Classic Albums-Deep Purple In Rock

Few can doubt Deep Purples' contribution to the history of rock music, they underwent many transformations & line-up changes, but the line-up most fondly revered is of course the mark 2 line-up. For any amoebas out there who need reminding of Mk 2 they were of course:

Gail Porter.............................Vocals, harmonica and foghorn

Jenny Agutter........................Lead guitar, air raid siren and klaxon

Kaiser Wilhelm the 2nd.......Keyboards and train whistle

Katy Hill.................................Bass guitar and swannee whistle

Samantha Eggar.................Percussion and police siren

In 1965 a 3-piece band appeared on the scene The Tawny Pipits.Inspired by the WW2 movie Tawny Pipit, Porter Agutter & Eggar went on a tour of The Norfolk marshes making bird noises.They had virtually no money so they had to make all their bird sounds with their mouths. This all changed one day when Gail Porter whilst in the middle of a sixty minute solo from Wood Pigeon Lament , found an old foghorn which had been discarded from an allied submarine from the war. She immiediately sounded the foghorn and all three agreed that it gave the song a more 'edgier feel.' That afternoon they visited all the local farms and the farmers paid them substantial amounts of money to go away.

With the money they made they headed down to London where they hoped they might get a record deal. They were spotted busking outside The Ministry Of Defence by General Herbert Plumer whistling Kentish Plover Blues with foghorn accompaniment.He saw their potential & quit the army, but by the time he came out of the ministry they were signing a record contract on the bonnet of a car, their new manager was Rear Admiral Martin E. Dunbar-Naismith. It's rumoured that Plumer died of a broken heart 3 weeks later, he was hit by a stray bullet in the head as he walked past a shoot-out between the police & a gang of bank robbers. Dunbar-Naismith had big plans for the group, he bought them proper instruments & drafted in keyboard player Elizabeth Montgomery and bass player Yootha Joyce.They recorded their first album Call Of The Carrion Crow in just 7 hours, it sank without trace although they had minor chart success with the one single taken off the album, Red-Backed Shrike Shat On My Washing reached number 87 in The Lithuanian charts.After a whirlwind tour of Lithuania, Afghanistan and Anglesey they released their second album Sedge Warbler Cake. It caused outrage.The album cover depicted a clearly distressed sedge warbler looking on as the band prepare hors d'oeuvres and petit-fours. A dribble of excrement can clearly be seen coming out of the leg of Yootha Joyces' shorts, Elizabeth Montgomery isn't wearing a hat and a hair can clearly be seen in Jenny Agutters' smoked salmon and dill terrine. It was the death of the band, despite the acclaim the album recieved musically, the music press & the record buying public were not prepared to tolerate filthy kitchen practices.Porter, Agutter & Eggar were left at a loose end after Montgomery successfully auditioned for the role of Samantha in "Bewitched" and Yootha Joyce was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation on her shorts.

The 1960's were a funny old decade for Kaiser Wilhelm the 2nd, since he was forced to abdicate as kaiser of Germany in 1918 he'd just drifted from job to job. Whilst working as a farmhand in 1964 he was caught kissing a cow on the lips and was subsequently jailed for 4 years.Whilst in jail Wilhelm struck up a close relationship with talking horse Mr Ed. Mr Ed was serving a two year sentence for smuggling cigarettes into the country, he was president of the prison music club.They discovered that they had much in common, a love for German military marching music and a sexual attraction to creatures of the bovine variety. They entertained their fellow prisoners regularly as the duo Hohenzollern and Eohippus.

They were both released from prison on the same day, and they were greeted by a BBC executive at the prison gates.They were both offered the lead parts in new BBC sitcom The Liver Birds, Mr Ed was given the part of Beryl Hennessey and Wilhelm the part of Sandra Hutchinson.They were sacked after filming the pilot episode as it was apparent that they had no comic talent whatsoever.The pilot show was screened by The BBC and was watched by Porter, Agutter and Eggar, thinking it was a show about wildlife of the feathered variety in the Liverpool area. Rear Admiral Martin E. Dunbar-Naismith arranged meet Hohenzollern and Eohippus at a London hotel and they all agreed that it was a great idea to start a band out of the remnants of The Tawny Pipits.

All five of them met for the first time in the buffalo enclosure at London zoo.They had gathered there to think of a name for the band. It was The kaisers idea to meet there and he could barely contain himself. They bandied many names about for the band, The Smells, Bovine Ejaculation, The Bitterns, The Yellow Wagtail five, The Schlieffen Quintet, A Kraut A Horse And Three Bints, Porterage For You, Eggar On your Face, Down On The Agutter, The Mane Event and The Homogenised Lumpens. Samantha Eggar had approximately 16 pints of Shadwells' Old Misanthrope earlier in the day and she was bursting for a piss. She couldn't wait to go to the toilet so she had a piss in the bushes of the buffalo enclosure.The others could see steam rising out of the bushes, The kaiser pulled branches from the bush and Samantha Eggar was there squatting having a piss. They were all amazed that the colour of her piss was a really dark shade of purple. "That's the name of the band!" shouted Mr Ed "Eggar Piss" he went on, a scuffle broke out and after things had calmed down they eventually settled for Deep Purple as the name of the band. The legend that became known as Deep Purple was born that day.

Six Months later they released their first album & it achieved moderate success, but it did much to redeem Porter, Agutter & Eggar in the eyes of the public, it was named Ultra Hygienic Kitchen Practices and the cover depicted all of them in a kitchen wearing the appropriate overalls, with hats and hairnets on, they were preparing Carpaccio of zucchini with seared scallops with an orange & lime vinaigrette, and Warm spinach and frisee salad with pepper bacon,shallots and almond crusted chevre and it all looked delicious.A far cry from the debacle of Sedge Warbler Cake. They had one top forty single from Ultra hygienic Kitchen Practices, a high tempo number penned by Wilhelm called Sperm Count Negligible, a song about a WW2 dictator with a complex about having one bollock and he takes it out on the world. They got an appearence on Top Of The Pops where they performed Sperm Count Negligible live.Mr Ed was never completely comfortable playing bass guitar, he was left-hoofed and he couldn't hit one string at a time, he could only manage smacking all four strings at the same time.He also couldn't do chords with his other hoof, he could only slide it up & down over all four strings at the same time, standing up on his hind legs also proved to be a major strain. Katy Hill noticed this.She was governor of the prison where The Kaiser and Mr Ed had served their sentences.

The mark one line up were to make one more ill-fated album-Concerto For Group And Orchestra. The year was 1969, flower power was out and hard rock was coming in. Unfortunately for Deep Purple classical music hadn't been "in" for about 120 years, even the hippies detested the album.They only ever performed the album once in it's entirety & that was at The Royal Albert Hall, they were pelted with rocks and bottles. Mr Ed panicked and bolted, he fell off the stage crushing 3 members of the orchestra. He was arrested and charged with death by horseplay, but he was found not guilty at the subsequent trial. He never really recovered from the shock of being pelted with rocks and bottles, so he quit the band and decided to take up a more suitable career as both ends of a pantomime horse.

The Hill family had owned The Laughing Gravy Prison for over 50 years, and they took great pride in the fact there had been no jailbreaks under their tenure.In 1964 Friedrich Nietzsche-Hill and Carl Gustav Jung-Hill, Katy Hills' uncle and aunt respectively and joint governers of the prison both won a substantial amount of money. They decided to blow all the money on a dream around the world cruise on the slowest ship in the world. Katy was lumbered with the running of the prison.She hated the job because it got in the way of her pursuing her dream, being a bass player in a moderately successful band. Throughout 1968 and 1969 the prison had been in an almost constant state of rioting due to the apalling treatment meted out to the inmates, prisoners had to endure poor quality foreign porn movies with no subtitles, hard toilet paper and they were forced to grow aubergines in the prison allotment.The final straw came in august 1969 when Hill decided that fabric softener was no longer necessary in the laundry. The place erupted, the inmates went on the rampage and wrecked the place. Katy Hill was hit on the head by a flying brick, wrapped around the brick was a note demanding the restoration of fabric softener rights as the prison uniforms really chafed.The note was scrawled on a newspaper, & above the note she saw the headline: "Deep Purple Look For New Bass Guitarist" and below the headline: "Pantomime Horse Runs Amok In Cowshed". "Fuck the lot of yez" she thought and buggered off through the front door, leaving it wide open and causing the biggest jailbreak in history.

Only two people attended the audition, Katy Hill and Yootha Joyce. Joyce played an amazing 15 minute bass solo which greatly impressed the 4 band members. Hill fitted her bass guitar with all bottom E strings tuned exactly the same & strummed them for 75 minutes without touching the frets whilst humming the same note. Hill edged the audition because of concerns over Joyces' hygiene problems.Within days they were back in the studio recording their next album.

In the spring of 1970 they unveiled their new work Predictions For The Future, which recieved good reviews in the music press. The track listing was as follows:

* Marquis Mover In The 2:50 At Kempton Park

* The Internet Will Take Off In The Nineties

* Tottenham 1 v Man City 1 (AET) (Tottenham Win 3-2 in replay) 1981 FA Cup Final

* Tyson Knocked out By Buster Douglas

* They Will Be Called iPods

* No Manned Mission to Mars

They had a number 1 single from the album, Tottenham 1 v Man City 1 (AET) (Tottenham Win 3-2 in replay) 1981 FA Cup Final. It was a heavy rock classic, from the opening riff to the rumbling bass & powerful drumming, manic keyboards and the interplay between Gail Porter on foghorn and jenny Agutter who was switching between air raid siren & klaxon.The album reached the top 10 in The UK and even made the top 100 in The US.They went on a tour of Europe & North America that year and got rave reviews.President Nixon officially pardoned Kaiser Wilhelm for starting WW1.

The pressure was on the band to release a follow up album as good as Predictions For The future.They came up with what is generally considered the greatest album released in the past 500 years, surpassing in the view of many Thomas Tallis' Phlegm On My Whisk and John Dowlands' Lute With One String

Deep Purple In Rock went in straight at number one, the track listing was as follows:

* Deutschland Uber Alles

Penned by the kaiser, the track is a desperate cry for a return to German imperial militarism.

* Panini Sticker Album Regret

An Agutter composition in which she attempts to recreate the tension she felt when she was caught shoplifting.

* Bush Stone Curlew

A return to the days of The Tawny Pipits with much interplay with foghorn, swannee whistle and train whistle.

* Luxuriate With DFS Furniture

A katy Hill Song, there was rumours that she was also CEO of DFS Furniture and she was using her position in the band to advertise DFS furniture.Nothing was ever proven.

* El Burro

A towering drum solo which lasts a staggering 15 hours, Eggar recreates the scene in The Packhorse Cafe in the movie If.... by the power of drums.She thrashes her drumkit to a pulp in a manic 15 hour burst, not even stopping for a piss or a shit,.8 extra discs were needed for this song alone.

* Stig Thoughts In My Mind

Porter wrestles the demons in her head.Poignant moment in song when Eggar comes in with a solo on police siren.

* Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy

A lament from The Kaiser on how ones' love for a cow can turn your brain to sponge.

* Sleep Well With DFS Beds

Another Hill classic

It was their magnum opus, it catapulted them to mega stardom and made them into millionaires.

Just as they were about to embark on a world tour katy Hill left the band citing "irreconcilable musical differences" & she took up a post as CEO of DFS Furniture.Yootha joyce was offered the job of filling in for Hill, but it was impossible as she had recently lost both hands in a freak accident during an eye test.Then in January 1971, three weeks after the release of the album, Kaiser Wilhelm The Second was found dead in his hotel room, his body was riddled with 176 stab wounds. Police verdict: Suicide.

Porter, Agutter & Eggar decided to carry on, they brought in ex-Tawny Pipit Elizabeth Montgomery & rival screen witch Melissa Joan Hart.They made an album, Sperm On My Milky White Buttocks in the summer of 1972. It was obvious that the magic had gone, so the band split up and went their separate ways in the spring of 2001.