The music world continues to mourn the loss of legendary DEEP PURPLE/WHITESNAKE composer, pianist and Hammond organ player JON LORD, known for his pioneering work in fusing rock with classical or baroque forms. Jon Lord died on Monday, July 16 in a UK hospital at the age of 71, suffering a fatal pulmonary embolism at the London Clinic after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

In this November 1970 interview from Beat Instrumental, Lord talks of his technique and his equipment with Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director of Rock's Back Pages.

Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Beat Instrumental: Fairly recently, Jon, Deep Purple have become known as something of a controversial group — especially in regard to classical music. Where do you feel Deep Purple's present musical direction is going? Is it going to consolidate this marriage of styles?

Lord: "No, I feel we're moving away from it now because it was never intended to be part of the direction of the group; it was merely an experiment. As you know, we did experiment with classical themes in the beginning — and with classical chord structures in the music, but it all got a bit soulless...planned, you know? We wanted to get a bit more freedom into the music so we don't normally use any form of classical music now — except maybe in our solos. I love classical music; I love the way it's worked ...all those chord sequences so I often use that sort of effect in my solos. The actual group now is trying to develop into being good at what we're best at — which is what we call rock 'n' roll. The Concerto was originally intended to be an experiment. What happened was it caused an awful uproar...which was very nice, of course...and that really started us off."

Beat Instrumental: Do you believe in musical discipline?

Lord: "Yes. You take the great symphony writers like Beethoven...they wrote within an incredibly strict framework...you know, it must have a first subject, a second subject, a dominant key...and it must have an exposition based around the theme — that's just the first movement! But look what they produced...incredible music, through putting themselves into a restricted formula, and then expanding from there. It's often like the restriction on a painter. A piece of canvas, some oils and a brush are his restrictions, and he works within those limits, and extends beyond them. Working against a restriction — for me — often produces greater things than getting rid of all boundaries. Free from jazz means absolutely nothing to me. Because there are no boundaries."

Beat Instrumental: What is the guiding musical philosophy of Deep Purple?

Lord: "We believe in experiment and excitement within the framework that we have set ourselves at this particular moment in time. That will change...we will extend, obviously. We'll get older, get different influences; we've not reached a point where we are perfectly happy and contented to develop naturally. We were trying to develop un-naturally before. We would grasp all sorts of different ideas at once...like a child in a garden full of flowers: he wants them all at once. When Ian [Gillan] and Roger [Glover] joined, something very nice happened within the group."

Read more at Rock's Back Pages.