2023-11-05 02:10:00
The most emblematic album of the pioneers of British hard rock, the one with the famous “Smoke on the Water”, is also distinguished by the strange graphics of a fuzzy cover where metal is not only present musically. Explanations.
The album
The sound of Deep Purple, formed in 1968, based on the unleashed guitar of Richie Blackmore and the furious keyboards of Jon Lord, reached new heights with this sixth album recorded in a mobile studio located in the Montreux Casino in Switzerland. It’s their biggest commercial success with classics like Smoke on the Water of course but also Highway Star or Space Truckin’. Reissued many times.
The photograph
The American Shepard Sherbell moved to London in the 1960s where he photographed the elite of the rock scene of the time: the Beatles, the Stones, the Who (he was Keith Moon’s official photographer) and even Cat Stevens . The choice of Deep Purple is therefore logical. This will be one of Sherbell’s last works in music. Shortly afterward, he returned to the United States where he successfully converted his career into photojournalism in the mid-1970s. He died in 2018 of heart failure.
The metal plate
It was the band’s bassist, Roger Glover, and their manager John Coletta who came up with the idea for the cover design. They suggested that Sherbell take a photo of Deep Purple that would be reflected in a metal plate and take up all the space on the cover. Not necessarily convinced at first by the tandem’s delirium, the American still had a polished sheet of metal made with the name of the group and the title of the album engraved in advance, leaving a place for the reflection of the musicians.
Le shooting
Not easy. When the day comes, Sherbell places the sheet according to the musicians’ positions and climbs on a stepladder to take the photo. The challenge is to avoid as much as possible seeing his reflection on the metal plate. It’s half successful since we can still see his shadow under the word “head”. But the objective is really achieved for the five members of Deep Purple with an effect that is sufficiently intriguing, but which still allows each of them to be distinguished perfectly. At a time when digital retouching didn’t exist, everything had to be done live. A hell of a performance.
Deep Purple Machine Head (1972)
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