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Deep
Purple is the greatest hard rock band of all time period!
There I said it!
Now
I know those are fighting words for a lot of you out there.
What about Led Zeppelin “Can’t categorize, Zep
was a entity into themselves) Black Sabbath? (They were the
godfathers of Heavy Metal) The Who? (The granddaddies of rock
operas Tommy, Quadrophenia, even Who’s Next was a aborted
opera originally entitled Lighthouse.) The Stones? (The greatest
bar band of all time) Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Aerosmith,
Queen, AC DC , etc. (We are talking legends right? They all
came out after the guys above and were influenced by them
one way or another. Anyways you can see where I am going with
this.
Now
I also have to add that emotionally the music you grow up
with in your formulative teenage years is the music that remains
your favorite for the rest of your life, your tastes could
broaden but nothing races the memories back than those tunes
you heard as a teenager.
In
the fall/winter of 1972-73 there wasn’t a place you
could walk in my home country of Greece (Athens to be exact)
and not hear Deep Purple being played. They were that huge.
It didn't matter where; Underground Pirate radio (Dictator
state sponsored radio would not play rock n roll) nightclubs,
discos,that really exotic girl living in the apartment next
to me on her stereo, and most record stores on the intercom.
My
parents were working and living in America (I joined them
and my kid brother a year later), I was living with my aunt
and uncle going to high school.
Alone
and feeling out of place, rock music and art was my escape.
Deep Purple Machine Head was the first LP I ever owned (a
present from my uncle for Christmas, all I had before were
45’s). I played it to death, knew the lyrics by heart,
I scribbled the words Highway Star with a BIC pen on my Levi
bellbottoms (early punk). HIGHWAY STAR was and is the greatest
Deep Purple song of all time and top five of all time hard
rock songs.
And
of course there was the record cover, I used to sit there
and stare at it as I listened to the album. Roger Glover,
Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore were
gods to me. They were superheroes like Conan, Spiderman, Ghostrider
and the XMen in the comic books I read at the time, the mysterious
metallic image just added to the myth.
Not
in my wildest dreams did I imagine that many years later I
would be creating sleeve designs for a living and Deep Purple
would be my clients, but I digress.
Machine
Head works as a complete package timeless music with the perfect
visual statement. In the music industry this is not so easy
to achieve, especially with the constant egos, compromises
and battles one has to content with. Even than I remember
one famous record label art director telling me that “the
greatest record cover artwork will be quickly forgotten if
all that is inside the package is musical garbage.”
Of course this is not the case here, however another lesson
is also apparent, that art becomes great cover art if it captures
the moment, think of your most favorite covers and that sometimes
the art is not great but it’s a perfect fit for the
music thus making it mythical in stature.
Machine
Head delivers on both levels art and music working together
to offer the ultimate experience. In my previous articles
I have related the story of how the cover was done, this time
around I had the pleasure of talking with Roger Glover about
the cover and the story behind it, as we worked together on
the latest Deep Purple release.
Here is his story. Enjoy!
WHO
CAME UP WITH THE NAME MACHINE HEAD FOR THE ALBUM? IT WAS YOU
RIGHT?
Yes,
the name was my idea. A machine head is the knob on the guitar
that tunes the strings and it struck me as a cool-sounding
name, it sounded industrial and some what menacing, not to
mention sexual, but I won't mention that.
WHO
DID THE COVER AND HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
An
American photographer called Shep Sherbell was put in charge
of doing the cover, presumably by our management. He came
out to Montreux to shoot the piece while we were recording
the album. Since our previous two albums had images of us
cast in various substances - rock and fire - we were wondering
what we could do next. I can’t remember who came up
with the idea of it being metal, It was either me or John
Coletta, one of our managers at the time, but had nothing
whatsoever to do with the phrase 'heavy metal' - a term that
was not yet in mainstream circulation - we were hard rock
and that was that!
WHERE
THERE OTHER IDEAS AND CONCEPTS TOSSED AROUND OR TITLES?
No,
I don't think so; I suggested the title early on in the recording
and don’t recall any other discussion.
HOW
WAS THE COVER DONE?
How
to portray us in metal? There were some expensive thoughts
and suggestions bandied around, but someone - John, Shep or
myself - came up with the idea of it being a reflection; cheaper
and easier and also quicker. Shep Sherbell procured a sheet
of metal from somewhere, roughly five feet square, and managed
to find some wooden letters, like those used in early printing
presses, which he then hammered into it. It was a bit tricky
because the harder the letters were hammered in, the more
the metal tended to warp, and since the result was going to
be a shot of our reflected images, we wanted to keep the smooth
quality of the sheet as intact as possible. The embossed metal
sheet was then suspended vertically in front of a blue cloth
backdrop and the five of us in the band, suitably lit, sat
in front of it with the backdrop behind us. Shep (disguised
by some sort of dark material so that his face and camera
were as unobtrusive as possible) positioned himself just in
front of the backdrop, seven or eight feet behind us, and
shot the pictures over us, capturing our reflections in the
metal underneath the roughly stamped letters of the name and
title. (Shep can be spotted on the album cover. looking like
a dark shape underneath the 'E' of Head.) Trial and error
was the modus operandi of the day and out of all the shots
taken very few looked like anything recognizable, I seem to
recall having only three or four hopefuls, one of which is
of course the image that is now so instantly recognizable.
The back cover was the same sheet of metal but in reverse
and with a close up of a bass guitar's machine heads reflected
in it. Interestingly, the bass guitar he used was a Fender
Precision but the bass I used extensively on the record was
a Rickenbacker 4001. I don’t know why, I wasn't there
when that was shot so maybe it was all he had available.
All
the candid photographs used on the insides of the gatefold
sleeve were taken by Shep as well, in the ground floor corridor
of the (then) Grand Hotel, Montreux, during that cold month
of December 1971. Some time after my return to the UK, I was
in Deep Purple's management offices in London one day and
was invited to look at the contact sheets of his photographs
and asked to pick out any that I liked of either myself or
the rest of the band. Thinking that everyone in the band was
going to be going though the same procedure, I duly picked
all the best ones of me that I could find and also occasionally
earmarked any shots of the others that I came across that
I thought might be of interest to them. It was only later,
when the album was about to be released, that I saw it for
the first time and realized, to my absolute horror, that my
choices were the only ones used – which is why there
are dozens of shots of me there but very few of anyone else!
In fact there are only two shots of Ian Plaice in the entire
album. I had some explaining to do after that! Of course,
I blamed the management. Those contact sheets were all I ever
saw and I believe that was all that was used for the cover,
which goes a long way to explain the dubious quality of the
printing on the inside of the album. I have no idea what became
of the originals, probably lost forever, or maybe Shep has
them locked in a suitcase somewhere in his attic, if he has
one ...During the same period, Didi Zill, a photographer for
Bravo - a huge music magazine in Germany at the time and with
whom we had done several photographic sessions - flew out
to Montreux and spent a few days with us, documenting the
activities and atmosphere of the hotel corridor in which we
had improvised our 'studio'. His photographs can be seen in
the 1997 Anniversary Edition of Machine Head. In 2002 he produced
a book called Deep Purple – Fotografien Von Didi Zill,
published by Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, and contains all
the photographs he took of us at that time.
WHERE
IS EVERYONE (PHOTOGRAPHER, ART DIRECTOR, DESIGNER) TODAY?
Shep
Sherbell was living in London at the time and we had dinner
a few times after the album was finished. In fact I bought
the Nikon F2 that he used for the session from him, it had
been around for a while and was well used. At some point in
the 60s he had painted it blue with badly daubed bright yellow
stars and planets all over it, no doubt a good idea at the
time - cosmic, man!
I
paid £100 for it although it was probably worth less
than that because of the paint job. I just wanted to own it
and I still have it. He was last known living and working
as a photographer in New York, but has traveled extensively,
especially in Russia.
John
Coletta and Deep Purple parted company long ago and lives
in Spain.
I
moved to the States several years after Machine Head was released
and continue to live in Connecticut. I am still a member of
Deep Purple!
You
can visit Roger Glovers website here
You
can visit Deep Purple's official site here
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