Deep Purple: Who do we think we are!

During the second semester of my sophomore year in high school (spring 1987), I really got into Deep Purple. The main reason I got into this band was because of I was a fan of the spinoff band Rainbow, who got a decent amount of airplay on MTV back in 1981-1983 or so. This was also the semester of school I spent a lot of time trying to earn money to buy my first guitar so I could learn that famous first riff: "Smoke on the Water". Machine Head is considered the classic Deep Purple record, but my favorite is Who Do We Think We Are.

In 1987, Deep Purple was pretty much viewed as a standard classic rock band amongst my peers. Most of school friends, who were rock fans, liked the songs "Smoke on the Water" and "My Woman From Tokyo" but no one was really a fan of Deep Purple, except me*. In a lot of ways it was more puzzling to my peers than anything else. Friends would say things like:

"I like Mississippi Queen"
"wow, I've heard of them but I never heard anything by them"
"they are really old aren't they?"
"are they psychedelic"
"my brother was into them"
"Bon Jovi!"

Another interesting thing happened when I talked about Deep Purple to guys who were 10+ years older than me. They were impressed that I liked the band, but also surprised since they were about a decade out of date. One person I remember in particular was the guy who drove the bus on our band trip that year. I remember getting into a long conversation with him about music for some reason. I also remember that he was an Aerosmith fan, which was still a little unusual in early 1987. Contrast all this to now when youtube is full of teenagers making videos of themselves playing 40 year old music and no one thinks twice about it. It's also amazing that my fandom with Deep Purple goes back 24 years, and that Deep Purple is still recording and touring, albiet on a very infrequent basis. Even more amazing is that the only consistant member is drummer Ian Paice. It's like a reverse Spinal Tap. Another thing about Deep Purple is that they have a much larger fan base in St. Louis, where I live now, than they have back home again in Indiana. Even better is the fact that the musicians around here also truly get Deep Purple.



I also spent a crazy amount of time obsessing over the various lineups of Deep Purple, the spinoffs and related bands. In early 1987 the same teenagers who had no clue who Deep Purple was, were about to become major fans of their most successful spin-off, Whitesnake.

Who Do We think We Are is my favorite DP disc based on the second side of it. There are only 3 songs on side 2 of WDWTWA: Rat Bat Blue, Place In Line, & Our Lady. Rat Bat Blue is a great lost classic. Great riffs, killer vocals and one crazy Jon Lord solo. Place in Line proved once again that Deep Purple could be a great blues-rock band, much like Lazy on Machine Head did. Our Lady is a musical outlier in Deep Purple's long career. It's almost a power ballad but not very atmospheric and ethereal. Who knows, maybe 40 years from now teenagers will still be listening to late 60s - early 70s rock.

*I think by the 1st semester of my junior year the second real Deep Purple fan showed up.