Who Do We Think We Are is the seventh studio album by the British hard rock band Deep Purple, released in 1973. This is Deep Purple's last album with singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover until Perfect Strangers came out in 1984.
Musically, the recording shows movement to a more blues sound, even featuring scat singing. Although the band's production and behavior after the release showed the group was in turmoil, with frontman Gillan commenting that "we all have a major illness" and feel very tired, the album is commercially successful. Deep Purple became the best-selling US artist of the calendar year 1973. The album also featured the hard rock single "Woman from Tokyo", which has been performed on several band tours over the years.
Despite massive sales, the group collapsed among the many disputes between band members as well as conflicts with their managers. The album's line-up will end after the last concert in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 1973.
Video Who Do We Think We Are
Recording
Who Do We Think We Are was recorded in Rome in July 1972 and Walldorf near Frankfurt in October 1972, using Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.
"Women from Tokyo", the first song recorded in July, is about touring Japan for the first time (eg lyrics "Fly to the Rising Sun"). The only other song released from the Rome session is the "Painted Horse" disguise. The rest were recorded in Frankfurt after more tours (including Japan). The group, split with internal strife, struggled to come up with the tracks they agreed on. Members do not talk to each other and many songs are completed only after the schedule is set so they can record the parts separately.
Ian Gillan left the band following this album, citing internal tensions - widely considered to include hostility with guitarist Richie Blackmore. However, in an interview supporting the comeback album Mark II Purple Perfect Strangers , Gillan stated that fatigue and management have a lot to do with it:
We just came out of an 18 month tour, and we all had a major illness at one time or another. Looking back, if they're decent managers, they'll say, 'All right, stop it. I want you all to go on vacation for three months. I do not even want you to take the instrument. 'But instead they encouraged us to finish the album on time. We should stop. I think if we do, Deep Purple will remain there to this day.
The last Mark II concert in the 1970s before Gillan and Roger Glover remained in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 1973.
On 'Mary Long', Gillan said: "Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford were very famous figures at the time, with a very shaky finger... This is about older generation standards, overall moral framework, intellectual vandalism - all things that existed throughout generations... Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford became one person, joining together to represent the hypocrisy that I saw at the time. "
Maps Who Do We Think We Are
Title and album artwork
The original album artwork has many articles quoted from newspapers. One of them was from Melody Maker magazine in July 1972, in which drummer Ian Paice commented:
Deep Purple gets a heap of passionate letters either roughly against or pro groups. The angry usually starts "Who the Deep Purple think they are..."
Release
Despite the chaotic birth of the album, "Woman from Tokyo" was a hit single and other songs took a lot of airplay. Fans bought it in record numbers and in the US, for example, sold half a million copies in the first three months.
It reached number 4 on the UK charts and number 15 on the US charts. It also won a gold record faster than the Deep Purple album released until then. These figures helped make Deep Purple the best-selling artist in the US in 1973 (with previous praise for Machine Head and Made in Japan also helped a lot).
In 2000 Who Do We Think We Are were remastered and re-released with bonus tracks. The last bonus song is a long instrumental jam called "First Day Hour", featuring Ritchie Blackmore on bass. Roger Glover, the usual group bassist, absent, allegedly lost in traffic.
In 2005 Audio Fidelity released their own album mastery on the 24 carat Gold CD.
Reception
This album received mixed reviews. Ann Cheauvy of Rolling Stone reviewed the album negatively and compared the Who Do We Think We Are to breakthrough album Deep Purple In Rock wrote that the former "Sounds very tired in a place that's really confusing "and" the band seems to be just collecting enough energy to put the beat of a song, let alone improvise. " In a retrospective critical review, Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic expressed the same opinion and wrote that apart from "Woman from Tokyo", the album's songs "are very inconsistent and found the band only through movement," although he praised "Rat Bat Biru". Instead, David Bowling's reviewer wrote on the Blogcritics website that Who Do We Think We Are "is one of the strongest bands and stands near the top of the Deep Purple catalog in terms of quality", providing "Some of the best hard rock in this day and age. "
Track list
All songs are written by Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice.
Personnel
- Deep Purple
- Ian Gillan - vocals
- Ritchie Blackmore - guitar
- Jon Lord - keyboard
- Roger Glover - bass
- Ian Paice - drums, percussion
- Additional personnel
- Produced by Deep Purple
- Martin Birch - engineer
- Jeremy Gee, Nick Watterton - Rolling Stones Rolling Unit Operators
- Ian Paice and Roger Glover - mixing
- Ian Hansford, Rob Cooksey, Colin Hart, Ron Quinton - equipment
- Roger Glover and John Coletta - cover design
- Peter Denenberg with Roger Glover - remixing bonus track (2000 edition)
- Peter Mew - remastering (track 1-7) and mastering (track 8-14) at Abbey Road Studios, London (2000 edition)
Diagram
Certification
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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