Who Do We Think We Are is the seventh studio album by Deep Purple, released in 1973. It was Deep Purple’s last album with singer Ian Gillan until Perfect Strangers in 1984. Who Do We Think We Are was recorded in Rome in July 1972 and Frankfurt in October 1972, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio. “Woman from Tokyo”, the first track recorded in July 1972, is about touring Japan for the first time (e.g. the lyric “Fly into the Rising Sun”). The only other track released from the Rome sessions is the out-take “Painted Horse”. The rest of the album was recorded in Frankfurt after more touring (including Japan). Ian Gillan left the band following this album, citing internal tensions widely thought to include a feud with Blackmore. However, in an interview supporting the release of the 1984 Mark II Deep Purple comeback album Perfect Strangers, Gillan stated fatigue and management also had a lot to do with it. We had just come off 18 months of touring, and we’d all had major illnesses at one time or another. Looking back, if they’d have been decent managers, they would have said, ‘All right, stop. I want you to all go on three months’ holiday. I don’t even want you to pick up an instrument.’ But instead they pushed us to complete the album on time. We should have stopped. I think if we did, Deep Purple would have still been around to this day. The last Mark II concert in the 1970s before Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left was in Osaka, Japan on 29 June 1973. The original album artwork has many quoted articles from newspapers. One of them is from Melody Maker July 1972, where Ian Paice says: Deep Purple get piles of passionate letters either violently against or pro the group. The angry ones generally start off “Who do Deep Purple think they are…” Although “Woman from Tokyo” was a hit single, the group – riven with internal strife – struggled to come up with tracks of the quality of their previous three albums (and first live album). Although it hit number 4 in the UK charts and number 15 in the US charts, it did not sell as well as previous albums. Nonetheless, Deep Purple was the best selling artist in the USA in 1973.
Fly into the rising sun,
Faces, smiling everyone
Yeah, she is a whole new tradition
I feel it in my heart
My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me
Talk about her like a Queen
Dancing in a Eastern Dream
Yeah, she makes me feel like a river
That carries me away
My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me
But I’m at home and I just don’t belong …
So far away from the garden we love
She is what moves in the soul of a dove
Soon I shall see just how black was my night
When we’re alone in Her City of light
Rising from the neon gloom
Shining like a crazy moon
Yeah, she turns me on like a fire
I get high
My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me
[Dedicated to H.K.]
