Which Line-up of Deep Purple is the best one?

[coloradodem2005]

Poll question: Which Line-up of Deep Purple is the best one?

For you Deep Purple fans. which one is your favorite?

[Tom Kitten]

1. I voted for the Hush lineup...

But in your post you asked for favorite lineup, not necessarily the best!

I like the first line-up because I like the 60s sound over the 70s sound...Blackmore's guitar definately sounds different here, plus they did killer songs like Hush, The Shield, And the Address, Mandrake Root, plus great covers of Kentucky Woman, Hey Joe, I'm So Glad...

The Machine Head line-up may have been the best, though...classic lps like In Rock, Machine Head (although I'm still tired of hearing songs from that one!) and I like Who Do We Think We Are?...that's the line-up that gave them enduring fame, the term "heavy metal" was coined with them in mind!

I saw the third lineup live on the Stormbringer tour...they had greater range vocally with Coverdale and Hughes (I liked Glen Hughes a lot in Trapeze, their lp Medusa is a fave of mine) but I didn't like Coverdale as much...seems like the newcomers had energy but the oldsters seemed a little burnt (especially Blackmore...the opening bands were Elf (w/ Ronnie James Dio) and ELO...after that tour Blackmore left Deep Purple and basically replaced Elf's guitar player and renamed the band Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow for their first lp! I liked that band's first 2 lps, then I got bored by the whole arena rock think until the Ramones and Patti Smith!

The other lineups I'm afraid I know nothing about, except Tommy Bolin was a good guitar player I knew from Billy Cobham's Spectrum lp....did one lp with Purple then od...

[No Mandate Here.]

2. "Shades of" is their best album, IMHO.

'Hey Joe', 'Help' are among the best versions of those songs, and 'Mandrake Root' sort of began an instrumental style- I call the canned jam. I wish I had seen them- they probably played this song as about a ten minute showcase.