Let us voyage way back in the mists of time when the planet was still young and hope still lived in the world*. I had 43 LPs and my last two purchases funded by washing dishes in a local pub were Fly On The Wall and Appetite For Destruction. Then a friend of someone my mum knew at work was selling some LPs and ‘there were still some heavy ones left, £3 each’. There were only four left and after negotiating a loan from my mum, I bought The Fugs Tenderness Junction, Doors L.A Woman, Bad Company Run With The Pack and Deep Purple The Book Of Taliesyn.
The Fugs were far too much for my fragile 16 year-old mind, The Doors became a staple of my playlist later, Bad Co were great but the Purple? man, it just didn’t sound like any of the tapes I’d copied of theirs. Even having the patriotic honey of the LP being named after a 14th century Welsh manuscript didn’t swing it for me and before this week I had probably played it 3 times in the last 32 years**.
Time to open the book again.
The bird he flies the distance From pages two to six Past minstrels in their boxes To the waters of the Styx (Listen, Learn, Read On)
Of course The Book Of Taliesyn didn’t sound like In Rock or Perfect Strangers^ – time, place, personnel I understood that. But whilst I could dig the cover that I was convinced Jon Lord had created in between organing his fingers off^^, it just wasn’t heavy enough for me then. Now, whilst it will never be a Deep Purple fave I can see its merits clearly.
As ‘heavy’ wasn’t as yet an established thing to hang a movement, or significant sales on, Deep Purple were launched on the US as something of a psychedelic outfit, albeit one who were a bit too fond of the old classical fol-de-rols in places.
Take opener ‘Listen, Learn, Read On’ where singer Rod Evans gets to do his best Jim Morrison over what sounds a lot like the Purple Doors. It’s very entertaining, in a daft mystical way, but possibly best filed away as ‘very of its’ time’. Far better is the instrumental ‘Wring That Neck’ which foreshadows some of the band’s later sound, Nick Simper’s bass playing is smart and rather neat and all is groovy.
Plagiarising themselves kinda, ‘Kentucky Woman’ was an attempt to ‘do a ‘Hush” and whilst it is a fun excursion, it doesn’t quite make the grade. To these addled ears it all sounds improbably like 1537-dance-fave ‘Footloose’, albeit with a slightly out-of-tune guitar solo grafted on top and a very good ‘Gimme Some Lovin”-style build up. Maybe there was a need for that back in ’68.
The Book Of Taliesyn really gets its 60’s on with the next track being split into two 4 (a) being ‘Exposition’ and 4 (b) ‘We Can Work It Out’^*. Hmm. Who can truly begrudge someone as wonderful as Jon Lord getting his classic-on to good effect and the instrumental passage is all quite fun and over-dramatic, the cover works less well, by quite a margin.
Side 2 offers us a real high with ‘Shield’, which is an excellent track to my mind. Rod Evans really sounds at home on this cut and the band serve us up a tautly stretched track, that actually sounds very west coast. Ian Paice plays some particularly interesting stuff on this one, including a bongo freak out*^. Look beyond the lyrics which do sound a tad like the writer had taken his own advice to ‘smoke the pipe of a sweet and better life’ and this is the track where this version of Deep Purple sound most like themselves. It really should be better known.
That’s it for highlights. I find ‘Anthem’ cloying and irritating. The faux classical flourishes really grate here and Evans sounds like a bad late-period Elvis impersonator covering ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’ after necking two bottles of Crème de Menthe. Apart from a bit of instrumental freak-outery at the end, file Purple’s cover of ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ in the same bin.
Derek Lawrence, graduate of Joe Meek’s madhouse (along with Mr Blackmore) and future producer of Wishbone Ash, Angel and Legs Diamond, does a really good job here within the confines of the times. The Book Of Taliesyn has a great, warm sound throughout.
Rock history usually relegates The Book Of Taliesyn to a footnote, a purple smudge in the band’s history. I have grown a touch fonder of it than that over the last week and in ‘Shield’ there is a genuine hidden gem here, ‘Wring That Neck’ not being too far behind either. The Book Of Taliesyn is a diverting curio, with an ace back cover picture of the whole band staring at Jon Lord playing the piano with his dong. Fact.
Well worth £3 of my (mum’s) money.
1020 Down.
*September 1988.
**could explain why the 52 year-old LP is in almost perfect nick, especially if the previous owner felt the same way about it too.
^or thankfully the dross that was The House Of Blue Light – a tape that so disappointed my mate David that he ceremonially threw it into the river Towy, egged on by me, after 4 listens. Sorry environment.
^^I was wrong, John Vernon Lord is a different person and a wonderful illustrator. I am pretty sure he never played keys on ‘Space Truckin”.
^*by the Merseybeats, or Cilla Black, or someone similar.
*^Let’s face it, what sentient being doesn’t like dig a bongo freak out?! That’s a rhetorical question.