By Rob Thompson
Can you imagine Deep Purple taking time off from recording Machine Head to construct a wondrous device to allow them to travel through space and time and meet up with Iron Maiden who were just about to record Piece of Mind? Now further imagine the two bands somehow constructing a terrifying monster from their own body parts: Jon Lord's arms, Steve Harris’s fingers, Ritchie Blackmore’s ears, etc, then that monster being forced to listen to the entire Deep Purple back catalogue every minute of every day until he is old enough to leave the dungeon he lives in? For the sake of argument, let's call this creature Boris. Clearly, Boris would no doubt confirm that Deep Purple composed some special songs, had they been played to him in a normal, routine manner. However, they weren’t: remember that poor Boris was, in effect, fiendishly tortured with these albums for his entire miserable existence. So, what effect did this have? Poor Boris needed to be de-programmed in an attempt to allow him to live life as a reasonably normal adult.
The treatment started off well and Boris even made a friend, we’ll call her Maureen, romance seemed possible. Of course this made Boris very happy indeed, in fact he was so excited that he decided to learn how to play musical instruments so he could write love songs for Maureen. All day long he practiced, slowly learning the scales, notes and thinking all the time of lovely, delicate Maureen. How he longed to kiss her fragile face and tenderly embrace her thin body. Each song he wrote was carefully crafted, each song meant something profound to him and was very heartfelt. The day drew close when Boris would play his songs to Maureen, he grew ever more nervous and excited; then the questions and doubt started. Would she like them? What if I made a mistake when I was playing? Boris invited Maureen into his bedroom at the sanitarium, sitting nervously on the end of the bed Maureen prepared to listen to the compositions of love Boris had made for her.
However, to his horror all Boris could play were slightly different versions of Deep Purple songs with Iron Maiden overtones. The influence of his childhood and his Frankenstein like existence were just too strong to shake off. It was impossible for him to be deprogrammed, it was impossible to not play classic rock no matter how deeply Boris dug into his soul. Maureen ran from the room in tears. Distraught Boris sought an alternative solution. What if he was locked into a recording studio and forced to play music until he ran out of ideas? This, he thought, was the only option. His only chance of survival. He must combine all of the influences of his body and mind together until he was spent, exhausted and unable to play any more. He knew this was his only hope of ever becoming a sane adult, and perhaps then there may be the slight chance that he could win Maureen back? Overjoyed by this idea he immediately started to record an album, an album which he would give away for free on a website. An album which sagged under the weight of the classic rock it contained.
Very Heepy Very Purple is the album Boris made.
