Rick Wright and Jon Lord were the first keyboard players in any kind of music that I ever took notice of. Lord was instrumental {pun both intentional and unintentional} in providing a different angle for me at a time when my musical headspace was entering into a crucial period of flux from which I never recovered.
I remember borrowing "Shades of Deep Purple" and "Fireball" when I was 16 from a friend. They were the first hard rock albums I ever heard. The way Lord approached the organ {and on "Anyone's daughter", the piano} was something of a bucket of ice cold water in the desert for me. I utterly loved his guitar/organ duels with Richie Blackmore. No other heavy band had such a feature; every band had their own particular
thaing - this was one of Purple's. Long before I knew anything about them, the music stood on it's own. He really was the leading figure in carving out keyboards in a heavy rock outfit. John Paul Jones was exemplary on the vast array of keyboards he used in Zeppelin, but it's worth noting that he rarely used them on Zep's heavy blasting tracks. Rick Wright, Keith Emmerson, Rick Wakeman and others rarely hit the heavy heights in the same way as Lord. Only maybe the late Vincent Crane played the same heavy organ role. But he never had a Richie Blackmore as a foil.
And make no mistake, Lord was more than a worthy adversary to Blackmore, no mere second fiddle. To me, his solos on stuff like "And the address", "Hush", "Happiness", "Mandrake root", "Help", "Hey Joe", "Fireball", "
Demon's eye", "The Mule", "No one came" {for me, the ultimate Purple performance}, "Flight of the rat", "Living wreck", "Hard loving man", "Bloodsucker", "Never before", "You keep on moving" and the MIJ versions of "Highway Star" and "Smoke on the water" stand as some of the most outrageously creative pieces of playing in
any genre but especially in the guitar dominated heavy rock world. I never get tired of hearing his eerie-ly haunting sounds. The flavours he brought to Purple's eternal rip off "Child in time" distinguish it from the It's a beautiful day number {"Bombay calling"} it was culled from.
It was a long time before I realized that he shoved his Hammond through a seriously huge Marshall stack. The vibrations of that rig must've been better than any massage. Incidentally, he claims he played piano on the Kinks' "You really got me" although Ray Davies says it was Arthur Greenslade. He also said Jimmy Page played the solo but both Davies' say it was Dave.
Jon Lord was a character. It was generally a joy to catch his interviews because he was so articulate and informative.
I see he died of a pulmonary embolism. That's the same thing my Dad died of. Not a nice way to go, but quick when it arrives.
