When Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975, there was uncertainty over whether the band would continue, as they did when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left in 1973. It was David Coverdale who asked Jon Lord to keep the band together, and Coverdale was also a major factor in recruiting Tommy Bolin to take the guitar slot.
Rehearsals for the album were recorded by Robert Simon, who was originally engineering the album. But after a dispute with the band over scheduling, the band left Simon's Pirate Sound Studios in favour of Martin Birch.
According to Glenn Hughes and Lord, at least two songs were written well in advance of the album's recording. "You Keep on Moving" had been written in 1973 by Hughes and Coverdale, but was rejected for inclusion on the Burn album by Blackmore. "Lady Luck" was written by Bolin's friend and songwriting partner Jeff Cook around the same time, but Bolin couldn't remember all the lyrics when the band hit the studio and the group couldn't get hold of Cook. So Coverdale rewrote much of the lyrics, and the song was included with Cook's blessing.
The remainder of the album was mostly written in Los Angeles, then recorded in Munich, with the exception of "Comin' Home" which was written in the studio. Hughes went back to England before the completion of the record so he could deal with his then-rampant cocaine addiction, and he cites this as the reason for Bolin playing the bass and singing the lower-register backing vocals on "Comin' Home". The album shows the strong funk influence from Hughes at this point, now working with the equally funk and jazz influenced Bolin, but the direction tended to be more like 1974's Burn, with a heavier focus on rock guitar. The recording with Bolin also allowed the band to take many creative liberties, as Blackmore had been somewhat difficult to work with on the band's two previous albums due to creative differences with Hughes and Coverdale.
Generally the record is considered one of Deep Purple's lesser efforts, although it did sell reasonably well on release (#19 in the UK charts, and #43 in the US) and received a rave review in the leading British music paper New Musical Express. The album was certified Silver on 1 November 1975 by the BPI, selling 60,000 copies in the UK.
In recent years the album has received some critical reassessment, primarily due to Bolin's contributions to the album. Gillan (who left the band just over two years prior), on the other hand, has stated that he does not view the album as a real Deep Purple album. Lord praised the quality of the album years later in interviews, stating that "listening to it now, it's a surprisingly good album," while acknowledging, "the worst thing you can say about it is that, in most people's opinion, it's not a Deep Purple album."
The tour to support this album started strong, according to Lord in the documentary video Deep Purple – Getting Tighter, The Story of MK-IV (2011), in Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. However, according to Lord and Hughes on the same documentary, in Jakarta, Indonesia, the band was 'set up' for murder. Specifically the two affirmed that Hughes and two others were "framed" for the death of the band's highly trained security worker, Patsy Collins, who died under 'suspicious circumstances'. Hughes and the two others were placed in jail. The promoter also sold a second night's show, and forced the band to play for only the original fee for one night. Hughes was taken from jail at gunpoint to the second show, and returned to jail promptly afterwards. During this time, Bolin was given morphine by the promoter, which caused problems on the band's next stop in Japan. In order for the band to be allowed out of the country with the "charges", Deep Purple's management had to forfeit their entire fee as well as pay thousands more out of their pocket to the Army and Airport Security to fly out of the airport in Jakarta.
Their next stop was Japan, immediately afterwards. Bolin had taken the drugs given to him and fell asleep for an excess of 8 hours on his arm, causing him to be unable to play the guitar properly. According to Hughes, many of Bolin's guitar parts were covered by Lord on his organ and other keyboards. Lord (and in other interviews, Ian Paice) stated that to carry on with the concert, Bolin had several guitars tuned to open keys, minor and major, depending upon the song being played. He would make "a bar position" with his fingers, and play a basic rhythm while Lord played the melodies. Unfortunately, the show was filmed. In the opening song, "Burn", it's Lord's organ playing the opening riff that should have been played on Bolin's guitar (as was done by Blackmore in the original recording).
After tours for this album concluded in March 1976, Deep Purple broke up for eight years. Tommy Bolin died of a heroin overdose in December 1976. According to Billy Cobham, who Bolin did studio guitar work for on his Spectrum album, he died from an overdose as a result of a 100 dollar bet that he couldn't do a gram of cocaine, down a bottle of aspirin and drink a bottle of liquor in a relatively small amount of time.
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