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A mountain burned down…
In the last couple of weeks Ritchie Blackmore’s official YT channel has posted several short clips of Jon Lord reminiscing about Deep Purple’s selected albums and tracks. Most (all?) of these had been available before in one form or another. Here they are as a playlist, albeit in reverse chronological order — starting with Stormbringer and going back in time from there.
Thanks to Karl for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Those were quite enjoyable… can’t figure out why the Speed King video has an age restriction on it though.
April 6th, 2026 at 08:48Hello.
Just exactly like Russ 775 told and described.
I could listen to Jon for hours. Perfect gentleman talking about things he has created himself with his bandmates.
He has no hurry whatsoever, he choices his words carefully, but tells about the facts how they where at the particular times.
I didn´t know Ritchie had that white Strat already in 1970?
And yes, it´s 52th anniversary of the Cal Jam today.
Kippis.
April 6th, 2026 at 11:06Darn and I thought a Stormbringer was a flying white stallion with feathered wings that brought tornados and stuff from up high … Jon, the mythbuster.
April 6th, 2026 at 11:56@1… So no lawsuits occur due to profanity. ¯\(°_o)/¯
April 6th, 2026 at 12:04It’s interesting that Highway Star was written with the intention of having a new concert opening number…they “just” wrote the best possible opening number!
April 6th, 2026 at 21:16Definitely Highway Star is the best concert opening number any other rock band could only dream about.
The creation of the song to me is the peak of them Mark 2 together as a band. Quick ideas, collaborating, meticulously worked, resulting in a fantastic song. When it worked it was magic, they were untouchable.
As for Stormbringer, the guitar riff was more ‘Steve Morse’ than ‘Ritchie Blackmore’, compared to the straight-forward Burn.
April 7th, 2026 at 03:11I like that riff even though it’s not one of Ritchie’s best.
April 7th, 2026 at 10:47Iron Maiden song “Wrathchild” reminds me of .
Interesting, for (usually high) DP standards, I find the Stormbringer riff simplistic if not even mundane (also likely borrowed from this here https://youtu.be/mfTpjrzas5E ) whereas Burn is DP riff-o-mania at its glorious height. The riff is rhythmically complex, fast and elegant plus cannot be played well by everyaone (even Ritchie struggled with it at the reunion).
April 7th, 2026 at 12:24Another instance where you read my mind, Uwe. The Stormbringer riff might be OK for most hard rock groups, but to me it was generally of a lower standard than Purple was capable of. I think Jon was being a bit generous in his Stormbringer comments (which was consistent with his personality and demeanor anyway). The Burn riff is another matter altogether. For my money, it’s Purple’s best riff and (on most days, IMHO) their best song, period. One of the times when I think Jon clearly outclassed Ritchie in their respective solos, although Paicey is the real star of the song – arguably his best work. I sometimes feel a bit guilty picking a MKIII song as my favorite Purple cut, since I have lots of loyalty to Ian/Roger/MKII. I love the various youtube1985 live concert videos where Jon and Ritchie incorporate the riff into their duel jams, and you get the sense they were just aching to play the entire song. But it wasn’t going to happen with Big Ian, although I would have liked to hear what he would have done with it.
April 8th, 2026 at 02:46And remembering Jon Lord after watching the video above, it still saddens me that he often had to play “Burn” majestic guitar riff alone with his keyboards during Mark 4 live concerts, as the guitarist clearly don’t give any care at all to play it properly like the song requires.
I’m sure the fact him and Paice had to cover many grounds at their – according to Glenn Hughes’ words – horrendously wrong world tour led to them ultimately decided to disband the group prematurely, despite there were still some dates to finish. They could not even finish 12 months together
April 8th, 2026 at 09:25@8 @9 ….and ain’t it funny that Ritchie even recycled that rather mediocre riff for Slow down Sister?
There are good reasons to pick Burn as Purple’s best song. But let’s not forget Ritchie nicked that riff too…😉
April 8th, 2026 at 16:56The Stormbringer riff is like something Budgie would have come up with in their garage …
https://youtu.be/54H3EUAzpVg
Now there is nothing wrong with the Welsh trio and they are a cult favorite of mine, but in the pantheon of great DP riffs the Stormbringer riff does belong NOT! Obviously something Ritchie was not bothered to “sacrifice” for the Stormbringer album in whose gestation he only participated in a noncommittal way – in contrast to the riffs for MOTSM and 16CGS which he kept stashed away for his solo album which he went about recording immediately after Stormbringer.
Not that Stormbringer is a bad song, the overall arrangement and other composition parts did as much as they could to resurrect the somewhat lackluster riff from banality. Deep Purple können also auch mit Wasser noch ganz gut kochen. 😂
April 8th, 2026 at 18:19#10 Andre Sihotang:
you’re right, but unfortunately Purple MK IV were a band in disarray, Lord & Paicey were not able to navigate the drifting ship towards happy hard rock islands or other even more creative and radical territories
April 8th, 2026 at 19:34When I listen to Mk IV live tracks today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq_nl1D8fr4
I wonder what the hell was so terrible about it. I guess that funky jamming was more than many Blackmore fans could stomach at the time, but is it really that far away from what the Red Hot Chili Peppers would do several decades later with raging success? I guess music tastes of rock fans have widened over time and Mk IV in 1975/76 was asking too much. Touring the UK was a mistake at this point too, I believe fans in continental Europe would have been more appreciative.
Tommy was too American in groove to really credibly play Blackmore’s strict riffs in DP. They should have kept Mk II and III material to an even scarcer minimum or take choice cuts such as Holy Man (the verse chords are identical with the ones of Wild Dogs!), Sail Away or Hold On that would have suited Tommy’s style better and play those. And I’m sure Mk IV could have done an RnB version of Hush to make Mk I and II collectively blush (rhymes! 😂).
Tommy knew two DP songs when he joined them: Hush and SOTW. Expecting him to be a good Blackmore impersonator was hardly a realistic prospect. Clem Clempson could have done that better.
April 8th, 2026 at 20:26@ 10- you are not wrong there. A debacle of gigantic proportions was Tommy Bolin on stage. Embarrassingly so and yes without Jon Lord hammering away, well it was already falling to pieces no matter how hard Jon and Ian were trying to keep it ‘together’. Karmic for the two ‘surviving’ Deep Purple member perhaps. I am not saying that in a nasty way, but in hindsight as they have often said, ‘we should never have kept the band going’. At least we all have a decent studio album from the ashes of that fire. Cheers.
April 8th, 2026 at 22:34Why should Ritchie or anyone else for that matter keep coming up with ‘killer’ riffs ALL THE TIME? Where does this end? And so what if musicians keep ideas for other projects, so many do just that and for good reasons. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. It is the same old story, as soon someone comes up with some successful formula, it is EXPECTED that they will continue to do so, forever and a day. The Stormbringer riff is fine for that song, it is that simple isn’t it? What other riff would people have there? Madness, it really is! Cheers.
April 9th, 2026 at 08:42The most frustrating part is that they made a fresh and musically great album together. Then everything went downhill after that.
Jon Lord himself said he was devastated after hearing Tommy’s passing
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/interviews/lord/jl19990500.html
#14
The notion I often get that the Mark 4 UK Tour was total disaster. Now after getting from Jon himself in the link above, it wasn’t really full dark.
“By the time we reached the U.K. he completely lost it. It was not entirely his fault. There was some opposition from the British fans to seeing their favorite British group with an American guitarist. He won them over on a couple of nights, but usually he ended up shouting at the fans.”
Perhaps that ‘on a couple of nights’ is including Scotland 1976 concert
April 9th, 2026 at 09:13Tasmanian wild hogwash! I’m happy that CTTB, LCIJ, Long Beach + the rehearsal jams exist! LCIJ is flawed due to Tommy’s arm affliction, we all know that, but man do the others cover for him! It’s a band giving its best under unfortunate circumstances, the album is worth the price for Purple’s Wild Dogs version alone.
April 9th, 2026 at 09:55“The raspberry of a tour” (Little Ian’s term for the UK leg in a 1976 NME interview explaining the dissolution) can’t have helped and you can add road fatigue and financial saturation on the part of Little Ian and Jon too, but I think Mk IV succumbed for dearth of a leader:
– Glenn and Tommy obviously couldn’t do it, they themselves needed someone to guide them and keep them contained.
– Jon and Little Ian, for all their seniority, experience and musical prowess as instrumentalists were not band leaders; senior advisors, yes, but they were not made to assume leadership in a band like DP.
– That leaves us with DC. I believe he was itching to assume or at least attempt assumption of that role, but even young at age he was also a smart and, more importantly, a prudent man. He must have realized that his initial status as the new green-behind-the-ears rookie in DP less than three years before would have at best made it very difficult for him to become the new leader. Perhaps if a more visionary management had backed such a coup and let loyalties to Jon and Little Ian be future royalties, but it would have been an uphill struggle. So DC opted for a new set of cards (continuously reshuffled in the years to follow) and the creation of Whitesnake where the former rookie metamorphosed into the founder and caller of all shots, eventually hiring Jon and Ian and even firing the latter. Control became everything for the Saltburnian, he has repeated in later interviews over and over again that the loss of control in the careening Mk IV taught him a valuable lesson for life and future conduct of himself.
And you have to hand it to DC: The Purple member who when joining the band in 1973 had been the least known ever, was the only one whose solo success would a laborious 14 years later (an eternity in rock’n’roll terms) catch up with and even eventually eclipse DP’s success in the all important US market. So David did have it in him, like his later music or not.
–
April 9th, 2026 at 19:04Coverdale was far more prepared to ‘sell himself’ than the other musicians from the DP tree. So, yes he did go further in that commercial sell out side of the rock ‘n roll circus. He also learnt how to be ruthless with and without a conscious, if you know what I mean. To his credit at least he knew in 1976 what to do about it. Firstly getting out of that DP situation and all. Cheers.
April 9th, 2026 at 22:19Every DP lineup was great ..MK 4 when they were having fun were better than of other many bands in the final product..
there was a lot of talent there..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgSDSQmeDyk
Too bad for RnR.. Bolin left way too early he was 25 (Rithie recorded “In Rock” at 25)..
PS And happy birthday Ritchie ….for three days
April 10th, 2026 at 09:27It was great to hear that number again, thanks Ivica!
April 10th, 2026 at 21:30