Former Deep Purple organist to play Lichfield Cathedral

Jul 10 2009 by Andrew Coleman, Birmingham Mail

WHERE would you expect to find an organist? A church or cathedral would be a fairly sensible place to start.

And in Lichfield Cathedral, where a musical instrument as big as half a house sits, you can find one at most times of the day, and on most days of the week.

But next Friday evening you will find a very different kind of organist in the cathedral – one who is better known for standing over an electric Hammond organ and for much of his musical career has been more accustomed to playing to whole stadia of rock fans with one of the loudest rock bands in the world.

Jon Lord has always been known as the organist in Deep Purple and as a musician who leaps the artificial boundaries that are put up between different areas of music.

Hence, fairly early in his Deep Purple career he wrote Concerto for Group and Orchestra, which placed the band in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall stage with the Royal Philharmonic around them.

In recent years he has enjoyed success in the classical charts with his Durham Concerto.

He had a classical music education but was alerted to rock music through Jerry Lee Lewis.

“I heard him playing Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On, and I wanted my piano to sound like that. But it wouldn’t. So I investigated further, I was lucky in being a teenager at the time of the birth of rock ‘n’ roll,” he says.

But the one kind of music didn’t replace the other.

“I kept my love of classical music but just added rock ‘n’ roll to it and later jazz.”

So now Jon, the classical pianist, was playing rock, but he had to have the right instrument.

“The first time I heard the Hammond organ played with massive intensity was by Jimmy Smith. To hear him playing Walk On The Wild Side I just knew I had to have one,” he adds.

“Actually, I didn’t know it was a Hammond, I just knew it was an electric organ, so the first band I was in, we went out and bought an organ but it was the wrong one – we bought a Lowry, which, fine organ that it is, is not a Hammond.

“So I asked a friend at the time called Graham Bond, who had a band called the Graham Bond Organisation, with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker ‘how do I get my organ to sound like a Hammond?’

“He said ‘first you take hold of your Lowry and you burn it, and then you go out and buy a Hammond’ so, not that we burnt the Lowry, but we did sell it and go and buy a Hammond. And the first time I played it, it was a revelation.”

It is a Hammond that Jon Lord will be using with his band in Lichfield Cathedral on July 17.

On stage with Jon will be singers Steve Balsamo and Kasia Laska, flautist Bruce Martin, Nigel Hopkins on keyboards, Don Richmond on bass and Steve White on drums, plus the Badke string quartet.

What is it like trying to combine an electric band with a string quartet?

“Well, I love the tightrope that you have to walk in a way,” Jon admits. “You have an extremely loud drum kit and then a Hammond organ and an electric bass player and yet need to put them together with a string quartet in a way that both don’t get compromised.

“It informs a lot of my music making, this dichotomy between one style of music and another and the very, to me, pleasing result of trying to put them both together.”

* Ticket Info

Friday, July 17: Lichfield Cathedral
Tickets: 01543 412 121 or www.lichfieldfestival.org