Read Lars Ulrich’s Passionate Deep Purple Rock Hall Induction
Lars Ulrich fell in love with Deep Purple when he was nine years old, when his dad’s friends took him to see the pioneering hard rockers live in Copenhagen. “They have probably been the primary musical backbone in my body ever since I first heard them,” he recently said.
The drummer, who covered the band’s “When a Blind Man Cries” with Metallica in 2012, has long called for the group’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as they’ve been eligible since 1993. When Rolling Stone asked him in 2014 who he’d like to see inducted next, he said the band’s name four times. On Friday night, his dream came true when he welcomed the band into the Hall. Here’s what he said about the group at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for his induction speech.
This night is a culmination of two musical journeys. One is mine, the other is that of a band that changed my life and rock & roll. When I was nine years old, my dad took me to see Deep Purple on a cold day in Denmark, on a dark cold Saturday night in February 1973. Everything was larger than life, the sound the spectacle, the songs, the musicians, all doing things with their instruments that I had never seen before – and didn’t even know was possible. Deep Purple were a beautiful contradiction, like you just walked in on five musicians at the top of their game jamming one classic after another with raw intensity, as if they were in a garage playing for no one but themselves. Yet at the same time projecting a thousand-yard deep stare into the bowels of the arena. That’s right, I said bowels. Let me break this down for you. Singer, Ian Gillan, where are you?
Ian Gillan, centerstage, a magnet for the eyes personifying every trait of every frontman coolness, screaming his lungs out and reaching notes so high, I’m sure he was breaking glass all over town. Behind him on the drums, little Ian Paice, a rock & roll cocktail of hair, sweat, spit and position. Somehow, managing to wipe the steam off his glasses after he presses this great train forward and doing it in eight-inch platform heels, very impressive, Ian. Very impressive. At stage right, the regal Jon Lord.
We love Jon Lord, yes we do. I’ve never seen anyone get so physical with his organ. [Laughs] But I was only nine. He did things with the Hammond C-3 that no one had ever done before, firing the result through a wall of Marshall amps and Leslie speakers, uniquely heaving up the sound into uncharted territory. Let me emphasize this, Jon Lord was the first to truly amplify and destroy the Hammond organ. Sadly, we lost him in 2012. Cowboy hat, paisley shirt, next level smoothness, the one keeping it grounded, groovy and dare I say, sexy? I just said it. His eagle-esque stage presence supported the crossfire energies of his bandmates, disguising a firm mortality as both songwriter, co-producer of the biggest records.