Deep Purple-Made In Europe (1976)

By the time the live album "Made In Europe" was released, Deep Purple had practically disbanded. In fact, this album was released as a sort of epitaph by Purple Records and published by EMI months after the band's last album of the 1970s, "Come Taste The Band". While the so-called Mark II lineup (Glover, Blackmore, Gillan, Lord, and Paice) had released their live album, the fabulous "Made In Japan", this Mark III lineup, composed of Blackmore, Lord, Paice, Coverdale, and Hughes, would also have its own live album, recorded during the "Stormbringer" tour in April 1975 in Germany and Austria. Specifically, these would be the last three shows the band would play, and therefore the last for guitarist Ritchie Blackmore before he left to found Rainbow later that year. Constantly overshadowed by the aforementioned "Made In Japan", this live album still showcases the greatness that Deep Purple retained at that time. The superb performances of the glorious “Burn” and “Mistreated” alone are reason enough to consider this epitaph a fitting end to the band's career in that decade. The rest of the tracks on this live album are no less impressive: the frenetic “Lady Double Dealer” showcases the vocal prowess of Coverdale and Hughes with a Blackmore in top form on guitar; “You Fool No One” becomes a kind of jam session for the sheer mischief of an exceptional Blackmore and the extraordinary skills of Paice on drums; and the album concludes with the portentous “Stormbringer”. This work would mark the end of Deep Purple in the 70s, thus leaving the band's fans orphaned...at least for ten years when they would reunite for the long-awaited return with the prodigious "Perfect Strangers", but in the meantime the Purple saga would continue with the aforementioned Rainbow, Whitesnake or Ian Gillan Band who would fill that gap in an extraordinary way, until the aforementioned return of the best Purple lineup in 1984.