sad news ; Jon Lord diagnose with cancel……
“Jon Lord is one of the greatest keyboard players there has ever been. He’s not really considered a prog rock musician, but he did things that nobody else did. When you look at early Deep Purple especially, there was a lot of prog in there – they were breaking rules. Jon did things that you ‘shouldn’t’ do on in the context of a rock band. If that’s not progressive, I don’t know what is.
I bought Shades Of Deep Purple, the very first album by the original Deep Purple line-up, back when it came out. What I really loved about that album was that they did a version of The Beatles’ Help! on there, where Jon did amazing things on the Hammond and Leslie. I thought, ‘I like this guy,’ so I always kept an eye on what he was doing.
Like Keith Emerson, Jon had such had such an identifiable sound – one that nobody else could play. He worked hard on his Hammond to get new noises out
He could have been whatever he wanted to be. He loved playing in a rock band, and he had a phenomenal feel for solos – listen to a song like Speed King. But he also had a classical edge to him. Ian Paice, the drummer from Deep Purple, once told me that no one else in the band knew what was going on with the Concerto For Group And Orchestra thing they did, because it was all in Jon’s head.
