DEEP PURPLE: The Story of the Stormbringer Album

Stormbringer - Deep Purple's 9th LP, released in 1974. The album turned out to be quite unusual. The Warner Bros. label was very surprised by the unusual manner of Deep Purple's sound. After the release of the album and the American tour in support of it, Richie Blackmore left the band.

The beginning of work on Stormbringer

Work on the album was very nervous. This was largely due to Glenn Hughes, who seemed keen to make up for his suspension from the previous Burn album.

Jon Lord recalled:

"Hughes interfered in everything, arguing, claiming that he was the only one who was right, because he knew better about modern music. He reproached us for not incorporating other popular music into our style. He even came to me in the middle of the night talking about Coverdale. He tried to tell me that his voice was better suited to our music as a solo vocalist" 

The atmosphere at Musicland Studios was quite tense. Ritchie Blackmore was going through divorce proceedings. Because of this, or maybe for some other reason, he was annoyed with everyone around him. He admitted: "I wasn't with the people I would have liked to record an album with". Ritchie deliberately avoided socialising with the other musicians in the band.

During the recording period. Stormbringer Blackmore began to meet more often with Ronnie Dio and the rest of ELF, who later became part of his Rainbow project. And after his Deep Purple colleagues refused to include a song by the band on the album Quatermass Black Sheep Of The Family, Ritchie generally turned over all the worries of releasing the record to Hughes and David Coverdale.

End of recording and exit of Stormbringer

The album was recorded for about three weeks, after which the band flew to Los Angeles, taking demo tapes of the songs with them. Many of the songs were still "raw". For example, the vocals for Soldier of Fortune were superimposed by Coverdale on the music in the US. One day, when David was performing another version of the track, Stevie Wonder - Coverdale's idol - entered the studio with other musicians. Annoyed, David shouted: "Who the fuck is that?" When he found out that he had sworn at his idol, he couldn't forgive himself for a long time.

Stormbringer was released in November '74 and went straight to number 6 in the UK chart and number 20 in the US. The album was a mixture of blues brought by Coverdale, funk, which Hughes was fond of, Blackmore's hard rock and Lorde's powerful organ sounds. The dissimilarity of the new record to previous Deep Purple albums disappointed the old, loyal fans. But the band gained a lot of new fans.

The best tracks Stormbringer, are certainly the title track of the same name and Lady Double Dealer. Although many fans prefer Soldier Of Fortune. On the cover of the album they decided to put a photo of a tornado, taken in 1927.

The name of the record and the single of the same name, which translates to "Petrel", is said to be inspired by Michael Moorcock's fantasy novels. It was the name of the sword of the protagonist of his works. Although David Coverdale later said that he was not inspired by Moorcock's work.

It took a long time for listeners to realise what the strange set of sounds heard at the beginning of the title song was. Glenn Hughes explained that it was a phrase spoken by Linda Blair's character in the film The Exorcist, when a priest talks to her. According to another version, Blackmore's voice was inserted at the beginning of the track, saying: "Stormbringer... cocksucker... motherfucker!". Only it was played backwards and sped up.