Christmas 1972 came just a little bit early for most Deep Purple fans, even if they did have to buy their own present, providing they could find £3.25p. What would that money buy you back then? Your parents could stick ten gallons of petrol in the family car; if you were old enough to sneak into a pub, a pint would cost 16p (one six pence), and if you weren’t you could put it towards a Raleigh Chopper, but still have to save up another £32.
Like a lot of Deep Purple fans at the time I was still at school, supposedly trying to get on top of my A Level subjects. What income I managed to get together came from a bit of pocket money, a couple of evening shifts at the local fish and chip shop, a weekly delivery round stuffing 15 copies a time of the ‘advertiser’ through any letter box big enough to take them (we did try just putting the lot in the paper recycling bin one week but there were complaints from people who hadn’t had their copy!) and a regular gig at the city cathedral (weddings and funerals paid extra).
So as the news about Deep Purple ‘first ever “live” recording’ broke in the music papers via unprecedented double page two colour adverts, it wasn’t too difficult to get myself into town on the day of release and bag one of the first copies.
Needless to say for dedicated fans (and I think I already counted as one of those) this was far from our ‘first ever’ live recording, as we had been introduced to the mysterious world of bootlegs by Sir Richard Branson the year before and H-Bomb, Space and others had already enthralled us. So Made In Japan was partly a response to Deep Purple managements battles with Virgin to get bootlegs banned. Though whether they and the band would ever have got around to doing a live set without the prompting of Warner Pioneer in Japan is open to question.
I guess all we can say is thank goodness for the executives at Warners. There was plenty of precedent for the Japanese live album going back to the sixties, with in concert albums by The Walker Brothers, The Ventures, Miles Davis, Cliff Richard (and even The Osmonds) getting there before Deep Purple did. Benny Goodman even called his 1965 live album Made In Japan. These releases were seen as a great way of introducing western acts to the home market, and giving them something exclusive. Most were strictly for the Japanese market and didn’t surface back home until specialist import shops opened up (hands up if you remember Flyover Records in Hammersmith where I went into debt to afford my Roy Buchanan Live In Japan import a couple of years later).
Many of the big US and European labels were at best indifferent to official live albums, which is clear from the decision by Warner Brothers in America to hold Made In Japan back for around six months so it wouldn’t clash with the band’s new studio album there, only really relenting when import copies began to flood across.
£3.25p then, actually a good deal as most single albums were above the £2 mark at the time (Flyover would charge around £9 for single LP Japanese imports), and everyone agreed to take a bit of a hit on Made In Japan to encourage sales. It was Christmas after all!
So despite a budget price there in terms of presentation the album was very slick, though clearly the product of a marketing mind rather than aimed at fans. I recall admiring the small pics on the front and back (mostly the Rainbow Theatre in London), and the gold special ink, but being distinctly underwhelmed by the inner gatefold (and lack of record sleeves). What, nothing to read?
Once you put the damn thing on the record player though all that was forgotten as we were just sucked into a blistering Deep Purple performance. And that’s what remains, fifty years on. Of course fans already knew how Deep Purple were the best live group we’d ever seen but here was proof positive.
It’s quite difficult to put your finger on it but here were five gifted rock musicians with very little to prove, who could amble on stage (with little in the way of presentation) and rely on each other to keep things powering along come what may. That left them free to push one another and together with the spirit of competition this produced often remarkable performances, as well as giving them freedom to indulge one another when the situation arose. Of course they knew they were being taped but that never seems to restrain the performances. And by taping all three shows on the trip, there was plenty of material to work with. Never especially a band to keep going over things again and again, they couldn’t be bothered with any overdubbing and while Ian Gillan in particular was a little critical there was a consensus arrived at to produce what they felt was the best cut of each track and throw them together in such as way as a full live set was achieved.
In the fifty years since, the background to the band’s internal wranglings off stage at this time has been well documented, which just add another level of astonishment to the cohesion exhibited on these recordings.
Fans soon became aware of the fantastic packaging of the Japanese edition which certainly didn’t cause me a moments hesitation to fork out for once I’d seen it. Over the five decades since then the archive market has tinkered with Made In Japan reissues three or four times both to wring more mileage out of the tapes and explore the unreleased versions. I could write as much again about the politics surrounding the 3CD EMI set which first explored the original multi-tracks (until then nobody seemed sure they’d even survived). Or, with a heavy heart, having to tell EMI they could stick their abysmally packaged multi format box set where the rising sun don’t shine as it did not come close to what it needed to be (if your design team cannot even spell Smoke On The Water correctly then you know you are doing something wrong!).
Even the bootleggers still hammer away at this, presenting note for note end to end CD sets of all three concerts using audience recordings (and stealing the Darker Than Blue name for their packaging!). That there even is a market for such releases shows just how powerfully Made In Japan cuts through the band’s history and psyche.
Rolling Stone still have it at the sixth best live album of all time as voted for by their readers: “They’ve done countless shows since in countless permutations, but they’ve never sounded quite this perfect.”
The Skeptical Audiophile, an American hi-fi shop which searches for the best pressings of any given vinyl disc, then cleans, ranks and sells them on, had this to say: “Made In Japan – sounds more like a top quality studio production than any live album I’ve ever heard. It’s shocking how clean and undistorted the sound is. I’d put it right up there with the best of the best. In terms of Tubey Magic, richness and naturalness — qualities that are usually in very short supply on live albums — I would have to say that the shootout winning copies of Made In Japan would be very likely to take Top Honors for Best Sounding Live Album of All Time. Yes, the sound is that good.”
So we’re somewhat spoilt for choice when it comes to how to celebrate this momentous album and everyone will have their own ideas. I love the EMI triple set (well, I would say that wouldn’t I?) as it kind of hits home like a proper official bootleg; imperfect but very exciting. So I might dip into that, and perhaps a side off the original vinyl just to remember Christmas 1972. It was after all the last we could safely enjoy without that Slade song…
Just as the heatwave comes to an end, here’s a DTB exclusive shirt to help you be the envy of your pub quiz team! From the DTB shop.
darker than blue 