Introduction: A Purple Passage or a Lasting Legacy?
Who Do We Think They Are? - Deep Purple and Metal Studies - Andy R. Brown
Andy R. Brown [+]
Independent Scholar
Description
What this collection seeks to do is not just to put the seminal Mk2 Deep Purple line-up back at the centre of the formation of the heavy metal genre in its classic phase but also to trace its artistic and musical influences on subsequent metal bands, metal musicians and metal sub-genre styles. For example, although there is no doubt that Deep Purple have had an influence on many hard rock bands, including Def Leppard, Europe, Foreigner, Kyuss, Nazareth, Queen, Queens of the Stone Age, Quiet Riot, Van Halen and UFO (see Chapters 1 and 2), they were also a major influence on heavy metal bands, such as Accept, Budgie, Candlemass, Danzig, Diamond Head, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Machine Head, Metallica, Monster Magnet, Motörhead, Pantera, Saxon, Scorpions, Slayer,Venom, Uriah Heep, W.A.S.P., Whitesnake and White Zombie (see Chapters 1, 3, 7, 8 and 10). At the same time, this influence, via the Mk2 line up and subsequent musical iterations, such as Rainbow, is seminal to the development of speed metal, neo-classical ‘baroque’, symphonic and progressive metal, as well as most obviously power metal (Brown 2025), particularly in Europe and North America, as exemplified by bands such as Dio, Dream Theater, Fates Warning, Helloween, King Diamond, Marillion, Mercyful Fate, Meshuggah, Opeth, Planet P Project, Porcupine Tree, Rainbow, Rush and Yngwie Malmsteen. In terms of musicianship, the influence of the band is not just to be found in the ‘name dropping’ by high-profile metal and hard rock musicians, such as Lars Ulrich (Metallica), Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Steve Harris (Iron Maiden) and Joe Elliot (Def Leppard), but also the musician-to-musician influence of the individual band members of Deep Purple on record and in ‘live’ performance. Not surprisingly then that Part One of the book seeks to explore individual musicians as part of the heavy rock band virtuosity of Deep Purple.