Often considered one of the greatest live albums of all time, Deep Purple’s Made In Japan stands tall among other iconic live recordings of the era, including The Who’s Live At Leeds, The Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East, and Humble Pie’s Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore. Of course, Purple was the heaviest of them all, and the fact that they could thrill Japanese audiences with loud and extended performances of their mightiest and meatiest material only made the whole platter that much more desirable. Now, over 50 years later, Made In Japan has gotten the kind of super-sonic makeover fans and audiophiles only drivel about.
For 2025 — 53 years after the first performance was recorded, to be exact — Rhino has put a Super Deluxe Edition box set together of Made In Japan. The package comes with five CDs and a Blu-ray Disc (there’s also a 10-LP black vinyl edition available exclusively from Rhino). The first CD is the original seven-song album, featuring the best of three shows Purple played August 16, 17, and 18, 1972, in Osaka and Tokyo, all remixed in stereo by Steven Wilson. Track through that, and you’ll likely pick up on kind of nuances you never heard before.
Discs two, three, and four feature the individual performances of the same songs from each night, remixed by Richard Digby Smith, while the fifth disc has the encores from each night, none of which were included on the original Made In Japan. However, this same configuration was part of the 2014 box set that also included a replicated single of “Smoke On The Water” and a DVD with three documentaries and two videos — the official clip and a live version from 1973 — of “Smoke On the Water,” instead of new mixes. Completists, of course, will need to own both.
Smith’s stereo remixes go well with Wilson’s stereo remix, though franklly, aside from Gillan’s spoken-word intros, you’d be hard=pressed to pick up on the differences. Maybe an A/B comparison would reveal more; for the layman whose happy with two speakers, the most fun trying to find anything dissimilar from one to the other. That being said, once Steven Wilson wraps his ears around a classic record, he is usually able to transform it into a spacial soundscape oozing over with wonder and new discoveries to fill the space.
Remixing Made In Japan in 5.1 and Atmos, Wilson clearly pushed the barriers of the analog eight-track recording to spine-tingling limits. If you have a spacial, multi-channel audio system, prepare to hear Made In Japan as if the concert was taking place just a few feet away. Deep Purple, once considered the loudest live band in the world, unleash a furry of notes from Jon Lord’s Hammond (out of the right rear or ceiling speaker) and Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar (out of the left rear or ceiling speaker), while Ian Paice’s drumming and Roger Glover’s barking bass absorb the front speakers as Ian Gillan’s young, untarnished vocal comes booming out of the center channel. For audio enthusiasts, the surround and Atmos mixes are the crown jewels of the entire set.
No matter how you slice it, both the individual and collective performances on Made In Japan are at the heart of its appeal. “Highway Star” surges with so much force and power, it takes the stakes for one of the best opening songs ever. “Child In Time” is all about the band’s inter-dynamics and Gillan’s incredible range at the time. “The Mule” is a showcase for Paice’s superlative drumming skills, while both “Lazy” and “Space Truckin’” are prime examples of why Jon Lord supplied the band’s secret sauce. Glover’s bass work stoically holds up the framework and holds down the foundation. Which leaves Ritchie Blackmore.
Clearly, the notoriously moody guitarist was on his best behavior in “The Land of the Rising Sun” and lays down some of his most masterful and memorable Bachian-flavored licks ever captured on tape. He and Gillan playfully engage in a call-and-response like two brothers wired at birth on “Strange Kind Of Woman.” And, of course, the interplay between Blackmore and Lord throughout the album was always a major element of Deep Purple’s unique musical cache in the 70s. They may never ever play together again, but we’ll always have Made In Japan as evidence of what they once were able to accomplish as young men in unison.
The Super Deluxe Edition box set of Made In Japan, which also comes with the requisite poster and two booklets of liner notes and colorful images, is the ultimate testament of Deep Purple’s prowess on the concert stage. Even before a subdued Japanese audience, they had them all clapping for more at the end. Maybe those encores of “Black Night” or “Speed King” would have been better suited as the original album’s final songs. Then again, who knows what to think after a 20-minute version of “Space Truckin’” finishes the record! How could anyone even entertain the idea of adding the encores after such a finale! Now you can listen to it anyway you want. And chances are it will leave that same long-lasting bombastic impression of ‘How could it get any better than this’…
~ Shawn Perry
