Classic Purple Album (Fireball: 25th Anniversary Edition - Deep Purple)

Member Name: ordy

Product:	Fireball: 25th Anniversary Edition - Deep Purple
Date:	21/03/02 (209 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great songs, Remastered Version

Disadvantages: None

Before I write this I must caveat it by saying that I have just got back froma Deep Purple gig in St Petersburg where they blew me away. They were awesome - brilliant brilliant brilliant!! OK, it helped that I happened by chance to stay at the same hotel as them , get to the very front of the arena (mad Russian crowd there - it was wild!) and was thrown one of Ian Paices drumsticks at the end of the gig - but the music and performance was great!

And so I have been going over a few of the old Puprle albums - and generally people regared the classic 3 albums as In Rock, Fireball and Machine Head, with Fireball often cited as the weakest of the 3 (not an insult - the others are fantastic albums)

I think one of the reason diehard Purple fans prefer the other 2 is that Fireball is musically very diverse and strays from the more metal style of the other 2 albums. For me though, this adds a dimension which actually makes it my favourate album.

So on to the album...

It starts with Fireball,the title track and a real cruncher. Good drum intro, and a good pace. Gillans vocals at his best. The recently released remastered vbersion has a great version of this with no vocals, just Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore going for it bigtime - well worth a listen.

The No No No - one of the weaker songs on the album, but still pretty good.

Next is Demons Eye, with a great bass line on it - a very catchy tune.

Anone's Daughter is a folk style song which apparently in its days caused contoversy - it was the first single on the album and people thought Deep Purple had sold out. In fact it is a great song - it shows the humour of the band and Ian Gillan in particular. It is a tale of how he kept getting in trouble with all his different girlfriends parents who didn't like their daughters going out with a "hairy bum". Happy ending though - he gets a rich mans daughter pregnant, which apparently is what he always wa
nted. This is one of my all time DP faves.

The Mule, with some great drums - a good song about all the illegal substances they (allegedly) took in those days. This still features on the live set, which is quite surprising.

No One Came - a song written about an unsuccessful rock band (to quote Gillan - "This song thankfully never came true"). Still a live favourate - good vocals and quite a funny song!

Final track is Strange Kind of Woman - originally called Prostitute - about falling in love with a hooker. A real DP classic which unfortunately doesn't make the live set any more - but a very catchy tune with a good beat.

As mentioned, this album has recently been rereleased with remastered tracks on plus also some outtakes from the studio of the band jamming together (Williams Tells Overture, Robin Hood...) and the history of the album. recommend this to all rock fans - it is a classic album that you will play to death!!

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