• AllMyVinyl #41
• Band: Deep Purple
• Album Title: Burn
• Release Date: 15 Feb 1974
• Date purchased: 12 Aug 2020
• Location purchased: Tower Records
• Color of vinyl: translucent purple
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This album was a clear change in direction for Deep Purple.   A major change of lineup.  Out were Ian Gillan & Roger Glover, replaced by David Coverdale & Glenn Hughes respectively.  It must have been a major shock for Deep Purple fans of the time.  That was before my era, everything before Perfect Strangers happened before I was paying attention to Purple. But at the time, that must have been a radical change.  Coverdale and Gillan are two radically different singers.  Glover & Hughes play bass differently as well.  When you have that big a change, you sometimes will want to make a statement, and boy did Purple make a statement.  This album is a banger of epic proportions, but it leads off with one of my all time favorite Purple songs of all time.  That’s not just MY opinion, the title track to this album is widely regarded as an excellent song.  More on that in a minute.

My history with this album is interesting.  I never actually owned it in the past.  I know a couple of tracks, but this is one of those albums for me where one song is SO dominating over everything else on the album, it becomes one of those albums I never wanted to get because I already had the best song.  The first thing I ever bought by Deep Purple was the 1980 compilation “Deepest Purple: The Best of Deep Purple”.  It contained “Burn”, and I fell in love with it then.  Somewhere along the line I heard the album Burn, but I never liked the other songs well enough to get it myself, I was OK with the title track on the compilation.  However, in the summer of 2020 when we were still all stuck at home, I decided to rectify that. I bought Burn on vinyl. In the interim I’d appreciated what else is on the album.  That’s mostly to the guys over at “The Deep Purple Podcast” who turned me around on Mk III & IV of Deep Purple.  I finally saw this as more than just “Burn and some other songs”.  Now, having said that – I still feel that the title track is by far the best song on the album, but I can like what else is there now where I ignored the stuff before.

One bonus. The vinyl itself is translucent purple. When I ordered it, I didn’t know that – thought it would be just black.  Quite surprised when I opened it to see that.  Purple vinyl is no surprise for Deep Purple, they’ve done it a ton of times.  But still, it was cool to see.

As for the tracks..

Burn – What more needs to be said especially given what I said above? It’s a total banger and the definition of “statement opening track”. It’s everything that’s right about Deep Purple, and proves that this is still the same band that fans had known for the years prior to this with the majesty that came before Burn.  They’re all in top form here, Ritchie has a badass riff that’s right up there with his all time best. Jon Lord is playing his ass off…  You get the idea.  Absolute top song all time for Purple.  It’s a fucking crime that Ian won’t sing other era’s tracks – this really needs to be seen live.  I did actually get to see it done live once.  In 2023 I saw Glenn Hughes solo in Dallas, and of course he did Burn, as he was touring the 50th anniversary of the album. I recorded it myself, I embedded that video below.

Might Just Take Your Life – A bit of a slower song compared to Burn.  It’s not SLOW as such, but then just about anything would by comparison.  Seems to feature Jon Lord more than Ritchie, which doesn’t usually happen a lot.  It’s OK, but I think unless we got 6 more minutes of Burn, whatever came next would suffer by comparison.

Lay Down Stay Down – Love the guitar work here, a faster song, and also has some nice Coverdale vocals to go with them. The chorus in particular when they sing the song title is probably my favorite part. The guitar solo stuff before the final verse was quite good, was getting into that too.

Sail Away – David sings in a different register at the start than he does for the rest of the album to this point. You can hear the start of the famed “funk” that Mk III was known for (right or wrong) here. But I love the sound on this one. Saw Glenn do this one live in 2023.  That video is below too.

You Fool No One – Ritchie plays to the song here, something he’s not terribly known for. When he does chime in, it’s quite good. The fadeout is on a solo of sorts?

What’s Goin’ On Here – This isn’t my favorite song on the album. It’s not exactly bad, but the main sound that permeates it doesn’t do a bunch for me. I do like Jon Lord’s piano solo here, not an organ thing. That was a nice change of pace.

Mistreated – Other than Burn, I’d wager the most recognizable song on the album. Glenn Hughes did it. Rainbow did it a bunch. Whitesnake did it. Even Blackmore’s Night has done this a bunch. If Ian Paice did solo tours, he’d probably play this too. :). It’s the slower blues based song, something that works well in all these bands I mentioned actually. Good track – it’s got a bit of a slow burn – not quite like Child in Time, but it ends up faster (in parts) than it started, so in that regard it reminds me of COT. Great track.

“A” 200 – This song showed up a bit early from the Stormbringer album. Feels like it belongs there vs here. An instrumental. I quite liked it, but from what I can gather, not everyone does.

So as you can see from reading this Burn (the track) still dominates my thoughts about this album.   I have come to like the other stuff on here, but Burn is by far the best individual song on here for me.  In fact, in writing this today I probably listened to the song Burn about 5 times – I did listen to all the other stuff, but Burn was the only one I repeated.

“…. all I nEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEd is burn!”