Come Taste the Band was the product of a band on the verge of dissolution. From 1973 onward, the band had become famously unstable, a witches brew of clashing personalities and styles, spiked with a lot of drugs and alcohol. The sole album of the Mark IV lineup featuring Tommy Bolin, it was a departure from both the "classic" Deep Purple and also the more recent developments of the two Mark III albums, in which newcomers David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes put their own stamps on the band.
The previous album, Stormbringer, caused a lot of head scratching among longtime fans. That album traded the hard rock of seminal albums like Machine Head and Burn for a slicker production style, with obvious funk and soul influence. Ritchie Blackmore's guitar, which was usually front and center on most album, was mellowed out considerably, and even his writing contributions seems scaled back and overshadowed by Coverdale and Hughes. By 1975, he finally threw in the towel and launched a solo career that would blossom into the band Rainbow.
Meanwhile, the remaining four members were torn over how to proceed. The veterans, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, seemed ready to call it a day, but the newcomers felt like they were just getting started. Indeed Hughes old band, Trapeze, never really broke out until after he left, while Deep Purple was Coverdale's first professional band. They hadn't gone this far for their band to collapse underneath them! Blackmore's replacement, Tommy Bolin, came from a referral by Coverdale, besting a number of other candidates. The initial jam sessions (see Days May Come and Days May Go) showed good initial chemistry between Bolin and the others, though, thanks to some drama over studio issues, the actual recording of Come Taste the Band took some time, and relationships were starting to ooze from sour to rancid among the band.
The writing credits are rather telling of the band's situation by 1975. Lord and Paice had virtually checked out, mainly serving as continuity to the band's pre-1973 history. Lord only had a co-credit on "This Time Around" while Paice added his name to "Comin' Home". Meanwhile, Hughes, the youngest member of the band, was struggling with a burgeoning cocaine habit and becoming a bit of a pariah to the rest of the band. In fact, the first song, "Comin' Home" was done without him (Bolin doubled on bass). His vocal contributions and songwriting were also scaled way back in comparison to the previous two albums. Coverdale, however, needed a songwriting partner, which mostly fell to Bolin (about half the tracks are credited to Bolin/Coverdale and Bolin shares or owns writing credits on all but "You Keep On Moving" and "Lady Luck", where Bolin's old bandmate Jeff Cook scored an oddball credit with Coverdale). Unfortunately, while an excellent guitarist, Bolin still had a way to go in the songwriting department, resulting in material that is large uninspired, when compared with both earlier Deep Purple as well as his own prior work in other bands. Oddly enough, Bolin never developed the dislike of Hughes as the others had, and their one song together, "Gettin' Tighter" is a standout moment. This unlikely partnership also, tragically, was awash in drugs, in this case Bolin's notorious heroin habit, which would ultimately kill him in 1976.
In April 1976, Deep Purple played their final show in Liverpool, after which Coverdale, Lord, and Paice all resigned, effectively cutting loose Bolin and Hughes. All band members would move on to solo careers in the late 1970's (Lord and Paice under the short-lived "Paice Ashton Lord" band), and all of these solo albums were fairly comfortable transitions from the twilight of Deep Purple, especially David Coverdale, who demonstrated improved songwriting on two solo albums as well as a fruitful partnership with another guitarist, Micky Moody. Tommy Bolin and Glenn Hughes only managed a single album each, Bolin cut short due to death, and Hughes due to a disruptive lifestyle that he only managed to get under control in the 1990's.
In brief, this isn't Deep Purple's finest moment, but it's a historically important album and a critical part of any comprehensive Deep Purple collection. Most of the band would prefer to forget it, but Glenn Hughes still shows a lot of love for it and was a major contributor to special anniversary edition released around ten years ago. Speaking for myself, I probably never would have known a lick about the life and career of Tommy Bolin if it hadn't been for this album. If you haven't heard Energy or his solo album Teaser, then you are missing some of his finest moments. Alas, this isn't one of them, but it can't hurt to give it a taste.
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