10. Heavy metal on Stage: Deep Purple’s Made in Japan and the Production of Arena Rock
Who Do We Think They Are? - Deep Purple and Metal Studies - Andy R. Brown
Steve Waksman [+]
Smith College
Description
In Chapter 10, Steve Waksman seeks to bring together two early ‘70s musical and commercially lucrative phenomena, the rise of arena rock, first in North America, and following this, the emergence of the global world tour, identified with concerts held in Japan and the Far East, featuring hard rock and heavy metal bands, such as Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad and notably, Deep Purple. For Waksman, arena concerts became the primary medium through which heavy metal gained recognition as a distinct genre, identified with the huge crowds of teenage rock fans that populated these shows and which became a symbol of metal’s appeal and impact in the early 1970s. But the other key commercially lucrative music industry form that Waksman seeks to add to this, is the somewhat surprising (at the time) emergence of the vinyl market for ‘live’ albums, as signified by the iconic and now legendary Made in Japan. As Waksman notes, Made in Japan was a ‘double-live’ album (two-disc, vinyl) that offered an expanded format, which could approximate to the length of a full concert performance in ways that the standard single album simply could not. Although major record companies were initially reluctant to support this ‘live’ album market,18 the phenomenal success of Made in Japan (accompanied by the double A-side single, featuring both studio and ‘live’ versions of ‘Smoke on the Water’), when it was released in the US, marked the beginning of a decade that saw the ‘double live’ album came of age. In this respect, as Waksman argues, Made in Japan stands at the intersection of two interrelated developments that shaped the evolution of the rock concert: the rise of the arena concert as a prevalent format for major touring rock artists, and the increasing globalization of the ‘live’ music economy. Although Made in Japan was the first ‘live’ album to be released by the three leading arena heavy rock bands, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad had actually released a ‘live’ double album before it, while key groups such as Uriah Heep and Kiss were soon to follow. As Waksman argues, ‘live’ albums became more and more integral to the definition of the ‘liveness’ of heavy metal – a particular way of putting on a show, and then transferring that performance onto record – in the late 1970s, and it is a measure of Deep Purple’s influence that two of the signature albums of that time were also recorded in Japan: The Scorpions’ Tokyo Tapes (1978) and Judas Priest’s Unleashed in the East (1979). But following this, Waksman seeks to explore the tour of Japan that produced the ‘live’ recordings of the Deep Purple concerts performed at Koseinenkin Hall, Osaka (August 15th and 16th) and the Budokan, Tokyo (August 17) in 1972, in order to examine the selection of tracks from the three performances that were chosen to ‘approximate’ to the ‘live’ concert experience. Unlike the controversy surrounding some hard rock and heavy metal ‘live’ albums, whose sound was subsequently edited and re-recorded (‘dubbed’) in key places, Made in Japan, stands as an authentic ‘live’ recording engineered and produced by Birch. But, as Waksman notes, the ‘liveness’ of the recording is down to a number of key elements, most notably the lack of self-consciousness of the band in being ‘recorded,’ (see also Chapter 9), as well as the re-ordering of the sequence of the songs and their selection, based on the quality of the performances, but also the recording quality for each, as well as the audience reaction.