Farewell to the Lord of Hard Rock

Things reached a bit of a tipping point today with the death of Jon Lord.  For those unfamiliar with the name, Lord was the keyboard player and founding member of Deep Purple, a long lived hard rock band from Hertford, England.

 

I say things reached a tipping point because of recent passings of a more personal nature over the last week; last Tuesday I discovered the old friend who introduced me to my late wife Maria passed away in California, where he is now buried.  On Friday, my oldest sister passed away from complications caused by bladder cancer.  Already emotional and grieving, the news of Jon Lord’s passing due to complications from a pulmonary embolism made me feel a part of my youth to be now gone forever.

Well, no one said grief is rational.  Since I am now in my 50’s, my so called “youth” has been gone for quite a while now.  And I’ve no desire to return to it, thank you very much.  

However, since this site has music as its subject, I’m happy to place the grief aside and talk about Jon Lord and Deep Purple for a while.

My first experience with hearing the group came in the late 1960’s when one of my older brothers borrowed a copy of Shades of Deep Purple from one of his friends.  When I started buying LPs on my own and began to establish a bit of a collection, the band was not originally on my radar, but liking what I heard of particular recordings on WNEW FM I decided to pick up one of their records. The first album I purchased by the group was Fireball, and this would have been in early 1971. I liked it, especially the sound Lord was able to get out of his organ – that slightly distorted, solid, gritty tone that just screamed of heavy and sometimes sounded like a second guitar. I had not heard an organ sound like that before.  It was clear the poppy “top forty” sounds of bands with an organ such as The Grass Roots or Tommy James and the Shondells was not going to happen here.

Thank God.

In retrospect, Fireball was part of a string of recordings that have become an example of the strength and creativity carried within the British hard rock bloodstream of the early 70’s. Those albums would include In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head, Made in Japan, and Burn.

 

The anomaly in the band’s discography from this period is the recording made with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

 

Lord had written a suite of pieces and decided to invest the time and effort to bring them to life.  I had a copy of the LP way back when, and even listened to it all the way through.  More than once, to be honest about it.  I was trying to get it, but never did.  When it was all said and done, I never understood why the rest of the band agreed to do the project, and assumed it was the personal respect they had for Lord that allowed the project to happen at all. It was a great idea, even if it didn’t work, and in any case I always admired bands that were willing to stretch themselves to reach new and higher plateaus as long as they were sincere in the effort.  And Jon Lord was sincere, no doubt. By the way, those sections that feature the band still sound good.

As for the other albums from this period, they stand the test of time and remain a great listen.  Listening to these recordings now makes it clear the band was a precursor to, as well as a part of, the early metal movement. Although I never considered them to be a metal band per se, they had a number of elements required to qualify them for the position.  Certainly volume was never a problem.  Neither was drama.  The guitar players made the difference here, though; they were never metal heads, and that is the rub, although all of the players that went through the band were monsters in their own right.  I can’t quibble with the chops of players like Richie Blackmore, Tommy Bolin (R.I.P) and Steve Morse, and like them or not, cannot imagine anyone who can.

(As a matter of fact, if you like drama in your music, give a listen to Child in Time from In Rock.  The buildup to the crescendo, then the resolution and the surprising rebuild to another crescendo – will leave you wondering how it will all end.  The tune flies like an action movie, even to the point of reaching the intended goal [We did it!] then discovering you overlooked something small but significant, and need to deal with that… [and by the way, you’ve got one minute to do it.] Boom. )

I’ve always been partial to Fireball, but that is more of a sentimental choice as it was the first album I purchased by the band.  The album I go back to more often than any other is Deep Purple, the self titled third album released in 1969.

 

I did not get a copy of this until the mid 70’s, but wound up liking it above all of the others.  It sounds and is different, but apparently the band didn’t like it, because they tossed out the singer and the bassist to bring in Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively.  The album also did not sell as well as the first two releases, and this, no doubt, was a catalyst involved in the personnel changes.  The rest is history, as this was to become the premiere version of the band, sometimes referred to as Mark II.

Other versions followed in the late 70s, causing a breakup, then a reunion in the 80s with the Perfect Strangers album.  All through the changes, Jon Lord was ever present with the organ sound that never changed.  Synthesizers came into play later on, but the organ was always the foundation of the band’s sound.  It permeated everything, whether the listener was aware of it or not.

After the breakup of Deep Purple in 1975, Lord became a member of Whitesnake, along with David Coverdale, who was the third lead singer for DP.   I cannot claim to be a listener of the band, and lost track of Lord’s work around that time.  Deep Purple was reformed in ‘84 with the Perfect Strangers album and subsequent world tour. I kept an ear to the ground to stay up with what they were doing, but for me their glory days were long gone.  Those early seventies recordings were just one heck of a ride, and once the creative batteries began to ebb the essence which made those recordings possible could not be recaptured.  It’s an old story.

Over the course of his career, Lord did find a way to fill his classical chops from time to time. I was reminded recently of the solo album he recorded in 1970 called the Gemini Suite.  I did not really like it then, and can’t claim to like it now, but it is clear he had a drive to fulfill something in the world of classical music, and worked hard to do so.  I will let others with an ear for it give an opinion on that work, and say no more of it.

Most recently, Lord had a blues itch to scratch, and you can find copies of The Jon Lord Blues Project Live in numerous places.  The CDs used to be sold at the gigs, and he does the blues thing rather well.  I can hear Vincent Crane is some of his playing, but his blues feel is stronger than Crane’s, while Crane could clearly be funkier.  Crane (of Atomic Rooster fame) has been long gone, but if you want to hear Lord give a try at the blues, check out the record.  It’s a bit too cliché for me, but die hard blues heads will certainly love it.

So we now say goodbye to Jon Lord, and who knows who else before the year is done. It was a long career and a good one as well.  Few have been so lucky.  I hope he found God along the way.

Jim Morrison wasn’t right about much, but he was right about one thing:

No One Here Gets Out Alive.

Jon Lord (1941 – 2012) 

Rest in Peace

NYC – July 15, 2012

jazzmanblue