Selling filth from a corner shop

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

18/02/73 : Who Do We Think We Are - Deep Purple


My first Deep Purple album - which feels like a bit of a surprise to me because I would have expected one of the #AOTD dinosaurs to pick one of them - I also don't think I can name a single album of theirs.  It's safe to say I'm expecting a bit of rawk.

And yeah, rawk is what we've got.  It's not exactly my sort of thing, but I didn't mind it at all.  It's interesting to compare this with the Faces and Status Quo albums because, like those two, this doesn't sound like an awful lot of planning went into it.  But, unlike those two, this just sounds like a set of guys gelling well and giving each other a bit of space to breathe - there's a lot of skill on display.  I quite liked "Girl From Tokyo" but I was intrigued by "Mary Long" - it's obviously about Mary Whitehouse but I'm wondering why she's been renamed.  It's a surprisingly short album as well - just under 35 minutes.  And a decidedly peculiar album cover.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on its second week of a ten week run, with this being the highest position it got to.  The rest of the top five this week are Elton, David Cassidy (a new entry), the LSO and Focus (about to start a barely believable run of five weeks in the top five) - that's it for new entries in the top ten, although we have Rick Wakeman and James Last just outside (#12 & #13).  Bizarrely, James has three somewhat curiously named albums in the charts - James Last In Russia, Non-Stop Dancing 14 (and yes, this is the fourteenth one - out of 29!) and The Music Of James Last.  Other artists with three albums in the charts are David Bowie and Cat Stevens - and there are FIVE Osmond related albums in the charts!  Carly is still the highest woman at #11 (very soon!) and she's sadly all on her own in the charts this week.

Ah, Wikipedia tells me that "Mary Long" is a combination of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford - that makes sense, although the only thing I remember about him is the hate he got for visiting Myra Hindley in prison.  It also tells me that this album was not the happiest production, although it's not clear whether that was because they were ill or had just had enough of each other - either way, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover the band left soon afterwards, not returning until 1984.  The album did pretty well though - #1 in Denmark and Norway!  And a very creditable #15 in the US.  There's a nice quote about the album title as well - "Deep Purple get piles of passionate letters either violently against or pro the group. The angry ones generally start off "Who do Deep Purple think they are...""

"Customers also listened to" Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad and Wishbone Ash - three groups I know very little about.  As is also pretty true for Deep Purple and I can't say this album has overly tempted me to greatly improved my level of knowledge - it was fine but no more than that for me, I'm afraid.

11/02/73 - I bet you think this post is about you
25/02/73 - Another one?!?

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