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.

As Kevin Ebert makes clear in Chapter 1, neither the popular riff composition status of ‘Smoke On The Water’ or the baroque-classical soloing to be found on Machine Head’s ‘Highway Star,’ as outlined by Walser, fully do justice to the extent of Blackmore’s heavy metal legacy, not least because neither includes his seminal contribution to the definition and subsequent development of the genre, laid down in conjunction with the classic Purple band on the pivotal 1970 album, In Rock. Indeed, as Ebert notes, these claims to fame to be found in guitar features and surveys, such as Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Guitarists’ (2015) lead to Blackmore being ranked a middling 50th, while other metal guitarists are placed above him and rock guitarists above them. Some of this, as Ebert notes, is attributable to Blackmore’s ‘the man in black’ or Black Knight persona, reflected in his ‘difficult’ relationship with the rock press. But this persona itself appears to be a defensive response to a perceived lack of recognition of his contribution to heavy rock and metal song composition but also a lack of appreciation of the technical skill and sheer audacity of his ‘live’ performances. It is the combination of these two aspects that Ebert seeks to explore in his re-examining of the making of the classic In Rock album, made possible by the musical leadership of Blackmore at this time, through a ‘guitar centric’ examination of the album itself and the anthemic track list of songs that define it. But also a focus on the musical journey of Blackmore as a guitarist and his development of guitar virtuosity techniques, such as his innovative use of extreme vibrato, aligned with his search for the loudest amplifier set up, made possible by the development of the Marshall 200watt stack. All of which leads Ebert to place Blackmore and his work on In Rock as central to the foundations of heavy metal music. After leaving Deep Purple, the first time around, Blackmore formed the band Rainbow and developed a neo-classical and hard rock sound, captured on the debut album Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (1975) and perfected on the follow up, Rainbow Rising (1976), especially on tracks like ‘Star Gazer’ where Blackmore’s anthemic song structures were complimented by Ronnie James Dio’s neo-classical, operatic vocal range and medieval-themed mystical lyrics, creating for many the music and lyrical template for power metal (Brown 2025). However, after Dio departed, Blackmore took the band in a much more commercial, rock-pop and R&B direction, on the aptly titled Down To Earth (1979), bringing in Roger Glover as producer and co-writer/ lyricist, as well as external songwriter Russ Ballard, to pen popular ballads and chart toppers, like ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ and ‘All Night Long’.

In Chapter 2, James Dickinson not only seeks to place Lord alongside progressive rock and neo-classical greats, Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, as a virtuoso keyboard player, but also to draw attention to his dynamic musical relationship with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. One that fused a baroque classical and R&B rhythmic attack, by developing a way to play his beloved Hammond C3 organ through a 200watt Marshall amplification set up, creating a powerful, heavy and distorted legato underpinning to Blackmore’s guitar riffs, as well as offering a solo virtuosity of equally striking proportions to that of the guitarist; an interplay that can be heard on the ‘Child in Time’ (1970) track as well as on Purple’s ‘live’ performances, such as those captured on the aforementioned bootleg ‘live’ album, Space (1970) and the double-vinyl ‘live’ LP, Made in Japan (1972). For Dickinson, it was Lord’s supportive role in this, sometimes fiery musical relationship, that enabled Blackmore to reach the virtuosic hights of his ‘live’ performances, knowing that Lord would maintain the riff heavy legato of Purple songs when needed, as well as compete with his own solo passages, where the two would duel while respecting each other’s space. In this respect, as Dickinson argues, Lord did more to show future rock keyboard players how this difficult relationship could work in a complimentary way; taking the lead role in tracks such as ‘Hush’ (1968), sharing the limelight on ‘Lazy’ or combining with Blackmore’s guitar in ‘Highway Star’ (both 1972) to create a hybridised sound-world unlike anything heard on record before. For Dickinson, Lord’s legacy is a musical masterclass in the balance between restraint and attack, demonstrated by a musician who could step aside to compliment some of the most iconic guitar riffs in history and then in the next track or section enter the limelight, turning his Hammond organ into a blistering distorted riff machine that merged with, and at times replaced, Blackmore’s guitar.

As Simon Poole importantly notes in Chapter 3, it is Ian Paice’s ‘energising’– not to say ferocious – 242 beats per minute, constant single stroke, double kick sixteenth-note drum intro to Deep Purple’s ‘Fireball’ (1971), that arguably defines the double-kick style that later metal drummers would replicate and advance, notably Simon Phillips’ work on Judas Priest’s Sin after Sin (1977), especially the tracks ‘Call for The Priest’ and ‘Dissident Aggressor,’ and Phil Taylor’s 238bpm power-drumming on Motörhead’s anthemic ‘Overkill’ (1979) – and on into the world of the blast beat in thrash, death metal and grindcore. Yet Paice employed his double-kick pattern only once in the studio and then afterwards in only a few early ‘70s ‘live’ performances as an encore track. Happy with the single-bass drum kit he had bought as a teenager, for Paice it was the intros, fills and trills that highlighted his virtuosity, but never at the expense of the group sound, underlining the maxim that it is not ‘where you put the note, it’s where you don’t put the note.’ Poole argues that it is this disciplined ‘non-attention seeking’ approach by Paice to his work, and drumming for Deep Purple in particular, that goes some way to explaining why his position in the canon of heavy metal drumming is often marginalised, despite the fact that Paice, along with Bill Ward of Black Sabbath and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, are equally credited with founding the rhythmic rules of the genre. Yet Bonham and Ward have comparatively elevated status, due in part to the mythologising of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as hard rock and metal pioneers. In addition to this, many of the drummers ranked above Paice, such as Bonham,Ginger Baker, Keith Moon and Carmine Appice, are seen to exhibit a combination of ‘primal, powerful, virtuosic and exhibitionist,’ traits, especially through their on-stage visual performance of virtuosity and/or exhibitionism. In the main part of his chapter Poole seeks to redress this imbalance by framing Paice’s style as drawn between the ‘sparing’ and the ‘flamboyant’ and he does so by examining his intros on nine example tracks from across the Mk2 album output, including the simplicity of ‘Woman from Tokyo’ (1973), to the complexity and flamboyance of ‘Pictures of Home’ (1972), to the choice of ‘a space or not’ that creates the dynamic and colour of the contrasting songs, ‘Black Night’ and ‘Living Wreck’(both 1970). To date, Paice is the longest serving founder member of Deep Purple and a drummer who has influenced a whole host of bands, from Iron Maiden to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers to Opeth.

The vocal performances of Ian Gillan, on the track ‘Child In Time’ (1970) and on the ‘live’ album, Made in Japan (1972), as well as the original version of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), articulate a debate about the wide octave range of the singer and his influence on other hard rock and metal lead-singers, such as Rob Halford, Freddie Mercury, Ronnie James Dio, and Bruce Dickinson, to name but a few. It is the development of distortion techniques, especially in the high register that defines hard and heavy rock singing, characterised by Gillan’s high octave screams, and his powerful, often first-take studio performances, especially on the classic In Rock and Machine Head albums, as well as the development of a layered-vocal delivery on later albums, that define the template, range and distinctive timbre of the hard rock and metal singer. Francesca Stevens, in Chapter 4, not only seeks to analyse Gillan vocal stylings, but to do so as part of an examination of the interconnections between borrowed classical female vocal virtuosity and the aesthetics of heavy metal masculinity. Through the lens of gender semiotics and critical popular musicology, the chapter considers the appropriation of classical feminine vocal capabilities by Gillan and his contemporaries by means of the dramatic use of an operatic vibrato and countertenor range. This singing style and technique employed by Gillan is analysed in relation to the sonic representation of essentialist gender tropes through his application of a delicate balance of classical/feminine and rock/masculine. This dichotomy is realised through Gillan’s use of the female tessitura, mimicked chiaroscuro, and wide vibrato, mixed with traditional rock techniques, such as vocal distortion and nasal resonance. At the centre of the analysis is the performances heard on the ‘live’ album Made in Japan (1972), focussing on the virtuosic sequential vocal patterns heard in ‘Child in Time’ and the (guitar/vocal) call and response (‘parroting’) cadenza and F#5 fermata (or feminine ‘scream’) notes heard in ‘Strange Kind of Woman’.

As Catherine Rudent demonstrates in Chapter 5, Gillan is very conscious of the R&B/Blues and Soul tradition of ‘parroting’ – that is, where the falsetto vocalist imitates or copies the notes of the guitar in a rising interchange, which, in the case of Deep Purple, may or may not be due to the influence of Led Zeppelin, on tracks like ‘You Shook Me’ and ‘Dazed and Confused’ (both 1969), and in their ‘live’ ‘on stage’ performances (Waksman 1999: 250-253; Fast 2001:44-47). Certainly, the reference to parroting is clear in an aside made by Gillan during a break or moment of repartee, in a filmed ‘live’ performance of ‘Strange Kind of Woman’ in New York 1973, when he says to Blackmore, ‘Get that parrot out of there’ (4.02-4.04).16 And there is clearly an amusement shared between the two of them over this, as Rudent also notes in her description of this performance. However, the central point that Rudent seeks to establish, through her detailed analysis of all three Live in Japan (1993) versions of ‘Strange Kind of Woman,’ and the two ‘Speed King’ encores, is that all of these performances, which are very different to the studio recordings, involve an extended segment of guitar vocal interchange which, in many respects, becomes the main part of the ‘live’ performance of the song; or rather that the song becomes secondary to the drama of the virtuosic rock falsetto auditory performance exhibited to the audience in these moments. For Rudent, these performances can be likened to a dialogue, or even a playful game, but where the stakes are high, particularly for the vocalist since the guitar can reach to heights that the voice cannot necessarily copy. In this respect the guitar and vocal interchange is decidedly a duel in which Blackmore is ‘raising the bar’ for his musical partner, suggesting higher and higher notes for Gillan to match. However, despite the allusion to parroting, Gillan’s performance surpasses that of the parroting technique in key moments, notably when he takes the lead in the contest and also when the finale is reached; it is then, and only then, as Rudent observes, when he is able to sustain the falsetto vibrato above that of the guitar, which becomes silent allowing him to scream alone. From this analysis, Rudent seeks to contextualise its reception, firstly in relation to the established framing of musical genre and gender, then in respect of a framing of the performance as an auditory spectacle.

Part One ends with a detailed and thought-provoking comparative discussion by Kevin Fellezs that seeks to compare the guitar virtuosity of Blackmore with that of Tommy Bolin. Fellezs begins by contrasting the reputation of the two guitarists in respect of the legacy of the Mk2 Made in Japan (1972) ‘live’ album, considered one of the best hard rock ‘live’ recordings of the 1970s, with Mk4’s Last Concert in Japan (1977), considered one of the most critically ‘panned’ Purple ‘live’ recordings, even by bandmembers themselves. He then discusses what happened in the five years between the two recordings and why it matters? Of course, what he is alluding to here is that Bolin, from joining Deep Purple as the chosen replacement (by the band) for Blackmore, had a very short career that ended in tragedy due to his drug addiction.17 But what Bolin brought to the Mk4 band was a jazz and funk style of virtuosity that decidedly contrasted with Blackmore’s hard rock and neo-classical style. By offering a detailed overview of the musical trajectory of both guitarists – Blackmore in terms of the studio and ‘live’ performances of his Purple career, and Bolin in terms of his jazz-rock career prior to joining Mk4, as well as his innovative contribution to Come Taste The Band (1975) – Fellezs seeks to ‘think through’ the changing role of the lead guitarist in 1970s rock, particularly in the way their contrasting modes of virtuosity transformed ideas about rock music at the time. Placing the work of Blackmore and Bolin within Deep Purple against the work both guitarists produced outside of the band, he argues that their respective approaches to hard rock lead guitar broadly speaks to the ways in which early heavy metal was already revealing trends that would appear much later, such as symphonic metal, in the case of Blackmore, and ‘nu-metal’, in the case of Bolin – to say nothing of their role in the rise of the shred, or virtuoso, metal guitarist. In this respect, the chapter seeks to analyse their respective aesthetic approaches – Blackmore’s interest in European medieval music and Bolin’s interest in music styles such as jazz and funk – as indicative of the directions their work would pull metal guitarists in their wake. In this respect, their divergent musical interests made for distinct versions of Deep Purple, repositioning the band as foundational in ways that recalibrates the way we have come to understand heavy metal history and its technical development.

Part two begins with a chapter by Esa Lilja that seeks to explore the tonal language of the Mk2 Deep Purple band in respect of their use of riffs, modes, chords and progressions. It does so in order to distinguish the melodic/harmonic idioms deployed by the band that constitute a seminal part of the musical vocabulary of hard rock and heavy metal. This is important because, as we have noted, Deep Purple’s significance in the formation of heavy metal as a musical genre is often downplayed or overshadowed, especially in relation to Black Sabbath. Lilja seeks to address this lack of musical acknowledgement by means of a corpus analysis of their classic 1970s albums employing a dualistic ‘modal/functional framework’ which aims to demonstrate how tonal characteristics are structured in Deep Purple’s music and to point out key similarities and differences between Purple’s tonal language and other styles of music. For example, according to a popular belief, the band contributed a mixture of baroque-classical and R&B idioms to the vocabulary of heavy metal, stemming from the compositional work and musical collaboration of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and organist Jon Lord. Lilja’s analysis demonstrates this to be an overstatement but finds other original combinations of musical styles in Deep Purple’s music. To explore this further Lilja pays attention to the tonal characteristics stated above but also seeks to isolate and discuss other tonal idioms, such as the use of church modes, plagal cadences, cross relations, as well as the almost complete absence of minor triads. As Lilja notes, these characteristics are common not only to blues rock but to renaissance polyphony. For Deep Purple, these characteristics result from stylistic borrowings, but also from the distortion effect applied to the guitar and the organ parts. To illustrate this, the chapter includes twenty-nine musical examples, tables and figures, including: ‘Highway Star,’ ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Speed King,’ ‘Fireball,’ ‘Maybe I’m a Leo’ and ‘Child in Time.’

In Chapter 8, Dietmar Elflein compares and contrasts Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Led Zeppelin, as key bands in the evolution of heavy metal. This is done as part of a critique of those writers who have attempted to differentiate hard rock and heavy metal, in viewing Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple as ‘hard rock’ and Black Sabbath as ‘heavy metal,’ without providing satisfactory musicological criteria. For Elflein (2016), Black Sabbath’s status as the first bona fide metal band is derived from a musicological analysis of their song structures that are shown to exhibit a sequencing of riffs, rather than a verse/chorus pattern. Following on from this, Elflien seeks to explore how the song structures of Deep Purple Mk2 differ from their contemporaries Black Sabbath, as well as the other competitors for the title ‘first heavy metal band,’ Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep. He also considers whether the multiple line-up changes of Deep Purple, from MK1 onwards affect their song structures. The crucial overriding issue here is whether Deep Purple make use of a compositional model that is independent of their frequent line-up changes or not. For this purpose, all Deep Purple studio albums of the line-ups Mk1 to Mk9, as well as selected albums from later line-ups are analyzed. In the case of the competitor bands, Led Zeppelin and Uriah Heep, albums released parallel to that of the Mk2 Purple band are analyzed. The analysis of Black Sabbath focuses on the first five albums with Ozzy Osbourne as a singer compared with the albums where Ronnie James Dio is the singer. To complete the picture, the albums by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio, are also integrated into the analysis.

The final chapter of Part Two by Jan-Peter Herbst is an appreciation of the pivotal role of Deep Purple Mk2’s sound engineer, Martin Birch in the recording of In Rock, Fireball, Machine Head and the ‘live’ Made in Japan. It examines how he encouraged and captured the loud and distorted, riff heavy, hard rock sound of the Mk2 Purple band in the studio and on stage. In this respect, Herbst seeks to situate Birch’s emergence, as an innovative sound engineer and later producer, as coinciding with the emergence of the heavy metal genre itself and its defining aesthetic criteria: the group pursuit of absolute musical and instrumental loudness. It was this driving aesthetic of pushing sound capture into the ‘red zone’ by means of instrumental speed, aggression, energy, and intensity, that provided the challenge for the young, up-and-coming studio engineers, like Birch, to find a way to capture the ‘live’ sound of the band in the studio and thereby ‘define’ on vinyl the heavy metal sound. But as Herbst also notes, while the pioneering albums of Black Sabbath and their recording engineer Tom Allom (as well as his work with Judas Priest), have been acknowledged as a formative influence on the development of the heavy metal ‘sound,’ Purple’s sound engineer on all their classic albums, has not been afforded the same level of appreciation. Paying tribute to Birch’s contribution to capturing and defining the classic heavy metal sound in the studio and thereby on vinyl, the chapter aims to decipher Birch’s sonic signature by documenting his role in the recording of three of Deep Purple’s classic and hugely influential albums – In Rock, Machine Head, and Made In Japan. The analysis acknowledges Birch’s innovative engineering of heavy metal in its formative phase, both sonically as an art form, but also in respect of the producer’s role, which has become a blueprint for later producers to this day. Birch also recorded and produced Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow (1975-1986), David Coverdale’s Whitesnake (1978-1984), later Black Sabbath (1980-1981), and most notably Iron Maiden (1981-1992).

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.

Dawn Hazle, in Chapter 11, explores Deep Purple’s influence on Russian hard rock and metal music behind the iron curtain in the Soviet era. The extent and range of this influence became worldwide public knowledge in 2008, when Dmitrii Medvedev, then president-elect of Russia, met with members of the band at a concert held at the Kremlin, an event organised by the Russian state-owned gas company, Gazprom, of which he was chairman. A year prior to this, Medvedev had revealed to RIA Novosti, a Russian state supported media outlet, that he collected original vinyl LPs by Deep Purple. In 2011 Medvedev invited the band to his residence for a press conference before their concert at the Moscow Olympic Stadium and afterwards continued to chat with the band members.19 Just as significant and in many ways more important is the fact that many Soviet-era musicians have stated their love of Deep Purple, including the rock band DDT and the popular Russian metal bands Aria, Kruiz and Chernyi Kofe. But, as Hazle states, the fact that Deep Purple’s music made it across the Iron Curtain at all is, itself, remarkable. The main part of her chapter, after setting out the circumstances of the Cold war that led to the consolidation of the Soviet state system, explores the restricted situation for musicians in terms of what they could publicly play, the censorship of lyrics, the restriction of musical styles and ‘live’ stage performances, which created a division between official music and the underground. Officially registered groups played official music at official venues and were paid the professional rate. Unofficial groups were unregistered, unpaid and remained underground. This did not stop them from releasing songs and albums on tape, performing concerts in apartments and basements, and having larger fan bases than the official bands. In this way hard rock and metal music started out as an underground, stimulated by shared and smuggled, copied and sold, albums and tapes, derived from the Western rock and metal scene, by fans and musicians who then began to replicate the songs and styles of their favourite bands, from the Beatles to Purple, leading to the development of their own repertoire. Thus, as Hazle states, rock music started as unofficial, but its popularity forced the State to allow a form of official rock music radio to disseminate its sound, which inevitably resulted in the sanctioning of ‘live’ concerts and even festivals, headlined by heavy rock and metal bands.

The final chapter in the book is one that gestures back to its origins as traceable to an interview that the author conducted with Simon Robinson, the founder of the UK fan club, the Deep Purple Appreciation Society and editor of its fanzine Darker Than Blue, over twenty years ago. The aim of that project was to explore how the global fandom tapped into and nurtured by Robinson and his ‘mail order’ fanzine, fruitfully coincided with the recognition and development, by major labels and copyright holders, of a lucrative market of digitally remastered classic rock albums. While this market was fully exploited by the major labels, the quality of the Purple reissues stand out from the majority because of the added tracks, which were unreleased recordings made at the time of the album sessions, as well as alternate takes of classic tracks, alternative guitar solos, outtakes of incomplete versions of songs and studio jams, backed up with Robinson’s expansive and informative sleeve notes, artwork and archive photos. But the retrieval of these classic albums and bonus tracks was not just down to good detective work in tracking down the original studio Master tapes but informed by the fan-knowledge of Darker Than Blue, which over the years and via collaboration with other fan activists and groups, was able to identify the tracks that did not make it on to the 40 min. maximum space possible on a vinyl LP. This fan-knowledge was reflective of a global international network, which preceded the internet by a number of years and was sustained by fanzines and fan mail, that had already resulted in the release of legendary ‘live’ bootleg Purple vinyl LPs. However, the main body of the chapter seeks to re-examine the history of the DPAS, Robinson’s rise to ‘elite/executive’ fan status through his role in developing the subscription-based magazine and its international fans base. But most importantly it documents the pivotal role of Robinson in calling for a coherent release and reissue programme of Purple classic albums and archived official and unofficial ‘live’ recordings, as well as putting himself forward as a graphic designer and researcher able to supervise such projects, first with small and medium sized record labels, and then with majors, such as EMI. The chapter then concludes with an examination of the fan conflicts and divisions that have been played out in the pages of Darker Than Blue magazine, particularly those concerning the departure of lead guitarist Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple Mk3 and then his even more dramatic ‘on stage’ departure from the reformed Mk2 line-up, which divided both fans and the editor, and appeared to presage the decline of the magazine itself.