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Very, very scholarly
There’s a new book on Deep Purple being published, and this time it is a scholarly tome in the Studies in Popular Music series, published by Equinox Publishing. It is called after the last classic Mark II album Who Do We Think They Are? and was edited by Dr. Andy R. Brown (which implies that it’s not a monograph, but a collection of contributions by different authors). The covered scholarly topics, among others, are said to include Ian Gillan’s influence on the operatic voice in heavy metal and the voice/guitar duels in Made in Japan.
Who Do We Think We Are (1973) was the fourth and final studio album of the Mk2 Deep Purple line-up of Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice. At the time of release, Purple were the most successful, top-grossing, stadium-touring heavy rock band on the planet; a position confirmed by the virtuoso performances captured on the double live album, Made in Japan (1972), and the Billboard chart success of the double A-side Live/Studio single “Smoke on the Water.” The idea for the title of the album came from drummer Paice, who told Melody Maker that the band received “piles of passionate letters either violently against or pro-the group”, with the angry one’s typically beginning: “Who do Deep Purple think they are?” This quote appears as part of the album artwork, a collage of press-clippings that dramatically contrast the success of the band with the controversy that surrounded it, particularly negative reviews of the band smashing up their equipment as the finale to their live performances.
Like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, Purple were derided as proponents of “heavy metal” rock. But, as this volume’s innovative and internationally recognised Metal Music scholars argue, it was their success in communicating – over the course of a series of ground-breaking studio albums and especially in live performance – with a new, younger rock audience that helped to define the genre template we now recognise as “classic” heavy metal. Without this success, heavy metal would not have developed in the way that it did nor forged a lasting bond with its audience amidst the controversy which surrounded its rise; a controversy which centred on the way it choose to communicate with this audience, through extremes of volume and dramatic musicianship, particularly live.
What: Who Do We Think They Are?, edited by Andy R. Brown
When: September 1, 2025
Where: Equinox Publishing
ISBN-13: 9781800506367 (hardback) | 9781800506374 (paperback) | 9781800506381 (e-book)
Price: £75.00 / $100.00 (hardback or institutional e-book) | £26.95 / $34.00 (paperback or personal e-book)
Format: 234 × 156 mm, 320 pages
Thanks to Marcelo Soares for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Scholarly or not, I’m gonna get this. Anything to bolster my intellectual air!
https://youtu.be/d-rQhuCYn1w
June 7th, 2025 at 04:34I’m saving my $$$ for Martin Popoff’s Seven Decades of Deep Purple,which is also due in September.
June 7th, 2025 at 12:43This is probably the last thing we all need here. Once Uwe has perused through it, we will be inundated with a mega news tsunami of ‘new’ information that will drown us all. I wonder if there is some sort of barricade we can put up, a draw bridge perhaps to stem the tide. The seven decades of DP that Mike has mentioned could be the end of everything including civilisation itself. Get ready everyone. A bit like the Game of Thrones and that dire apocalyptic warning about the approaching winter. “More information is coming”. Thanks for the warning. Cheers.
June 9th, 2025 at 07:47Are we now subscribing to INGSOC’s ‘Ignorance is Strength”, Comrade MacGregor? Doubleplusgood!
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June 9th, 2025 at 12:52