Sticking around the 70s this week with a concert from Deep Purple – recorded on January 26, 1976 at the Springfield Civic Center in Springfield Massachusetts.
For fans of Deep Purple, you know all this – but for those who don’t:
This concert was recorded during what would be the last tour of Deep Purple Mark IV. It also featured some of the last work with guitarist Tommy Bolin who had joined the band in 1975 as replacement for Richie Blackmore.
Before he joined Deep Purple, Bolin’s best-known recordings had been made as a session musician on Billy Cobham’s 1973 jazz fusion album Spectrum, and as lead guitarist on two post-Joe Walsh James Gang albums: Bang (1973) and Miami (1974). He had also played with 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 from Deep Purple Mark IV, Come Taste the Band, was released in October 1975, one month before Bolin’s Teaser album. Despite mixed reviews and middling sales (#19 in the UK and #43 in the US), the collection revitalized the band once again, bringing a new, extreme funk edge to their hard rock sound. Bolin’s influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Hughes and Coverdale, the guitarist developed much of the album’s material. Despite Bolin’s talents, his personal problems with hard drugs began to surface. During the Come Taste the Band tour many fans openly booed Bolin’s inability to play solos like Ritchie Blackmore, not realizing that Bolin was physically hampered by his addiction. At this same time, as he admitted in interviews years later, Hughes was suffering from cocaine addiction.
The last show on the tour was on 15 March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. The break-up was finally made public in July 1976, with then-manager Rob Cooksey issuing a statement: “the band will not record or perform together as Deep Purple again”. Bolin went on to record his second solo album, Private Eyes. On 4 December 1976, after a show in Miami supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend and bandmates. 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.
While firmly placed in the hard rock and heavy metal categories, Deep Purple’s music frequently incorporated elements of progressive rock and blues rock, prompting Canadian journalist Martin Popoff to once call the band “a reference point of a genre in metal without categorization.” Jason Ankeny of AllMusic said the band “made hard rock a fine art, and unleashed some of the greatest guitar riffs known to the world.”
As a reminder of Deep Purple during the Mark IV years and Tommy Bolin’s contribution, here is their concert from January 26, 1976.
Technical note: As with all live concerts, sometimes it takes a while for the sound mix to settle down – this one is no different. The vocals are wandering in and out for most of Burn before settling into something listenable – but when it settles down, all is good.
Rock on.
