Deep Purple "Who Do We Think We Are"

Who Do We Think We Are is the seventh studio album by the English hard rock band Deep Purple, released in 1973. It was Deep Purple's last album with singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover until Perfect Strangers came out in 1984.

Musically, the record showed a move to a more blues based sound, even featuring scat singing. Although its production and the band's behavior after its release showed the group in turmoil, with frontman Gillan remarking that "we'd all had major illnesses" and felt considerable fatigue, the album was a commercial success. Deep Purple became the US' top selling artist of calendar year 1973. The album also featured the energetic hard rock single "Woman from Tokyo", which has been performed on several tours by the band over the years.

Despite massive sales, the group disintegrated among much infighting between band members as well as conflicts with their managers. The album's line-up would come to an end after a final concert in Osaka, Japan on 29 June 1973.

Who Do We Think We Are was recorded in Rome in July 1972 and Walldorf near Frankfurt in October 1972, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.

"Woman from Tokyo", the first track recorded in July, is about touring Japan for the first time (e.g. the lyric "Fly into the Rising Sun"). The only other track released from the Rome sessions is the outtake "Painted Horse". The rest were recorded in Frankfurt after more touring (including Japan). The group, riven with internal strife, struggled to come up with tracks that they agreed upon. Members were not speaking to each other and many songs were finished only after schedules were arranged so they could record parts separately.

Ian Gillan left the band following this album, citing internal tensions – widely thought to include a feud with guitarist Richie Blackmore. However, in an interview supporting the Mark II Purple comeback album Perfect Strangers, Gillan stated that fatigue and management had a lot to do with it:

We had just come off 18 months of touring, and we'd all had major illnesses at one time or another. Looking back, if they'd have been decent managers, they would have said, 'All right, stop. I want you to all go on three months' holiday. I don't even want you to pick up an instrument.' But instead they pushed us to complete the album on time. We should have stopped. I think if we did, Deep Purple would have still been around to this day.

The last Mark II concert in the 1970s before Gillan and Roger Glover left was in Osaka, Japan on 29 June 1973.


Of 'Mary Long', Gillan said: "Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford were particularly high-profile figures at the time, with very waggy-waggy finger attitudes… It was about the standards of the older generation, the whole moral framework, intellectual vandalism – all of the things that exist throughout the generations… Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford became one person, fusing together to represent the hypocrisy that I saw at the time."

The original album artwork has many quoted articles from newspapers. One of them is from magazine Melody Maker of July 1972, where drummer Ian Paice remarks:


Deep Purple get piles of passionate letters either violently against or pro the group. The angry ones generally start off "Who do Deep Purple think they are..."