Brown/Who do we think they are, 10. Heavy metal on Stage: Deep Purple’s Made in Japan and the Production of Arena Rock

In Chapter 10, Steve Waksman seeks to bring together two early ‘70s musical and commercially lucrative phenomena, the rise of arena rock, first in North America, and following this, the emergence of the global world tour. In this respect, as Waksman argues, Made in Japan stands at the intersection of two interrelated developments that shaped the evolution of the rock concert: the rise of the arena concert as a prevalent format for major touring rock artists, and the increasing globalization of the ‘live’ music economy.As Waksman argues, ‘live’ albums became more and more integral to the definition of the ‘liveness’ of heavy metal – a particular way of putting on a show, and then transferring that performance onto record. He also seeks to explore the tour of Japan that produced the ‘live’ recordings of the Deep Purple concerts performed at Koseinenkin Hall, Osaka (August 15th and 16th) and the Budokan, Tokyo (August 17) in 1972, in order to examine the selection of tracks from the three performances that were chosen to ‘approximate’ the ‘live’ concert experience.