{"id":480594,"date":"2026-03-17T15:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/480594\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T15:49:09","slug":"mary-long-by-deep-purple-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/480594\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Long by Deep Purple: The story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s anything likely to upset Ian Gillan<\/a> more than a self-styled moral crusader with a viewpoint diametrically opposed to his own, it\u2019s two of them. Back in 1972, with Deep Purple<\/a> Mark II at the height of their fame and touring to promote Machine Head<\/a>, the holier-than-thou duet were Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford.<\/p>\n

Committed Christian Whitehouse, in her assumed role as guardian of Britain\u2019s moral standards, led the \u2018Clean Up TV\u2019 campaign, railing against anyone who dared swear the word \u2018bloody\u2019 on television. She was driven apoplectic, therefore, by the Alf Garnett character in Johnny Speight\u2019s seminal anti-racism sitcom Till Death Do Us Part (much loved by Gillan), as well as comedians Dave Allen and Benny Hill, and just about everything else that made the rest of us laugh.<\/p>\n

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Then, as Purple were about to commence sessions for what would become Who Do We Think We Are, news broke that former Labour minister and Knight of the Garter Lord Longford was campaigning for the release of Moors Murderer Myra Hindley.<\/p>\n

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Nearly four decades later Gillan recalls: \u201cMary Whitehouse and Lord Longford were particularly high-profile figures at the time with very waggy-waggy finger attitudes. On reflection, it\u2019s a little bit unfair because the generation before \u2013 in the post-war period \u2013 were extremely generous to us. But it\u2019s just natural to rebel.<\/p>\n

\u201cMary Long grew out of the whole idea of dealing with an imaginary person. It was about the standards of the older generation, the whole moral framework, intellectual vandalism \u2013 all of the things that exist throughout the generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a lot of issues with the religion that I grew up with, but as I found out later, those issues exist in all religions, so Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford became one person \u2013 fusing together \u2013 to represent the hypocrisy that I saw at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there I was slinging names about and accusing them of all sorts of things \u2013 dastardly deeds and vile occurrences! The idea was that we are young, we are naked and therefore we are truthful. I never met a 20-year-old who didn\u2019t think they were immortal and didn\u2019t lack an opinion on everything \u2013 it was that sort of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Deep Purple – Mary Long (1973) – YouTube
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It was also a very unhappy time in the singer\u2019s life. His relationship with Purple\u2019s guitarist Ritchie Blackmore<\/a> \u2013 who to this day he\u2019ll refer to only as \u201cthe banjo player\u201d \u2013 had broken down. Bassist Roger Glover also recalls the period with sadness as Blackmore became increasingly remote from the band<\/a>, completed by drummer Ian Paice and Jon Lord on keyboards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had gotten to the point where Ritchie wasn\u2019t interested in doing anybody else\u2019s ideas. I remember in particular coming up with a chord sequence which I thought would be an interesting idea for a song. I\u2019d written this out on a piece of paper \u2013 four or five chords or whatever, nothing much, and a certain rhythm. I said to Paicey: \u2018Start this rhythm, about this time.\u2019 Jon started playing. I started playing. But Ritchie just looked over my shoulder at this piece of paper and didn\u2019t put his fingers on the strings even once \u2013 so the jam quickly fizzled out.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, he started playing another riff. It may have been Mary Long or perhaps another one \u2013 something mid-tempo \u2013 as a lot of his riffs were starting to sound the same, nearly all variations in G\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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Part of the problem was the pressure of work. The band flew to the States four times in the first six months of 1972 as well as playing dates all over Europe. Whatever the causes, things had become so bad that when Purple first found time to interrupt their almost non-stop touring schedule in July \u2013 for recording sessions in a rented villa near Rome \u2013 Blackmore refused to stay in the house with the others and often didn\u2019t come to the sessions at all.<\/p>\n

Gillan: \u201cI remember the joys of the local red wine, the underwater swimming championships in the pool and the eternal frustrations of trying to perform as a band while 20 per cent short in number\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Those sessions produced just two songs in three weeks \u2013 \u201cPathetic!\u201d admits Glover \u2013 Woman From Tokyo and Painted Horse, the latter a song Blackmore soon decided he hated and barred from the album.<\/p>\n

The band went back on the road, first visiting Japan in mid-August. The three shows, one in Tokyo and two in Osaka, were recorded and \u2013 ironically, given the strife \u2013 saw the band compile their Made In Japan<\/a> live album, released in December \u201972.<\/p>\n

Mary Long was recorded earlier during October using the Rolling Stones\u2019 Mobile Unit parked outside studios in Waldorf Nord, near Frankfurt. The band would rarely be together as a five-piece. Worse, Blackmore was hatching plans to recruit Paul Rodgers<\/a> to replace Gillan and launch a trio called Baby Face<\/a>, who had cut some demos with Phil Lynott<\/a> and Ian Paice.<\/p>\n

Glover recalls the ideas for Mary Long were staring them in the face: \u201cWe had English papers delivered at the studio so we kept up with the news and those were the two people that got up our noses. It seemed that it was all getting much too pro-censorship and pro-do-gooder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitehouse\u2019s supposed sexless piety produced an extra spot of inspiration when the tabloids reported her pregnancy.<\/p>\n

Glover: \u201cIan came up with a great line: \u2018We never really knew you\u2019d had it in you\u2019 \u2013 ever the master of the double-entendre!\u201d<\/p>\n

So was the combination of the two names a ploy to avoid any charges of libel?<\/p>\n

Gillan: \u201cChrist no! I\u2019ve always enjoyed impressionism in lyrics and resented other people plugging their political values and social attitudes in that way. That wasn\u2019t me.<\/p>\n

\u201cMary Long was of its time, but is still relevant today \u2013 as our soon-to-be ex-government will find out\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 138, published in November 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there\u2019s anything likely to upset Ian Gillan more than a self-styled moral crusader with a viewpoint diametrically…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-480594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}