Charades of Deep Purple: Wring That Neck

I had quite a few positive comments regarding my last month’s Second Week Special, “Rolling Clones” – a look at covers of Rolling Stones’ tunes. I’ve decided to do it again with another great rock group: Deep Purple. As a play on the title of their debut LP “Shades of Deep Purple,” I’ve decided to call it “Charades of Deep Purple.”

For the first post, I have a version of “Wring that Neck” – an instrumental that was found on the Deep Purple’s second LP, “The Book of Taliesyn.” Those of us who owned the original US release on Tetragrammaton Records know the song as “Hard Road.” The name change came from the execs at Tetragrammaton who thought that “Wring that Neck” was a little violent for American tastes. I always thought that the neck it referred to was Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar neck.

For today’s feature, here’s The Kings of Cerveza, an Austrian rock band that does a yeoman’s job in recreating this very difficult tune. While not as good as the original studio version, doing this song live and as good as The Kings of Cerveza have done it is a credit to their talent. Hats off go to keyboardist Dietmar Gamperl and guitarist Reini Schöpf who do an excellent job of respectfully emulating Jon Lord and Ritchie Blackmore.

If you want to hear another interesting take on “Wring that Neck,” check out my post from 2011 where I featured It’s A Beautiful Day’s interpretation. They named it “Don and Dewey” and the post explains the source of the name and the reason for this very unique version of “Wring that Neck.”