Tommy Bolin: In and out of Deep Purple

:	Laura Shenton
:	Tommy Bolin: In and out of Deep Purple
:	Sonicbond Publishing
:	9781789526103
:	1
:	CHF 5.30
:

:	Musik
:	English

:	112
:	DRM
:	PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
:	ePUB

It started off so well. As Jon Lord enthused in an October 1975 issue of Melody Maker: 'Tommy can't be so bad for us with so many good ideas. All I can say is when you hear the album (Come Taste The Band) you'll change your mind. Whether you like the music or not, you'll have to realise that Deep Purple now have an excitement in their playing that they haven't had in a long time...'
Despite calls of 'we want Blackmore' when Deep Purple Mark Four played live, there was so much more to American guitarist Tommy Bolin than being Ritchie Blackmore's replacement. As a result, the purpose of this long-overdue biography is to readdress the existing narrative of Tommy Bolin's legacy. As well as discussing objectively Tommy's time with Deep Purple, Laura Shenton offers an insight into his musical achievements in his own right outside of the band, which include two cult rock albums in Teaser and Private Eyes. He also had a stint in James Gang and make numerous guest appearances, where his versatile and virtuosic skills as a guitarist were utilised, before his untimely death in 1976 at the shockingly young age of 25.
Laura Shenton MA LLCM DipRSL has been thinking about music since she first heard it, possibly while still in the womb. She has a Masters degree in Music Since 1900 from Liverpool Hope University. Her hobbies and interests include writing, playing the piano, staying up into the small hours wondering about life, whilst eating crisps and obsessing about music, hamsters and dogs. In particular, her writing buddy is the best dog in the world - a black Labrador.

Chapter1

Welcome To The Band

It started off so well. As Jon Lord enthused in October 1975 inMelody Maker:

Tommy can’t be so bad for us with so many good ideas. All I can say is when you hear the album (Come Taste The Band) you’ll change your mind. Whether you like the music or not, you’ll have to realise that Deep Purple now have an excitement in their playing that they haven’t had in a long time. I’ve always thought that Purple were a band that people saw as ‘well yes a big band, but I wish they would do more’.

By 1975, Deep Purple had already been through a number of lineups and musical styles. The Mk1 lineup from 1968 to 1969 featured Jon Lord on keys, Ian Paice on drums, Ritchie Blackmore on lead guitar, Nick Simper on bass and Rod Evans on vocals. During this time, Deep Purple were still finding their feet stylistically and commercially. They were still seen as an underground act by many and were predominantly marketed towards the hippy culture at the time on Harvest Records, a division of EMI set up for such market. It was in 1970 that theDeep Purple In Rock album epitomised the sound that many have come to most associate with the band. This masterpiece occurred due to the second lineup of the band featuring Roger Glover on bass and Ian Gillan on vocals. They breathed new life into the band having been recruited from their old band, Episode Six. It was through the second lineup of Deep Purple that the band became associated with the genre of hard rock and to some extents, heavy metal. This was the lineup responsible for some of the band’s most well-known songs including ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘Black Night’ and ‘Highway Star’. Stylistically and commercially, this approach to music continued throughout the Mk3 lineup of Deep Purple which saw Glenn Hughes replacing Roger Glover on bass and David Coverdale replacing Ian Gillan on vocals in 1973 to create the successful album,Burn. Briefly speaking, Deep Purple was already an established band by the time Tommy Bolin came into the picture.

Despite the frequency of lineup changes, audiences had come to expect a particular brand of music from Deep Purple. It was heavy, aggressive and exciting. Further to this, as with Lord and Paice on keys and drums respectively, Ritchie Blackmore had been the only lead guitarist in the band since it began. From a personnel perspective, Bolin’s recruitment into Deep Purple was significant because Blackmore had been such a strong driving force in the band from day one; he was one of the key founders of it (the band was named after his grandmother’s favourite song) and certainly musically and commercially a very big deal by the time he decided to walk away from Deep Purple in 1975 to form his band, Rainbow. Coverdale said in August 1975 in theNew Musical Express:

You gotta remember man, that to replace Ritchie… well, you know. He wasn’t just anybody and you can’t get just anybody to replace him.

Around the time of the beginn