Deep Purple is the most legendary English heavy rock band! Many people in the music industry say that the world would not even know the concept “heavy rock” without this band.

Deep Purple was founded already in 1968, some forty years ago. The original line-up included Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on keyboards, Ian Paice on drums, Rod Evans on vocals and Nick Simper on bass.

The band became world famous when their first hit single "Hush" along with the first album "Shades of Deep Purple" entered the American charts in 1968.

After "Shades of Deep Purple" the following albums "The Book of Taliesyn" and "Deep Purple" reached the American charts in the late sixties as well.

The line-up was changed already in the early seventies: Singer Rod Evans and bass player Nick Simper were asked to leave the band to be replaced by Ian Gillan and Roger Glover.

And the new line-up found themselves in the middle of two very different kinds of album projects. The other one was a true heavy rock album called "In Rock" conducted by Ritchie Blackmore and the one a combination of rock and classical music called "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" together with The London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jon Lord. Luckily both albums did very well!

Indeed "In Rock", released in the Summer of 1970 is still considered to be one of the most brilliant heavy rock albums ever because of super hit songs like "Black Night", "Speed King" and "Child In Time".

At that time the band was busy touring around Europe and America. While touring Deep Purple took time to record an album called "Fireball" released in 1971. The biggest hit of the album was "Strange Kind of Woman".

The following album "Machine Head" recorded in Switzerland In December 1971 included probably the most well-known heavy rock ballad in the history of modern music called "Smoke On The Water"! Writer credits of the song are shared by all members.