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Next thing you know, there’s Mark 1
Derek Lawrence recalls his association with Joe Meek, meeting Ritchie Blackmore, and a new band coalescing around them.
This looks like another fragment of the same interview which we featured on our pages a few years back.
Thanks to Ritchie Blackmore Official channel for posting this.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
MKI are my favorite DP line up, just after the mighty MKII. Those first 3 albums are excellent and still get played very much by me!
June 26th, 2025 at 11:02Derek says in the interview, Ritchie played on this here:
https://youtu.be/A4e-5veFNKs
There is a solo at 00:59 that COULD be Ritchie and it MIGHT even be Ritchie in the vid sitting on a stool playing it. It’s hard to tell. With Joe Meek recordings it is notoriously difficult to determine what the respective recording line-ups were, he was a sonic alchemist distilling things in the aftermath.
What I would really love to see and hear is a compilation of Joe Meek stuff with Ritchie commenting track for track what he remembers about the sessions, but apparently he has no interest for that particular part of his legacy. Schade.
June 26th, 2025 at 12:15@ 2 Damn right Uwe, they should do something to lift Deep Purple mk I into more peoples minds. I regularly play all three of the mk I albums. Deep Purple (third) being the favourite.
June 27th, 2025 at 06:45I like The Book of Taliesyn best, it has that naïve late 60s psychedelia whimsical prog pop charm and is really varied. April (let’s call the third album that for ease of reference, everyone in Germany does!) saw the band edging forward (or backward? 😂) to hard rock territory, but I just felt that Gillan/Glover were better suited for that than Evans/Simper. April is also the much darker and sullen album. That said, Chasing Shadows, Lalena and the Ennio Morricone-pastiche of the title track (whenever I hear that choir in the first part set in, I see Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef glint mischievously into the sun, up to no good as usual!) are all personal favorites.
I can see though that pretty much none of the songs – Kentucky Woman and improvisational mainstay Wring That Neck/Hard Road excepted – on TBOT would have worked live in 1968/69 with the then available technology. The album is very much a studio creation, bit of an attempt to do a Sgt. Pepper even.
June 27th, 2025 at 15:30Anybody remember ANGEL?
https://youtu.be/K5Cc-9Wij_M
https://youtu.be/aZeZvzt-fEw
Curiously enough for a Yank outfit hailing from Washington DC (and obviously inspired by Freddie Mercury‘s gown chic!), they wanted Derek Lawrence to produce their first two mid 70s albums because they were all Mk I (not II or III) fans. By that time Derek‘s production skills were regarded as somewhat archaic/old hat and he was bemused by the request of these five young Americans he had never heard of before. He really didn‘t have experience in production of that heavy a music, but produce them he did, aided by Big Jim Sullivan, Ritchie‘s former guitar teacher.
SWEET were ardent Mk I fans too.
June 27th, 2025 at 20:39Leslie – Mk 1 is where it all started and I agree that those first three albums have such a great feel, very much like a band “finding it’s feet”. It’s a shame that important period of the band’s history is often neglected by most of us “amateur historians”.
June 27th, 2025 at 21:13In case you have never read or forgotten about this interview with Derek here:
http://www.deep-purple.net/interviews/derek-lawrence.htm
June 27th, 2025 at 21:15Derek Lawrence also has many anecdotes to tell that are not written in the purple history books
June 27th, 2025 at 23:15@4
“the Ennio Morricone-pastiche of the title track” Yeah, conjures up the same images for me.
Like this one does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IST8hN3Ezxo
“April” as you call it is my favorite & most played of the Mk I albums. I too find the overall mood of the album somewhat dark. The lyrics of most of the songs sound like the words of a severely depressed person crying out for help. It’s a glimpse in to the bands future; their transition from psychedelia to harder rock.
June 27th, 2025 at 23:31The one of the 3 I like the least. But Shield and Anthem are really good with Anthem as the big one on this album.
June 28th, 2025 at 08:12Truth be told, I most likely only like TBOT so much because my first four DP albums were – all bought on a four week vacation in Germany in the summer of 1975 while we were still living in Africa all year round (hard to get vinyl there) – Shades of, Book of Taliesyn, In Rock and Stormbringer – a hilariously weird mix and an indication of how I would never really have just one line-up of Purple which I liked, my catholic approach to all things Purple has its roots in juvenile randomness (I was 14). I’m such a fraud. 😂
When a schoolmate loaned me his copy of Burn soon after, I remember valiantly trying to match the photos of the band members in the In Rock gatefold sleeve with the candles – my results were somewhat inconclusive (I think I thought Glenn was Big Ian and identified DC as a beardless Roger Glover, but doubts lingered) … 🤣 That is when I started reading the name credits on the albums more closely – to this day I haven’t stopped with that … 😎
That interests me: When did it sink in with you guys that Hush, SOTW, Mistreated and Getting Tighter are sung by four different people and that there is not just one Purple line-up?
June 28th, 2025 at 13:25It was mail order people who started calling Mk I’s third outing “April” instead of “same” or “3rd” or “drittes Album” eventually in Germany and the name just stuck because it was descriptive (and April, the song, was a radio staple in the 70s in Germany, believe it or not, even the long version got played, especially on stillen Feiertagen). Sometimes it was also called “Hieronymus Bosch Cover”.
Never liked it when bands didn’t give their albums titles, Zed Leppelin-pretentious it is and only good for learning the term “eponymously named”, which you only ever read in record reviews. ☝️🤓
June 28th, 2025 at 15:48Wonder when Universal will release the live Canada 69 tape.
June 28th, 2025 at 23:38Book of Taliesyn has Listen, Learn, Read on along with Wring That Neck and Athem and Shield, four favourites for me plus that album cover. However, April and a few others off the third DP album are damn good arrangements too. MKI did very well to my ears, sure it is the 60’s and all, but that is what it was always going to be. Rod Evans was a fine singer and Nick a good bass player, both musicians opening the door nicely. That Ennio Morricone soundtrack (Sergio Leone) film, is that Once Upon A Time in The West, with Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda. A classic it is, really good quality filming in that and Claudia Cardinale too. Uwe again eh? He does these things deliberately, luring us into something then, bingo, oh yes, I do remember that scene. Shame on him. I know it in’t the film he is talking about, but I will blame him anyway, why not? Cheers.
https://www.art.com/gallery/id–b10176-d207238/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west-canvas.htm?srsltid=AfmBOopGXZ9eka1YtfWUSOkeCtGRCmcA9e5GqinaJ-kNPR1QC2jbPypz
June 28th, 2025 at 23:46