Personnel:
Ritchie Blackmore - guitar
Rod Evans - lead vocals
Nick Simper - bass, backing vocals
Jon Lord - Hammond organ, keyboards, backing vocals
Ian Paice - drums
British rock band Deep Purple's debut album. The album had dismal sales in England, but it had stronger ones in the United States. Compared to Deep Purple's 70's albums, their late 60's material comes off as more pop rock and psychedelic.
Shades of Deep Purple is filled with many cover songs. Four out of the 8 song tracks are covers from bands and artists like The Beatles (Help), Hey Joe (Billy Roberts), Skip James (I'm So Glad), and a song that Deep Purple made their own, Hush by Joe South arguably the best song on the album.
But Deep Purple does a great job of adding their own style to the songs, the band took "Help" from a standard pop rock track and made it feel like a slow progressive rock ballad. Ritchie Blackmore is fantastic on the guitar and John Lords keyboard ingrains Deep Purple's signature sound on the cover songs.
Shades of Deep Purple is an okay album, I'm not really upset with the amount of cover songs on the album but I'm not really a fan of the pop/psychedelic sound on this album. I like a couple of tracks like Hush, And the Address, but the rest of the songs range from above average to forgettable. Deep Purple would experience multiple lineup changes later on and this Mk I lineup would release two more albums before bass guitarist Nick Simper and vocalist Rod Evans were booted from the band leading to the formation of the Mk II lineup, my favorite one.
Favorite Songs: Hush, And the Address, Hey Joe
The Verdict: 3.0
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