Deep Purple
Burn
Burn — Deep Purple (1974)
Released in the United Kingdom on 15 February 1974 by Purple Records, Burn was Deep Purple's first album with the Mark III line-up of Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale. A contemporary hostile review, alongside chart results with their dates.
The verdict at the time
Barnes dismissed Burn as 'a passable but disappointing effort' whose new material was 'largely drab and ordinary', without 'the runaway locomotive power of the group's best work'. He found 'Mistreated' 'flaccidly lengthy', 'Might Just Take Your Life' 'relentlessly mediocre' and 'You Fool No One' a 'tedious Moog/bolero instrumental retread', judging the 'Gillan/Glover spark' 'regrettably absent'. This verdict belongs to Barnes and Rolling Stone, not to Echo Mandala.
Chart peaks
European positions are listed by country. Later chart entries are labelled separately.
Sources & context
One critic's opinion, summarised from Ken Barnes's original Rolling Stone review of 25 April 1974. Burn is now regarded as a classic of Deep Purple's 1970s hard-rock era: 'Mistreated' and the title track remain among its best-known songs, and its mixed-to-negative reception was later reversed by critical reappraisal.
