DEEP PURPLE Drummer Discusses 'Rapture Of The Deep'

In a recent interview with DEEP PURPLE fan site The Highway Star, PURPLE drummer Ian Paice offered his views on the group's soon-to-be-released album, "Rapture of the Deep":

"Obviously, I think it's very good. I think that four, five of the tracks have the possibility to become classic DEEP PURPLE songs — because we don't decide that, the audience do — but there is some very, very good stuff there. The album was very easy to make and very quick; and when the recording is easy and fast, it usually means that the songs are correct, that you are not trying to create, trying to find something which is not in the song.

"The whole thing — writing, arranging, and recording the base tracks — was three weeks, which is very quick. And in the same way that 'In Rock' was very quick, 'Machine Head' was very quick. Those sorts of records tend to have immediacy and a feeling that communicates to people who listen to them. Whereas with some of the records which take a long time, you may end up with perfect tracks, but you've lost a little bit of the soul and the heart which you had when you first started to record it.

"Because every one of these things has either take one, two or three, and that's when you still have the excitement to play something new. Once you have played it fifteen, twenty, twenty-five times, to get it perfect, you may end with five minutes of really perfect boring nonsense, as opposed to that first take that was five minutes of pure magic, but maybe not perfect. So everything that we kept was when we were still physically excited about playing something new, and when the actual take wasn't perfect, it was good enough that you could fix a little bit so it became perfect, instead of going over and over to fix something which isn't there.

"And so, to me, the record is very immediate, and as I said four or five tracks — you almost know straight away, as soon as you've heard it once, you sort of know what it is, it’s inside your head. But making a record nowadays is, you know, you’re in the lap of the gods, whether it is accepted or not accepted by people, because music is not the driving force it used to be for the public. They have many other things that they do, whereas thirty years ago, for young people music was everything. You know, waiting for the next record, you waited for the next big band to come to town. Now people travel, have internet — they spend more money on bloody ring tones than they do on records. So it's different, but all you can do is try to make the best record you can and hope you connect with enough people. That the album generates enough interest and income for things to be able to continue. There are some records you hope is gonna be ok. This one I know is OK."

Read the entire interview at TheHighwayStar.com.

"Rapture of the Deep" is scheduled for release on November 1 via Eagle Records. The follow-up to 2003's "Bananas" will be the group's first release since their split with the EMI label.