studio album of this period, released in
mid-1970, was In Rock (a name supported by the album's Mount Rushmore-inspired cover), which contained the then-concert staples "Speed King", "Into The Fire" and "Child in Time". The band also issued the UK Top Ten single "Black Night".[30]
The interplay between Blackmore's guitar and Lord's distorted organ,
coupled with Gillan's howling vocals and the rhythm section of Glover
and Paice, now started to take on a unique identity that further
separated the band from its earlier albums. Along with Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin II and Black Sabbath's Paranoid, In Rock codified the heavy metal genre.[3]
A second album, the creatively progressive Fireball, was issued in the summer of 1971. The title track "Fireball" was released as a single, as was "Strange Kind of Woman", not from the album but recorded during the same sessions (although it replaced "Demon's Eye" on the US version of the album).[31]
Within weeks of Fireball's release, the band were already performing songs planned for the next album. One song (which later became "Highway Star") was performed at the first gig of the Fireball
tour, having been written on the bus to a show in Portsmouth, in answer
to a journalist's question: "How do you go about writing songs?" Three
months later, in December 1971, the band traveled to Switzerland to
record Machine Head. The album was due to be recorded at a casino in Montreux, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but a fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig, caused by a man firing a flare gun into the ceiling, burned down the casino. This incident famously inspired the song "Smoke on the Water." The album was later recorded in a corridor at the nearby empty Grand Hotel.[32][33]
Continuing from where both previous albums left off, Machine Head has since become the band's most famous album. It reached #1 in the UK, #7 in the U.S., and included tracks that became live classics, such as "Highway Star", "Space Truckin'", "Lazy" and "Smoke on the Water", for which Deep Purple is most famous.[30][34] Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on; when Machine Head was recorded, the group had only been together three and a half years, yet the album was their seventh LP. Meanwhile, the band undertook four North America tours in 1972, and a Japan tour that led to a double-vinyl live release, Made in Japan. Originally intended as a Japan-only record, its worldwide release saw the double LP become an instant hit. It remains one of rock music's most popular and highest selling live-concert recordings (although at the time it was perhaps seen as less important, as only Glover and Paice turned up to mix it).
Ian Gillan and Roger Glover performing in Hannover, Germany, 1970
The classic Deep Purple Mark II line-up continued to work, and released the album Who Do We Think We Are
(1973), featuring the hit single "Woman from Tokyo", but internal
tensions and exhaustion were more noticeable than ever. In many ways,
the band had become victims of their own success. Following the
successes of Machine Head and Made in Japan, the addition of Who Do We Think We Are made them the top-selling artists of 1973 in the US.[35]
Ian Gillan admitted in a 1984 interview that the band was pushed by
management to complete the album on time and go on tour, although they
badly needed a break.[36]
The bad feelings culminated in Gillan, followed by Glover, quitting the
band after their second tour of Japan in the summer of 1973 over
tensions with Blackmore.
The band first hired Midlands bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. According to Ian Paice, Glover had told him and Lord that he wanted to leave the band a few months before his official resignation, so they had already started to drop in on Trapeze shows. After acquiring Hughes, they debated continuing as a four-piece band, with Hughes as both bassist and lead vocalist.[37][38] According to Hughes, he was persuaded to join under the guise that the band would be bringing in Paul Rodgers of Free as a co-lead vocalist, but by that time Rodgers had just started Bad Company.[39] Instead, auditions were held for lead vocal replacements. They settled on David Coverdale, an unknown singer from Saltburn in Northeast England, primarily because Blackmore liked his masculine, blues-tinged voice. [38]
Ian Gillan on stage in Clemson, South Carolina, US, 1972
This new line-up continued into 1974. The band played at the famous California Jam festival at Ontario Motor Speedway located in California on 6 April 1974. Attracting over 250,000[40] fans, the festival also included 1970s rock giants Black Sabbath, Eagles, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seals and Crofts, Rare Earth and Black Oak Arkansas. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC Television in the US, exposing the band to a wider audience. This lineup's first album, titled Burn, was a highly successful release (only the second album, after Machine Head,
to crack the US Top 10), and was followed by another world tour. Hughes
and Coverdale added vocal harmonies and elements of funk and blues,
respectively, to the band's music, a sound that was even more apparent
on the late 1974 release Stormbringer.[38]
Besides the title track, the album had a number of songs that received
much radio play, such as "Lady Double Dealer", "The Gypsy" and "Soldier
Of Fortune." However, Blackmore publicly disliked the album and the
funky soul elements, even calling it "shoeshine music".[41][42][43] As a result, he left the band on 21 June 1975 to form his own band with Ronnie James Dio of Elf, called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, later shortened to Rainbow after one album.
With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest band member vacancies in rock music. In spite of this, the rest of the band refused to stop, and to the surprise of many long-time fans, actually announced a replacement for Blackmore: American Tommy Bolin. There are at least two versions about the recruitment of Bolin: Coverdale claims to have been the one who suggested auditioning Bolin.[44] "He walked in, thin as a rake, his hair coloured green, yellow and blue with feathers in it. Slinking along beside him was this stunning Hawaiian girl in a crochet dress with nothing on underneath. He plugged into four Marshall 100-watt stacks and...the job was his". But in an interview originally published by Melody Maker in June 1975, Bolin himself claimed that he came to the audition following a recommendation from Blackmore.[45] Bolin had been a member of many now-forgotten late-1960s bands – Denny & The Triumphs, American Standard, and Zephyr, which released three albums from 1969–72. Before Deep Purple, Bolin's best-known recordings were made as a session musician on Billy Cobham's 1973 jazz fusion album Spectrum, and as Joe Walsh's replacement on two James Gang albums: Bang (1973) and Miami (1974). He had also jammed with such luminaries as Dr. John, Albert King, The Good Rats, Moxy and Alphonse Mouzon, and was busy working on his first solo album, Teaser, when he accepted the invitation to join Deep Purple.
The resulting album, Come Taste the Band, was released in October 1975. Despite mixed reviews, the collection revitalised the band once again, bringing a new, extreme funk edge to their hard rock sound.[46] Bolin's influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Hughes and Coverdale, the guitarist developed much of the material. Later, Bolin's personal problems with drugs began to manifest themselves, and after cancelled shows and below-par concert performances, the band was in danger.
Later, Bolin had just finished recording his second solo album, Private Eyes, when, on 4 December 1976, tragedy struck. In Miami, during a tour supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death was multiple-drug intoxication. Bolin was 25 years old.
After the break-up, most of the past and present members of Deep Purple went on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and Gillan. There were, however, a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1980, a touring version of the band surfaced with Rod Evans as the only member who had ever been in Deep Purple, eventually ending in successful legal action from the legitimate Deep Purple camp over unauthorised use of the name. Evans was ordered to pay damages of US$672,000 for using the band name without permission.[49]
Deep Purple at the Cow Palace, San Francisco, California. 31 January 1985
In April 1984, eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, a
full-scale (and legal) reunion took place with the "classic" early 1970s
line-up of Gillan, Lord, Blackmore, Glover and Paice. The reformed band
signed a worldwide deal with PolyGram, with Mercury Records releasing their albums in the United States, and Polydor Records in other countries. The album Perfect Strangers was recorded in Vermont and released in October 1984. A solid release, it sold extremely well (reaching #5 in the UK[30] and #17 on the Billboard 200 in the US[50]) and included the singles and concert staples "Knockin' At Your Back Door" and "Perfect Strangers".
The reunion tour followed, starting in Australia and winding its way
across the world to North America, then into Europe by the following
summer. Financially, the tour was also a tremendous success. In the
U.S., the 1985 tour out-grossed every other artist except Bruce Springsteen.[51] The UK homecoming saw the band perform a concert at Knebworth on 22 June 1985 (with main support from the Scorpions; also on the bill were UFO and Meat Loaf), where the weather was bad (torrential rain and 6" of mud) infront of 80,000 fans.[52] The gig was called the "Return Of The Knebworth Fayre".[53]
The Mark II line-up then released The House of Blue Light in 1987, which was followed by a world tour (interrupted after Blackmore broke a finger on stage while trying to catch his guitar after throwing it in the air) and another live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) which was culled from several shows on this tour, but still largely based on the by-now familiar Made in Japan set-list. In the UK a new version of "Hush" (with Gillan on lead vocals) was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Gillan was fired as his relations with Blackmore had again soured and their musical differences had diverged too far. Originally, the band intended to recruit Survivor frontman Jimi Jamison as Gillan's replacement, but this fell through due to complications with Jamison's record label.[54][55] Eventually, after auditioning several high-profile candidates, including Brian Howe (White Spirit, Ted Nugent, Bad Company), Doug Pinnick (King's X), Australians Jimmy Barnes (Cold Chisel) and John Farnham (Little River Band), Terry Brock (Strangeways, Giant) and Norman "Kal" Swann (Tytan, Lion, Bad Moon Rising),[56] former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner was recruited into the band. This Mark V line-up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters (1990) and toured in support. It achieved modest success and reached #87 on the Billboard Charts in the US,[57] but some fans criticized it as little more than a so-called "Deep Rainbow" album.
With the tour complete, Turner was forced out, as Lord, Paice and Glover (and the record company) wanted Gillan back in the fold for the 25th anniversary. Blackmore grudgingly relented, after requesting and eventually receiving 250,000 dollars in his bank account[58] and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On. But Gillan reworked much of the existing material for the album. As a result, Blackmore became infuriated at what he considered non-melodic elements. During an otherwise stunningly successful European tour, Blackmore walked out in November 1993, never to return. Joe Satriani was drafted to complete the Japanese dates in December and stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994. He was asked to join permanently, but his record contract commitments prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs/Kansas guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.
Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse, 1999
Morse's arrival revitalised the band creatively, and in 1996 a new album titled Purpendicular was released, showing a wide variety of musical styles, though it never made chart success on Billboard 200 in the US.[57] The Mark VII line-up then released a new live album Live at The Olympia '96
in 1997. With a revamped set list to tour, Deep Purple enjoyed
successful tours throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the
harder-sounding Abandon
in 1998, and touring with renewed enthusiasm. In 1999, Lord, with the
help of a Dutch fan, who was also a musicologist and composer, Marco de Goeij, painstakingly recreated the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, the original score having been lost. It was once again performed at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1999, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann.[59]
The concert also featured songs from each member's solo careers, as
well as a short Deep Purple set, and the occasion was commemorated on
the 2000 album Live at the Royal Albert Hall.[59] In early 2001, two similar concerts were performed in Tokyo and released as part of the box set The Soundboard Series.
drummer Ian Paice (2006), last remaining original member of Deep Purple
Much of the next few years was spent on the road touring. The group
continued forward until 2002, when founding member Lord (who, along with
Paice, was the only member to be in all incarnations of the band)
announced his amicable retirement from the band to pursue personal
projects (especially orchestral work). Lord left his Hammond organ to his replacement. Rock keyboard veteran Don Airey
(Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake), who had helped
Deep Purple out when Lord's knee was injured in 2001, joined the band.
In 2003, Deep Purple released their first studio albums in five years (Bananas) and began touring in support of the album immediately. EMI records refused a contract extension with Deep Purple, possibly because of lower than expected sales. Actually In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra sold more than Bananas.[60] Ian Gillan said, "Record sales have been steadily declining, but people are prepared to pay a lot for concert tickets."[61] In July 2005, the band played at the Live 8 concert in Park Place (Barrie, Ontario) and, in October of the same year, released their next album Rapture of the Deep. It was followed by the Rapture of the Deep tour. This Mark VIII line-up's two studio albums were produced by Michael Bradford, who is known as rap or pop musician.
In February 2007, Gillan asked fans not to buy a live album Come Hell or High Water being released by Sony BMG. This was a recording of their 1993 appearance at the NEC in Birmingham. Recordings of this show have previously been released without resistance from Gillan or any other members of the band, but he said: "It was one of the lowest points of my life – all of our lives, actually".[62]
Gillan hinted that the group may record their nineteenth studio album in February 2010,[63] to be followed by a supporting tour.[64] Steve Morse later revealed in an interview that the band would begin working on a new album in March. But there’s been still disagreement among the members about whether to make the new studio album. Roger Glover stated that it wouldn’t really make money anymore.[65] The current band's chief sound engineer on nine years of tours, Moray McMillin, died in September 2011, aged 57.[66]
In early 2011, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes told VH1 they would like to reunite with former Deep Purple Mark III lineup for the right opportunity, such as a benefit concert.[67]
Current members of Deep Purple with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in 2011
Michael Bradford who produced Bananas and Rapture of the Deep
The band has gone through many line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus (1976–84). The 1968–76 line-ups are commonly labelled Mark I, II, III and IV.[13][14] Their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Roger Glover (bass), Jon Lord (keyboards), Ian Paice (drums), and Ritchie Blackmore (guitar). This line-up was active from 1969 to 1973, and was revived from 1984 to 1989, and again in 1993, before the rift between Blackmore and other members became unbridgeable. The current line-up (including guitarist Steve Morse) has been much more stable, although Lord's retirement in 2002 has left Paice as the only original member never to have left the band. As of 2012, the band has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[15]
Contents[hide] |
History
The beginning (1967–68)
In 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards, in the hope that he would manage a new group he was putting together, to be called Roundabout. Curtis' vision was a "supergroup" where the band members would get on and off, like a musical roundabout. Impressed with the plan, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with two business partners: John Coletta and Ron Hire, all of Hire-Edwards-Coletta (HEC) Enterprises.[16]The first recruit was the classically-trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, who had most notably played with The Artwoods (led by Art Wood, brother of future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, and featuring Keef Hartley).[17] He was followed by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who was persuaded to return from Hamburg to audition for the new group. Blackmore was making a name for himself as a session guitarist, and had also been a member of Screaming Lord Sutch's The Savages. Curtis' erratic behaviour soon forced him out of his own project, but Lord and Blackmore were keen to continue, and carried on recruiting additional members.[18]
For the bass guitar, Lord suggested his old friend Nick Simper, with whom he had played in a band called The Flower Pot Men and their Garden (formerly known as The Ivy League) back in 1967. Simper's claims to fame (apart from Deep Purple) were that he had been in Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and the car crash that killed Kidd. He was also in a group called The Delta Five which played the same circuit as The Savages, and it was then that he had first met Blackmore.
Bobby Woodman was the initial choice for the drums, but during the auditions for a singer, Rod Evans of the Maze came in with his drummer, Ian Paice. Blackmore had seen Paice on tour with the Maze in Germany in 1966, and had been impressed by the 18-year old's drumming. While Woodman was out for cigarettes, Blackmore quickly arranged an audition for Paice. Both Paice and Evans won their respective jobs, and the lineup was complete.[19]
The band began in earnest in March 1968, rehearsing at Deeves Hall in South Mimms. After a brief tour of Denmark and Sweden that April, in which they were still billed as Roundabout, Blackmore suggested a new name: Deep Purple, named after his grandmother's favourite song.[18][20] The group had resolved to choose a name after everyone had posted one on a board in rehearsal. Second to Deep Purple was "Concrete God", which the band thought was too harsh to take on.[21][22]
Early years (1968–70)
The band's second album, The Book of Taliesyn (including a cover of Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman"), was released in North America to coincide with the tour, reaching number 38 on the Billboard charts and number 21 on the RPM charts, although it would not be released in their home country until the following year. Early 1969 saw Deep Purple record their third album, simply titled Deep Purple. The album contained strings and woodwind on one track ("April"), showcasing Lord's classical antecedents such as Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov, and several other influences were in evidence, notably Vanilla Fudge. (Lord and Blackmore had even claimed the group wanted to be a "Vanilla Fudge clone".)[25] Not satisfied with the possibilities for singles off this album, the band also recorded a single called "Emmaretta", named for Emmaretta Marks, then a cast member of the musical Hair, whom Evans was trying to seduce. This would be the last recording by the original lineup.
Unfortunately, Deep Purple's troubled North American record label, Tetragrammaton, delayed production of the Deep Purple album until after the band's 1969 American tour ended. Thus, the album sold poorly, finishing well out of the Billboard Top 100. Soon after this third album's eventual release, Tetragrammaton went out of business, leaving the band with no money and an uncertain future. (Tetragrammaton's assets were assumed by Warner Bros. Records, who would release Deep Purple's records in the US throughout the 1970s.) During the 1969 American tour, Lord and Blackmore met with Paice to discuss their desire to take the band in a heavier direction. Feeling that Evans and Simper would not fit well with a heavy rock style, both were fired that summer. Said Paice, "A change had to come. If they hadn't left, the band would have totally disintegrated."[19]
In search of a replacement vocalist, Blackmore set his sights on 19-year-old singer Terry Reid, who declined a similar opportunity to front the newly forming Led Zeppelin only a year earlier. Though he found the offer "flattering", Reid was still bound by the exclusive recording contract with his producer Mickie Most and more interested in his solo career.[26] Blackmore had no other choice but to look elsewhere.
The band hunted down singer Ian Gillan from Episode Six, a band that had released several singles in the UK without achieving their big break for commercial success. Gillan had at one time been approached by Nick Simper when Deep Purple was first forming, but Gillan had reportedly told Simper that Deep Purple would not go anywhere, while he felt Episode Six was poised to make it big.[27] Six's drummer Mick Underwood – an old comrade of Blackmore's from his Savages days – introduced the band to Gillan and bassist Roger Glover. This effectively killed Episode Six and gave Underwood a guilt complex that lasted nearly a decade, until Gillan recruited him for his new post-Purple band in the late 1970s. This created the Deep Purple Mark II line-up, whose first release was a Greenaway-Cook tune titled "Hallelujah", which flopped.
The band gained some much-needed publicity in September, 1969, with the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a three-movement epic composed by Lord as a solo project and performed by the band at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold.[23] Together with Five Bridges by The Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra. This live album, Concerto for Group and Orchestra was their first album which made chart success in the UK.[28] However, Gillan and Blackmore especially were less than happy at the band being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras" at the time; what they had in mind was to develop the band into a much tighter, hard-rocking style. Despite this, Lord wrote the Gemini Suite, another orchestra/group collaboration in the same vein, for the band in late 1970. Roger Glover later claimed Jon Lord had appeared like a leader of the band in the early years.[29]
Breakthrough and break-up (1970–76)
A second album, the creatively progressive Fireball, was issued in the summer of 1971. The title track "Fireball" was released as a single, as was "Strange Kind of Woman", not from the album but recorded during the same sessions (although it replaced "Demon's Eye" on the US version of the album).[31]
 |
A sample of "Smoke on the Water" from Machine Head (1972), which is recognized for its central theme, a four-note "blues scale" melody harmonised in parallel fourths.
|
| Problems listening to this file? See media help. | |
Continuing from where both previous albums left off, Machine Head has since become the band's most famous album. It reached #1 in the UK, #7 in the U.S., and included tracks that became live classics, such as "Highway Star", "Space Truckin'", "Lazy" and "Smoke on the Water", for which Deep Purple is most famous.[30][34] Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on; when Machine Head was recorded, the group had only been together three and a half years, yet the album was their seventh LP. Meanwhile, the band undertook four North America tours in 1972, and a Japan tour that led to a double-vinyl live release, Made in Japan. Originally intended as a Japan-only record, its worldwide release saw the double LP become an instant hit. It remains one of rock music's most popular and highest selling live-concert recordings (although at the time it was perhaps seen as less important, as only Glover and Paice turned up to mix it).
The band first hired Midlands bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. According to Ian Paice, Glover had told him and Lord that he wanted to leave the band a few months before his official resignation, so they had already started to drop in on Trapeze shows. After acquiring Hughes, they debated continuing as a four-piece band, with Hughes as both bassist and lead vocalist.[37][38] According to Hughes, he was persuaded to join under the guise that the band would be bringing in Paul Rodgers of Free as a co-lead vocalist, but by that time Rodgers had just started Bad Company.[39] Instead, auditions were held for lead vocal replacements. They settled on David Coverdale, an unknown singer from Saltburn in Northeast England, primarily because Blackmore liked his masculine, blues-tinged voice. [38]
With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest band member vacancies in rock music. In spite of this, the rest of the band refused to stop, and to the surprise of many long-time fans, actually announced a replacement for Blackmore: American Tommy Bolin. There are at least two versions about the recruitment of Bolin: Coverdale claims to have been the one who suggested auditioning Bolin.[44] "He walked in, thin as a rake, his hair coloured green, yellow and blue with feathers in it. Slinking along beside him was this stunning Hawaiian girl in a crochet dress with nothing on underneath. He plugged into four Marshall 100-watt stacks and...the job was his". But in an interview originally published by Melody Maker in June 1975, Bolin himself claimed that he came to the audition following a recommendation from Blackmore.[45] Bolin had been a member of many now-forgotten late-1960s bands – Denny & The Triumphs, American Standard, and Zephyr, which released three albums from 1969–72. Before Deep Purple, Bolin's best-known recordings were made as a session musician on Billy Cobham's 1973 jazz fusion album Spectrum, and as Joe Walsh's replacement on two James Gang albums: Bang (1973) and Miami (1974). He had also jammed with such luminaries as Dr. John, Albert King, The Good Rats, Moxy and Alphonse Mouzon, and was busy working on his first solo album, Teaser, when he accepted the invitation to join Deep Purple.
The resulting album, Come Taste the Band, was released in October 1975. Despite mixed reviews, the collection revitalised the band once again, bringing a new, extreme funk edge to their hard rock sound.[46] Bolin's influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Hughes and Coverdale, the guitarist developed much of the material. Later, Bolin's personal problems with drugs began to manifest themselves, and after cancelled shows and below-par concert performances, the band was in danger.
Band split, solo projects (1976–84)
The end came on tour in Britain on 15 March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre.[47] Coverdale reportedly walked off in tears and handed in his resignation, to which he was allegedly told there was no band left to quit. The decision to disband Deep Purple had been made some time before the last show by Lord and Paice (the last remaining original members), who hadn't told anyone else. The break-up was finally made public in July 1976.[48]Later, Bolin had just finished recording his second solo album, Private Eyes, when, on 4 December 1976, tragedy struck. In Miami, during a tour supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death was multiple-drug intoxication. Bolin was 25 years old.
After the break-up, most of the past and present members of Deep Purple went on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and Gillan. There were, however, a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1980, a touring version of the band surfaced with Rod Evans as the only member who had ever been in Deep Purple, eventually ending in successful legal action from the legitimate Deep Purple camp over unauthorised use of the name. Evans was ordered to pay damages of US$672,000 for using the band name without permission.[49]
Reunions and reformation (1984–94)
The Mark II line-up then released The House of Blue Light in 1987, which was followed by a world tour (interrupted after Blackmore broke a finger on stage while trying to catch his guitar after throwing it in the air) and another live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) which was culled from several shows on this tour, but still largely based on the by-now familiar Made in Japan set-list. In the UK a new version of "Hush" (with Gillan on lead vocals) was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Gillan was fired as his relations with Blackmore had again soured and their musical differences had diverged too far. Originally, the band intended to recruit Survivor frontman Jimi Jamison as Gillan's replacement, but this fell through due to complications with Jamison's record label.[54][55] Eventually, after auditioning several high-profile candidates, including Brian Howe (White Spirit, Ted Nugent, Bad Company), Doug Pinnick (King's X), Australians Jimmy Barnes (Cold Chisel) and John Farnham (Little River Band), Terry Brock (Strangeways, Giant) and Norman "Kal" Swann (Tytan, Lion, Bad Moon Rising),[56] former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner was recruited into the band. This Mark V line-up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters (1990) and toured in support. It achieved modest success and reached #87 on the Billboard Charts in the US,[57] but some fans criticized it as little more than a so-called "Deep Rainbow" album.
With the tour complete, Turner was forced out, as Lord, Paice and Glover (and the record company) wanted Gillan back in the fold for the 25th anniversary. Blackmore grudgingly relented, after requesting and eventually receiving 250,000 dollars in his bank account[58] and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On. But Gillan reworked much of the existing material for the album. As a result, Blackmore became infuriated at what he considered non-melodic elements. During an otherwise stunningly successful European tour, Blackmore walked out in November 1993, never to return. Joe Satriani was drafted to complete the Japanese dates in December and stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994. He was asked to join permanently, but his record contract commitments prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs/Kansas guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.
Revival with Steve Morse (1994–present)
In February 2007, Gillan asked fans not to buy a live album Come Hell or High Water being released by Sony BMG. This was a recording of their 1993 appearance at the NEC in Birmingham. Recordings of this show have previously been released without resistance from Gillan or any other members of the band, but he said: "It was one of the lowest points of my life – all of our lives, actually".[62]
Gillan hinted that the group may record their nineteenth studio album in February 2010,[63] to be followed by a supporting tour.[64] Steve Morse later revealed in an interview that the band would begin working on a new album in March. But there’s been still disagreement among the members about whether to make the new studio album. Roger Glover stated that it wouldn’t really make money anymore.[65] The current band's chief sound engineer on nine years of tours, Moray McMillin, died in September 2011, aged 57.[66]
In early 2011, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes told VH1 they would like to reunite with former Deep Purple Mark III lineup for the right opportunity, such as a benefit concert.[67]
Band members
Main article: List of Deep Purple band members
Current members
- Ian Paice – drums, percussion (1968–1976, 1984–present)
- Ian Gillan – lead vocals, harmonica, congas (1969–1973, 1984–1989, 1992–present)
- Roger Glover – bass (1969–1973, 1984–present)
- Steve Morse – guitar (1994–present)
- Don Airey – keyboards, organ (2002–present)
Former members
- Jon Lord – keyboards, organ, backing vocals (1968–1976, 1984–2002)
- Ritchie Blackmore – guitar (1968–1975, 1984–1993)
- Nick Simper – bass, backing vocals (1968–1969)
- Rod Evans – lead vocals (1968–1969)
- Glenn Hughes – bass, vocals (1973–1976)
- David Coverdale – lead vocals (1973–1976)
- Tommy Bolin – guitar, backing vocals (1975–1976)
- Joe Lynn Turner – lead vocals (1989–1991)
- Joe Satriani – guitar (1993–1994)
Mag-subscribe sa:
Mga Post (Atom)