Shades of Deep Purple - Early Days of Development

Early Days of Development

Rehearsing began in February, after Nick Simper, Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore and Ian Paice (as of yet without an appropriate drum kit) had hired Rod Evans to sing after some auditions. Their first rehearsals (Paice having now acquired his favoured drum kit) involved mostly jamming and some occasional glimpses with the instrumentals "And The Address" and "Mandrake Root", which Blackmore had written earlier that year. (Mandrake Root was also the name of an earlier band that Blackmore had been trying to form in Germany when the call came from Deep Purple's management.)

Their previous test-singer, Chris Curtis had been wanting to add a cover of a Beatles song to an eventual album and therefore the first proper song that was set in motion turned out to be "Help!". "Mandrake Root" was given lyrics, so the album would feature only one instrumental. Then, with those three well inducted, the band started to think on "I'm So Glad", a song by Skip James, which had earlier been covered by Cream. Ian Paice and Rod Evans had also recorded the song earlier, with their band The Maze.

It was to be proven typical with Deep Purple in these early years that all the cover songs recorded were considerably longer and more grandiose than the originals. "I'm So Glad" was certainly no exception. When the track was recorded, the first movement of Scheherazade was added before the actual song began.

The next song added to the rehearsals was "Hey Joe", a song originally, but disputably, written by Billy Roberts and mistakenly credited to "Deep Purple" on original releases of the Shades album. The Jimi Hendrix Experience had recorded a version of this song in late 1966 and this was used as the main inspiration. But as well as "I'm So Glad", the song was heavily blown up and stretched in length. Joe South had written a song for Billy Joe Royal the previous year, called "Hush" and this song was also picked up by the band.