It is 1972 and I have been on the staff of Melody Maker for two years, ingratiated myself into the UK music industry and encountered most of the big rock acts of the day, among them Deep Purple with whom I have become quite friendly. Late that year they invited me to join them on a US tour, my third trip to America.
In November I visited the US again, flying first class over the Atlantic for the first and only time in my life, my companion John Coletta, Deep Purple’s dapper manager, with whom I was becoming increasingly friendly. John was in advertising before he and two others decided to invest in DP, and he told me he considered managing a rock group “an interesting marketing opportunity”. I always thought he was a bit out of his depth, especially when it came to controlling Ritchie Blackmore, mention of whom invariably caused John to roll his eyes, but he had a partner, Tony Edwards, who took care of admin while John went on the road with the band. I wasn’t to know it until many years later but the third partner in the early management of Purple was a heavy-duty fence who was jailed after police discovered piles of stolen goods in his garage in Brighton.
By 1972 Deep Purple was the biggest-selling act on Warner Brothers but the label was more attuned to singer songwriters like Neil Young, James Taylor and Randy Newman or rootsy groovers like Little Feat, Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder, and had acquired DP in a fire sale when their previous label, Tetragrammaton, went bust. Although the money was rolling in, especially from DP’s big-selling and cheap to record Made In Japan LP, hard rockers like Deep Purple were an altogether disturbing commodity for them.
Travelling first class in those days was the ultimate in luxury. The cabin at the front of the plane was on two levels, connected by a spiral staircase that led to a small bar and dining area above the regular seating – more like sofa-bed style arm chairs – on which you could stretch your legs and grab an hour or two’s sleep if you were so inclined. John and I flew to New York and spent the night in the Essex House hotel and the next day flew on to Des Moines, Iowa, to catch up with the group.
This was Deep Purple’s sixth and longest US tour of the year. Supported by the pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, they concentrated on the West Coast, southern and Midwestern States but I was soon to discover that all was not well within the band. Singer Ian Gillan, whose impending departure was still a closely guarded secret, travelled independently, often staying in separate hotels with his girlfriend Zoe Dean. He had developed a fear of flying and, whenever possible, travelled by road in a black Fleetwood Cadillac. Another reason why he stayed in separate accommodation was that the others weren’t happy that he had chosen to bring along his partner, and were concerned that she might observe post-concert debauchery and report back to wags back home.
The rest of the band flew from city to city and Ritchie was persistently late at airport check-ins. The tour stretched into December and I joined the entourage for shows in Des Moines and Indianapolis where they were drawing enormous crowds. When I interviewed Jon Lord in his hotel room he spoke about the need for change and their weariness at the constant touring, so much so that he had difficulty remembering which city he was in. No one was specific about the immediate future which led me to believe they were hiding something from me. Indications seemed to be that the group would disperse for a six-month period the following year and reassemble having had the opportunity to work on individual projects. Ian Gillan’s defection was not mentioned.
As candid as ever, Ritchie confided to me that apart from brief discussions before the evening’s set he hadn’t spoken to Gillan on the entire tour. Ritchie didn’t elaborate, probably because although he knew Ian was leaving he was under instructions not to tell the press, but when I subsequently asked Ian if it was true he hadn’t talked to Ritchie he confirmed it was.
While the fans at the Veterans Memorial Hall in Des Moines welcomed Deep Purple with open arms, elsewhere the capital of Iowa seemed particularly inhospitable towards them. It was bitterly cold in December; the telephone backstage had a lock on its dial designed to prevent its use; and in the hotel bar those members of the DP entourage enjoying a late night drink after the show were rudely interrupted by a couple of abrasive local cops who insisted that the bar close immediately and that unconsumed drinks remain untouched. Clearly disapproving on our hair, clothes and demeanor, the cops threatened to arrest us all if we demurred.
Perhaps this explains why on a plane flight from Des Moines Ritchie indulged in a prank that ranks among his best ever, or worst, depending on your point of view. We were sat together and when the plane reached cruising speed he produced from his hand luggage a fearsomely offensive pornographic magazine with obese women, some dressed as nuns, doing extraordinary things with animals, astride pigs, beneath dogs. Realising that the magazine was of the same dimensions as the in-flight magazine published by Braniff Airways, Ritchie systematically substituted pages from one to the other, carefully replacing the staples before tucking the reconstituted flight brochure back into the pocket provided. “Shame we won’t be here when the next person picks that up,” he said when the mischief was complete.
I left Deep Purple to their own devices and returned to the UK via New York where I had arranged to meet my MM pal Michael Watts who earlier in the month had taken over from Roy Hollingworth as our US correspondent, a role that I would assume the following year. Michael took me to PJ Clarke’s, a long-established bar and restaurant on the East Side where we ate their famous burgers and drank a lot of beer, so much so that I almost missed my flight back to London that night. Running very late and far from sober, I hailed a yellow cab in pouring rain on Third Avenue to take me to JFK. I really thought I was too late to check in but I hadn’t reckoned with how airport staff treat first-class passengers. “That’s not a problem sir,” said the kind lady at the Pan-Am check-in desk as I produced my ticket and apologised for my tardiness. “Please step this way.” Never again would I be escorted through customs and onto a plane. I collapsed in a large comfy seat and promptly fell asleep. Two hours later I awoke with a start and began to scribble about Deep Purple in a notebook, and when I landed at Heathrow on a Monday morning I went directly to the office and typed up what I had written.
As an aside here it is worth mentioning that to have been flown first-class across the Atlantic at the expense of those with a financial interest in the career of Deep Purple might seem to the untrained eye as if I’d been bribed to write positively about them. This was what was known in the trade as a “facility trip” and it wouldn’t have come about had it not become clear to everyone involved that I liked the band. Nevertheless, it could be construed as an indirect bribe since travel and hospitality doled out in such largesse might make it churlish on the part of the writer not to acknowledge gratitude in the form of favourable coverage. It’s a dilemma MM’s staff faced time and again.
However, this sort of thing was widespread in the music business during the period I worked for MM. I’ll stick my neck out here and state that almost all flights undertaken to see acts overseas by writers from the UK weekly press – not just MM – were paid for by someone else, usually their record label. Indeed, of the hundreds of flights I took during my seven years on MM, many between 1973 and 1977 when I was working from the US, I paid for only two, both private holidays.
It never occurred to any of us to question this, nor to become curious as to who might have paid for it all in the long term. I suspect now that it was the acts who footed the bill for entertaining us writers, probably not directly but in the form of debits from their royalties or add-ons to whatever debt in the form of an advance they had already accrued with their label.
Indirect bribery like this didn’t necessarily take the form of expensive air travel and accommodation. Publicists buying a round in the pub or lunch in a restaurant might feel the gesture warranted a favour in kind, and the only favour they’d be interested in would be mention of their client in the paper. “Lunch? Certainly, and here’s a copy of my client’s new album to review. I recommend the Chablis with the lobster.” The bill for both, in the form of expenses, would arrive at the office of the group’s manager who, after paying it, would add it to whatever expenses were owed them by their client, or their record label.
Either way, it’s a pound to a penny that the musicians paid in the end.
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