Schlock-Wire: 2 New DEEP PURPLE Books From Martin Popoff Plus A Special Shipping Deal For U.S. Customers

Martin Popoff, acclaimed scribe of the hard rock/heavy metal scene, has been a busy man lately.  In the last few months he has released not one but two new books on the his­tory of Deep Purple.  The Deep Purple Royal Family book series uses a time­line approach to dig into the com­plex his­tory of this hard rock legacy act, as well as the atten­dant solo careers and the many Purple off­shoot groups — Rainbow, Whitesnake and Gillan, to name a few.  The first vol­ume cov­ers from 1968 to 1979 and the sec­ond cov­ers 1980 to 2011.

Full details fol­low below but first there is some impor­tant news that comes directly from Martin about a new deal for his U.S. cus­tomers.  Given that Popoff is based in Canada, ship­ping has been costly in the past.  However, he has devel­oped a new arrange­ment that allows him to sub­stan­tially cut the ship­ping cost for American hard rock buffs — here is the news, in Popoff’s own words:

“Given that I’ve started ship­ping once a week from Niagara Falls, US rather than my home­town of Toronto, the postage cost sit­u­a­tion has bright­ened in that I can ship two or even THREE books for very close to the same postage cost I can ship one (also, a happy resid­ual is that there is no risk of any cus­toms has­sles or costs).

This means, like below, one of the Family books is $35, but I can send you TWO books for $55 total. This can be two of ANY of the four Deep Purple books, or for that mat­ter, add in BOC, Dio, Rainbow, UFO or any of the Ye Olde Metal books (although I’m out of ’76). Sabbath FAQ can only go with some­thing pretty thin. ”

Contact Popoff directly at his site — http://www.martinpopoff.com/ — to check out his full ros­ter of pub­li­ca­tions and get con­tact info.  Most of these books are avail­able as direct-order items only so it pays to visit his site and drop him an e-mail.  Here are the details on his two new Deep Purple books:

The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events Through ‘79

You might be sayin’, “What the… you’ve already writ­ten two Deep Purple books?!”

Sure have, and they’ve been sold mainly to you folks on my happy lit­tle email list, so with this one, I’ve made sure that the con­tent was all fresh, all 280 pages, includ­ing all-new inter­view footage, all quotes from archival press, all text, all… 542 pic­tures (more on that later).

The Text:

280 stuffed pages offer­ing an exhaus­tive and detailed time­line of Purple mile­stones, often to the day, includ­ing some sim­i­lar bands, influ­ences, cul­tural milieu, tour stuff, record­ing ses­sions, charts, sin­gles, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion news, break-ups, per­sonal stuff, trivia for miles, and lots and lots of artist quotes to add to the entries, turn­ing the book into a quasi-oral his­tory but loaded with fac­tual mat­ter. But as you’ve noticed, this is about FAMILY. So the text weaves, in and out of the story of Purple proper, the das­tardly diaries of Rainbow, Whitesnake, Ian Gillan Band, Gillan, Paice Ashton Lord, all the solo projects, guest slots, even Captain Beyond, Warhorse, Jerusalem, Jesus Christ Superstar, Bedlam, Elf, Episode Six, Outlaws, and Pussy. And when I felt it mat­tered to the story, there’s touch­downs to the likes of Heep, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Nazareth , Moxy, Silverhead, Hard Stuff, Trapeze, Lord Sutch, Warpig, Vanilla Fudge, Brian Auger, Judas Priest, James Gang, Angel and Legs Diamond, always with con­tex­tual expla­na­tion plus the odd rare and very cool archival advertisement.

The Graphics:

A blaz­ing 542 of them, usu­ally rare, archival, his­tor­i­cal shots of record ads, LP and 45 sleeves, tour posters and news­pa­per notices, ticket stubs, endorse­ment ads, tour pro­gram cov­ers, for­eign coun­try releases, and again, con­tex­tual things like, say, an ancient Hammond or Marshall ad, stu­dio ads, weird busi­ness stuff… Seriously, the crazy, cre­ative old ‘70s ads, and the hype copy on them – that’s why I wanted to do this book. It’s a gallery, flowed and framed by fully 41,000 words of beau­ti­fully dis­played time­line, which brings us to…

The Design:

This book marks my first project with awe­some Calgary-based designer Bill Harris, and what he’s cre­ated for the look of this thing is top-flight, emi­nently read­able, a plea­sure to flip through and touch down upon the trivia and the rare pic­tures from deep Deep his­tory. You’ll love it – a huge step up for my books.

The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events ’80-‘11

As you might have gath­ered, this is the sec­ond and clos­ing chap­ter to the elab­o­rate and exper­i­men­tal hit project that was The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events Through ’79.

This picks up where that book left off, offer­ing a few mod­est mile­stones within its pages, namely:

- the most com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion on the Gillan band ever stuffed in a book

- the largest amount of detail as per­tains the Whitesnake story ever presented

- a fair bit of Blackmore’s Night as well as Joe Lynn Turner and Glenn Hughes solo

- all the play-by-play from Perfect Strangers up to Purple hap­pen­ings this summer

Also, as with the first one, I’ve made sure that the con­tent was all 100% fresh over and above my first two Purple books, Gettin’ Tighter: Deep Purple ’68 – ’76 and A Castle Full Of Rascals: Deep Purple ’83 – ’09, all 296 pages, includ­ing all-new inter­view footage, all-new quotes from archival press, all text, all… 513 pictures.

The Text:

296 stuffed pages offer­ing an exhaus­tive and detailed time­line of Purple mile­stones from 1980 until right now, often to the day, includ­ing some sim­i­lar bands, influ­ences, cul­tural milieu, tour stuff, record­ing ses­sions, charts, sin­gles, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion news, break-ups, per­sonal stuff, trivia for miles, and lots and lots of artist quotes to add to the entries, turn­ing the book into a quasi-oral his­tory but loaded with fac­tual mat­ter. But as you’ve noticed, this is about FAMILY. So the text weaves, in and out of the story of Purple proper, the das­tardly diaries of Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan, Blackmore’s Night, all the solo projects, guest slots, a li’l MSG, Gary Moore, Black Sabbath and Black Country Communion, always with con­tex­tual expla­na­tion plus rare and very cool archival adver­tise­ments of shows ‘n’ records ‘n’ singles.

The Graphics:

A hefty 513 of them, usu­ally rare, archival, his­tor­i­cal shots of record ads, LP and 45 sleeves, CD sin­gles, Japanese issues, pic­ture discs, tour posters and news­pa­per notices, ticket stubs, endorse­ment ads, tour pro­gram cov­ers, other for­eign coun­try releases, and again, con­tex­tual things… It’s a gallery, flowed and framed by fully 50,000 words of beau­ti­fully dis­played time­line, which brings us to…

The Design:

This book marks my sec­ond project with awe­some Calgary-based designer Bill Harris, and what he’s cre­ated for the look of this thing is a tri­umphant reprise of the first one, same breezy, read­able mix of yummy graph­ics, pull quotes, classy type­styles… a plea­sure to flip through and touch down upon the trivia and the rare pic­tures from deep Deep his­tory. You’ll love it – a killer, com­pre­hen­sive com­pan­ion piece to the first edition.