9. Deep PurpleBurn

I have been a Deep Purple fan from their In Rock album and then I retroactively discovered their first three albums as well, Of course I like their hard rock period, but when they changed the line-up and added David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, they just became a band like no other – they added soul like you had never heard it before in heavy rock, and another thing that made them absolutely unique at the time was the twin lead vocals – it completely sucked me in.

You perceived them as friends from photos, but there was the sense of competition [between Coverdale and Hughes] when you listened to the music. The music benefitted immensely from that. That’s something I’ve talked about with many bands: there are always musicians who ask me for advice and one of the things I always tell ‘em: "instead of having the band guided by one guy’s ego – that leaves no room for any other idea – it’s far better to pool everyone’s very best ideas and make the entire band look good." And of course that’s what happened in the Coverdale/Hughes era – everyone was full of testosterone and adrenaline I suppose, and everybody wanted to be the star of Deep Purple.