Deep Purple Whooosh

England's Deep Purple is bona fide classic rock royalty with a body of work spanning nearly seven decades. Along with Cream, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, they defined hard rock and early heavy metal. Though their lineup has constantly evolved, Deep Purple effectively made music a career for guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Roger Glover, vocalists Ian Gillan and David Coverdale, drummer Ian Paice, and organist/composer Jon Lord. Shortly before his death in 2012, Lord attributed Deep Purple's success in selling more than 100 million albums to "musical restlessness." Their early singles were cover-heavy exercises in psychedelic pop and included "Kentucky Woman," "Hush," and "Might Just Take Your Life," as well as the 1968 long-players Shades of Deep Purple and The Book of Taliesyn.

England's Deep Purple is bona fide classic rock royalty with a body of work spanning nearly seven decades. Along with Cream, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, they defined hard rock and early heavy metal.

With a body of work spanning nearly seven decades, England's Deep Purple are bona fide classic rock royalty. Along with Cream, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, they defined hard rock and early heavy metal. Though their lineup has constantly evolved, Deep Purple effectively made music a career for guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Roger Glover, vocalists Ian Gillan and David Coverdale, and organist/composer Jon Lord.

If you were looking to find Deep Purple's spiritual home, then two locations would vie for top billing. The first would be Hanwell Community Centre, stuck in the midst of a huge between the wars London housing estate. The second would be the altogether more affluent and spectacularly sited town of Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva. In the former, Deep Purple assembled in mid-1969, to audition Ian Gillan and Roger Glover and begin work on "Deep Purple In Rock". But it was in Montreux, just two years later, that they wrote and recorded "Machine Head", one of the most influential rock albums of all time.

Deep Purple were on the eve of breaking wide open when they made Machine Head, a record that launched a heap of hard-rock hits, not to mention the bulk of the live album Made in Japan. No fewer than three classics were unveiled here: Highway Star, Space Truckin' and their biggest hit ever, Smoke on the Water.

On "Live In Tokyo 2001" we return to the year 2001, when Deep Purple toured all over Asia, finally arriving in Tokyo on March 24 for two consecutive concerts.