Jon Lord, best-known as the keyboard player for Deep Purple, has passed away at the age of 71.
Deep Purple have always been a major part of my musical life – One of the first albums I ever bought was the live double “Made in Japan”, and I loved the way he incorporated classical motifs into heavy rock and turned the organ into a lead instrument. He had a healthy respect for classical, jazz and rock’n'roll and frequently managed to fuse all of them into something that could often be more than the sum of the parts. I still like his “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”, composed in 1969, all-too-often condemned as a pretentious folly, as well as other rock and orchestral crossovers such as 1976′s excellent “Sarabande”.
After retiring from touring with Deep Purple a decade ago, he spent his final years as a classical composer, with works such as the acclaimed Durham Concerto.
I saw Jon Lord live three times, once with Whitesnake at the 1980 Reading Festival, and twice with Deep Purple; the infamous 1985 Knebworth mudbath, and again and most memorably at Manchester Apollo in 2002, on his very last tour with Deep Purple.
At that Reading Festival, when he started his lengthy classically-derived keyboard solo, I remember a guy next to me saying “Oh no, twenty minutes of boredom”. Even as a teenager I remember thinking “That guy just does not get it”.
Here he is towards the end of his time with Deep Purple, in Moscow in 1996, when Steve Morse had replaced Ritchie Blackmore on guitar.
RIP Jon. You were one of the greats.