Just how popular was Deep Purple really in the US in the 70s?

Early 70s Britain and I became a teenager. In my neck of the woods, everyone was quite divided between those who loved soul (mainly Tamla Motown) and those who loved "underground" (meaning rock music basically). There were inbetweeners who were on the fence and dug Bowie, TRex, Elton John and Faces aswell as soul - pop in general. I was resolutely rock but still liked a lot of Motown and some Bowie, Elton and Rod.
For those in the rock camp, the 3 kings were Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple (Free weren't far behind). "Black Night" was just one of the best things to ever happen (along with Sabbath's "Paranoid", Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" and Free's "Alright Now"). Boy, were we spoilt by such terrific music (one can only pity teenagers of today and the crap that is offered up for them).
Deep Purple In Rock was an absolute must for any serious rock fan, as was Machine Head and Made In Japan. So: massivley popular in the UK at the time. Interesting to read the US point of view here.

 

In the early 70's if you aspired to play guitar, Deep Purple was huge for you.

 

-Smoke On The Water single released in May of 1973 and climbs its way to #21.
-Stormbringer released November 1974.
When I step back and look at how little time there was between those two releases, and how vastly they changed their sound...that shows me why they just didn’t have the legacy that Zeppelin and Sabbath did. If they could have taken a break, and not tried to rush out Who Do We Think We Are ( which is one of my favorites actually), the MKII line up could have carried on with the momentum they had been building instead of blowing it up.

 

1973 they were huge. More popular I think than Zep or Sab. I believe they sold more albums in either the US or the world, or both, in 73 or 74 than any other artist. They got some kind of award from Billboard for that.

 

It’s not that they were more popular than either band, it’s that they had Machine Head at its sales peak, then released Made in Japan, the Smoke On The Water single, and then Who Do We Think We Are...all in 1973. Supposedly they were the top selling artist for the year in the US, but it’s more about having multiple releases coming out concurrently. Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy also went Gold in 1973, but then went on to sell more than 11 million copies....which is probably about what Deep Purple sold if you totaled every one of their albums up.

 

They were quite big early - mid 1970's.
You could hear "Smoke..." on every rock station at the same time.. that type thing.
They came along way since their breakthrough song "Hush" in 1968.
By "Machine Head" they were giving the biggies a real run for the money.
I'd have to say at the time they were easily top tier II, possibly even low tier I.
But Led Zeppelin and some others were just too far in front.
Saw the MH U.S. tour, they we're smokin'! .. years later I was on a promotional local
cruise from the FM radio station I worked at WDVE Pgh, PA.

 

Last night I was talking to a friend about the topic. He's quiet knowledgeable on all things ROCK.
His response: If Deep Purple weren't popular in the 70's, then their reunion in the States would've been a total bust.

 

I've heard that Saga is bigger than Rush in Germany.

 

And what about Uriah Heep?

 

It's interesting that the legendary In Rock appeared to make no impact in the States (though it was eventually certified Gold in 2001).

I've never heard any song from In Rock played on the radio. Purple is basically a 2-album band with regards to the classic rock station here in Pittsburgh (WDVE):

Machine Head: "Smoke", "Highway Star", "Lazy", "Space Truckin'"
Perfect Strangers: title track, "Knockin'"

"Woman From Tokyo" might get an increasingly rare 'deep cut' spin.

Made In Japan performances are all too long... I don't even hear them played on WDVE's live record themed weekends.

"Hush" doesn't seem to get much classic rock format play, existing instead on oldies stations alongside The Association, Donovan and Fifth Dimension.

I've never heard MK III-IV on the radio in my lifetime (1982-present) despite brisk sales at the time of release and strong critical consensus regarding Burn (and despite my many requests). I assume U.S. rock stations deleted the Coverdale/Hughes era from their libraries decades ago. The lack of any obvious single from those albums hurts as well.

By contrast, on rare occasion I will hear the radio play a select few Dio Sabbath tracks... though always by request.

 

(It's sometimes hard to tell if someone's joking.)

 

One of my best mates was mad on Uriah Heep but they were nowhere near as popular as the DP or the others that I mentioned. I remember quite liking Look At Youself and the double live album.

 

It’s probably fairly close actually...
They have 5 Gold and 4 Platinum (one of those 2x platinum). That’s 7.5 million.
They have about 15 other releases, including a few comps that weren’t certified at all...so if we very generously say that every album sold 200,000 copies, that’s a total of 3 million. Total...about 10.5 million.

 

I looked this up on the RIAA site a few months ago and was quite shocked to see how small Purple's sales tally is in the U.S. With the exception of a brief reunion surge in 1984-5, I imagine Purple sales pretty much dried up as younger generations did not embrace their antiquated Hammond organ-driven sound... while the legacies of Zeppelin and early Sabbath only grew stronger.

RIAA counts 7.5 million 'certified' Deep Purple album sales in the U.S. Obviously this is an imperfect and incomplete tally; releases that have not been certified are not tallied... so overall U.S. sales of 10.5 million seems like a reasonable estimate.

For comparison (RIAA certified sales):

Led Zeppelin 111.5 (4th all-time)
Pink Floyd 75
Aerosmith 66.5
Rolling Stones 66.5
Metallica 63
Ozzy Osbourne 27.25
Rush 25
Jimi Hendrix 23
KISS 21
The Who 21
Black Sabbath 15
Ted Nugent 14
Whitesnake 12.5
Grand Funk Railroad 11
Judas Priest 9.5
Alice Cooper 8
Deep Purple 7.5

 

I am young enough to remember that the Perfect Strangers reunion was a big big deal.. At least in Florida.

 

I can agree with all of this.. But where I grew up in Orlando Florida "Woman from Tokyo" received constant airplay for years and years... and it deserved it.

 

I've often felt that if Blackmore and Gillan could have kept their mutual disdain in check and if they had delivered another album or two that was perceived to be as strong as Machine Head, history might have unfolded very differently for them in the US. Obviously, they still did well in the US after the MKII breakup and Burn was a very big album and deservedly so, IMO, but it must have been quite a pill to swallow at the time for long time fans. Come to think of it, I wonder if MKIII had delivered a hard rock album similar in style to Burn instead of the funk/soul of Stormbringer, maybe things would have turned out differently for Deep Purple here as well. It's almost like the band burned their bridges twice within a couple years.

 

A very big deal up here in New England as well. I can't remember if it was three nights or five nights that Purple played at the Worcester Centrum, a venue that held 13,000 at the time. And there were several other multi night shows up my way as well, as I recall. It's just a shame that they couldn't capitalize on their newfound popularity. The 1987 tour, by comparison did fairly well, but the infighting and inertia were already taking over.

 

They used to come in the restaurant I worked at in high school around that time. Why, I don't know. It wasn't that great a place. But I guess a couple of them were living in CT at that time. Who knows, but I can remember seeing them all in there. Not like a ton of times or anything but a few times at least.

Apropos of nothing really except the mention of Perfect Strangers and New England reminded me.

 

So much rock history can be blamed on the spaghetti incident.

 

Well, put it this way...I remember a bunch of people I knew driving around with DP 8-tracks rockin' in their cars in '73 way more than Led Zep or Sabbath. Then there was Smoke and WFT all the time on FM. California Jam a bit later where Sabbath was way down on the bill. Don't even remember much about their performance. Seemed like DP was THE band there for a while. Guess it depends on how you interpret "popular".

 

Man, a bill like that would be worth sitting through Seals & Crofts!

 

Well, there you have it. Andy remembers way more people driving around with DP 8-tracks in 1973 than either Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. That’s pretty solid data.

BTW, the California Jam was broadcast over 4 nights, so perhaps you didn’t see every night. Black Sabbath was third on the bill...going on right before Deep Purple.

 

They also made "Funky Claude" a household name.