Jon Lord, the keyboard player with the hard rock band Deep Purple died this week. Deep Purple are known for the hits Smoke On The Water, which is a garage band classic, and Highway Star, one of the lamest car songs ever. I mean; “Big bad tires and everything,” really? The Beach Boys and Bruce Springsteen must have laughed when they heard Highway Star.
My first Deep Purple song, because I’m so old, was the psychedelic classic Hush. Jon’s organ sound became synonymous with Sixties psychedelia but I was surprised to learn that before he joined Deep Purple in 1968 he was a member of a band called The Flower Pot Men. Flower Power was a term for what would eventually become more widely known as “Hippie” and I suppose the guys in the band thought they had cleverly sneaked the term “pot” into their band name without getting banned. Or maybe they did get banned as I’ve never heard of them before. They were certainly very “Flower Power”.
My first Deep Purple song, because I’m so old, was the psychedelic classic Hush. Jon’s organ sound became synonymous with Sixties psychedelia but I was surprised to learn that before he joined Deep Purple in 1968 he was a member of a band called The Flower Pot Men. Flower Power was a term for what would eventually become more widely known as “Hippie” and I suppose the guys in the band thought they had cleverly sneaked the term “pot” into their band name without getting banned. Or maybe they did get banned as I’ve never heard of them before. They were certainly very “Flower Power”.
The Flower Pot Men's Let's Go To San Francisco
It’s sad reading, almost weekly, of another rock and roller from my youth joining that big band in the sky. Surprisingly, they are dying from “natural” causes. In Jon Lord’s case it was pancreatic cancer, the same thing that killed my 86 year old father a couple of years ago. From the way my parents and teachers talked back in the 70s I would think rock and rollers would have all gone insane and died young, and deaf. I guess rock and roll wasn’t so bad for us after all.
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