Deep Purple-Machine Head (Classic Albums) (2002)

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General		Extras
Category	Music	Main Menu Audio Featurette-No Smoke Without Fire; The Beast; Make Everything Louder... Featurette-Black Night; Keep On Space Truckin'; Maybe Leo's Off Beat Featurette-Break A Leg, Frank; Roger's Machine Head Featurette-'Never Before' Original 1972 Promo
Rating
Year Of Production	2002
Running Time	50:00 (Case: 100)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Matthew Longfellow
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Roger Glover Ritchie Blackmore Ian Gillan Jon Lord Ian Paice Martin Birch
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$34.95	Music	Deep Purple

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.78:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	German Spanish Italian Dutch French Portuguese	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    This DVD is the latest in the brilliant TV series "Classic Albums", this one providing the background and insight into Deep Purple's 1972 tour de force 'Machine Head'.

    This album will need no introduction to anyone into rock music. It is undoubtedly a classic rock album, spawning the singles Smoke On The Water, containing what was to become probably the most instantly recognisable (and copied) rock guitar riff of all time, Highway Star and Space Truckin', as well as some other superb album tracks. The influence of this classic album on guitarists and rock musicians both at the time and over the 30-odd years since its release is undeniable. This album would go on to firmly establish the Deep Purple Mark II line-up in the annals of rock. Yet the fact that this album came to be made at all is quite remarkable when you understand the mishaps and false starts surrounding it, and this documentary explains why.

    The documentary contains interviews with all five band members; Ritchie Blackmore (guitarist), Ian Gillan (vocalist), Roger Glover (bassist), Jon Lord (organist/keyboardist) and Ian Paice (drummer), as well as the "6th member of the band", engineer Martin Birch.  The documentary explains the pressure within the band during late 1971 to come up with a follow-up album to the Mark II's hugely successful debut heavy rock album 'In Rock' (1970). This had been followed by the release of 'Fireball' in early 1971, a credible album but one which was a bit more experimental than its predecessor and one which, even by the band members' own admissions, was not nearly as raw and powerful as the earlier debut. The band decided to record their new album in December 1971 in Montreux, Switzerland and therein begins a fascinating story of accidents and changed plans and unusual recording circumstances, the basic premise of which is outlined clearly enough in the lyrics of the track Smoke On The Water itself.

    To say that this album was recorded under unusual and difficult circumstances would be an understatement. Yet in spite of these difficulties - or actually probably because of them - the eventual recordings laid down by Martin Birch in the confines of the Rolling Stones Mobile truck over a whirlwind 3 week period in December 1971 captured the essence of the band's enthusiasm and determination. The recordings capture a rawness that exemplifies just how honest and direct and powerful heavy rock music can be.

    Whilst not a 'track listing' as such, for the record this DVD contains cuts from and analysis of the following tracks: Highway Star, Maybe I'm A Leo, Pictures of Home, Never Before, Smoke On The Water and Space Truckin' - in other words just about every track from the album. It also contains a cut from the great ballad When A Blind Man Cries, which was also recorded over the 3 week period but amazingly in hindsight was not included on the final album because Ritchie didn't like it!  As an aside, this DVD also explains the story behind the track Black Night, which actually had nothing to do with this recording period at all but was laid down during the sessions for In Rock the year earlier.

    For info on Deep Purple, including complete discography and song lyrics, check out the informative site www.thehighwaystar.com (the 'discography' and 'lyrics/tabs' links are on the RHS).

Video

    The transfer is presented in the originally presented aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    This is a recent documentary and appears to have been shot on digi-beta. Both foreground and background resolution are sharp. Shadow detail is also fine and all images are free of noise. The only carve-out from these comments is in respect of some small snippets of archival footage, being excerpts of live performances and some old home video footage taken inside and around the Grand Hotel (where the band played for the recordings) in 1971. This footage is quite noisy and of poor quality, but is only offered in small doses and is in any event both necessary and welcome to put the documentary in its context.

    Chrominance is also of a high quality for the feature proper, with all colours richly saturated and some nice deep blacks in the transfer. Skin tones are natural. Again, this is barring the odd use of archival footage, some of which is in black and white and some of which is in colour, but drained to the point of being monochrome. Again, this is only in small doses and quite acceptable/welcome in the context.

     The transfer is perfectly clean, has not been overcompressed at all and has had no MPEG artefacts introduced in the process. Only one minor instance of film-to-video artefacts is noted in the form of some brief edge enhancement and aliasing around 7:55 (on some archival footage of a Purple TV performance of the day). Film artefacts are also absent from the feature proper, but are there in abundance in some old home video and concert footage (flecks, scratches and negative artefacts).

    Strangely, whilst there is a choice of several subtitles languages on this disc, English isn't one of them.

    The DVD is single layered.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue quality is perfect. This audio is very well recorded and all the narrators resonate crystal clear. Audio sync is also spot on.

    The music in this documentary is in the form of either Deep Purple song extracts, all taken from a clean, re-mastered source, or else is direct from the mixing desk as Roger Glover and Martin Birch dissect the multi-track recordings for us. The DVD's audio transfer captures the material well, providing good dynamic range, nice stereo impact and clarity across the range.

    My Dolby ProLogic decoder fed some ambience and music into the rear speakers to give the soundtrack a nice balance and despite the amount of dialogue in this feature, I did not find the soundtrack to be overly 'front and centre weighted' at all. This is no doubt due to the excellent mixing and editing on this production, with clean recordings and the frequent and effective use of music to break up the dialogue.

    The subwoofer is used off and on, chipping in with the music extracts to fill out the bass when needed.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    My only (petty) complaint with these extras is that I would have much preferred all of the footage to be edited together as one extra, rather than breaking it up into small segments, or alternatively a 'play all' option would have been helpful.

    The extras are all presented with the same video and audio specs as the main feature.

Menus

Interview Excerpt 1: No Smoke Without Fire (7:37): Explains how the song title Smoke On The Water came about.

Interview Excerpt 2: The Beast (5:11): Jon explains how and why he modified the audio output from his Hammond organ directly to a Marshall amp to give birth to 'The Beast'.

Interview Excerpt 3: Making Everything Louder (2:13): Martin Birch on the mixing process and the joys of adjudicating between five band members who all wanted their instrument mixed in the loudest!

Interview Excerpt 4: Black Night (6:03): The funny story of how quickly and nonchalantly this song was recorded.

Interview Excerpt 5: Keep on Space Truckin' (4:39): The story behind Space Truckin' and the band members' frank reaction to it, in hindsight.

Interview Excerpt 6: Maybe Leo's Offbeat (1:56): Roger talking about this song's riff.

Interview Excerpt 7: Break A Leg, Frank (1:10): A reference to one of Ian's backing vocal ad libs, in the final mix of Smoke On The Water.

Interview Excerpt 8: Roger's Machine Head (3:34): Roger explaining the very simple story of the album's title. (Now why this short and interesting explanation was edited out of the documentary proper is beyond me.)

Extra 9: Never Before Original 1972 Demo (3:34): The original demo audio of this track. With no accompanying video available, this demo is set to visuals of some fascinating concert footage around this time. Although it is obvious the accompanying video is of the band performing a completely different song, the backdrop works well enough and fans will be thrilled with the inclusion of both this rare demo track and the rare (I think) concert footage.

    The producers really should be congratulated for this TV series, not only for the great concept, but also for the high production values. As with previous episodes in these series (this is the third series), this one has been nicely shot, well recorded and well edited, and the DVD's video and audio transfers capture it well. Fans will also be thrilled to get the additional half hour of interview material edited out of the TV episode as an extra.

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Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall