By 1973 Deep Purple was the most successful, top-grossing, stadium-touring heavy rock band on the planet: a position confirmed by the virtuoso performances captured on the double live album Made in Japan (1972) and the Billboard chart success of the double A-side live/studio single Smoke on the Water. The same year Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice released a fourth studio album, Who Do We Think We Are, the last that the Mk2 line-up would produce.

Despite their commercial success, like their contemporaries Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin their music was contemptuously described as 'heavy metal' by the contemporary press, which focused on the equipment-smashing finales of their live performances rather than the quality and innovative aspects of their music and musicianship. The title of their 1973 album was the band's response to typically negative opinions voiced in the press and by some disgruntled fans.

Over the decades Deep Purple has since being recognized as epitomizing classic heavy metal. In this volume, metal music scholars explore the reasons for the band's enduring legacy, the result of their success in communicating - through a series of ground breaking studio albums and especially in live performance - with a new, younger rock audience which helped them forge a lasting bond amid the controversies that surrounded metal's rise.

While this volume may not provide the final word on the question of who Deep Purple are, the contributors agree on the magnitude of Purple's artistic and musical influences on subsequent metal bands, metal musicians and metal sub genre styles alike.