Jon Lord ( b9 )

 Over the same period, Lord guested on albums by Maggie Bell, Nazareth and even folk artist Richard Digance. He also guested as one of several keyboard players on the live performance of David Bedford’s The Odyssey at the Royal Albert Hall in 1977. Eager to pay off a huge tax bill upon his return the UK in the late-1970s (Purple's excesses included their own tour jet and a home Lord rented in Malibu from actress Ann-Margret and where he wrote the Sarabande album), Lord joined former Deep Purple band member David Coverdale's new band, Whitesnake in August 1978 (Ian Paice joined them in 1980 and stayed till 1982).

Whitesnake, 1978–1984

Lord's job in Whitesnake was largely limited to adding colour (or, in his own words, a 'halo') to round out a blues-rock sound that already accommodated two lead guitarists, Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody. He added a Yamaha CP-70 electric piano to his set-up and finally a huge bank of synthesizers onstage courtesy of Moog (Minimoog, Opus, Polymoog) so he could play the 12-bar blues the band often required and recreate string section and other effects. Such varied work is evident on tracks like "Here I Go Again", "Wine, Women and Song", "She's a Woman" and "Till the Day I Die". A number of singles entered the UK chart, taking the now 30-something Lord onto Top of the Pops with regularity between 1980 and 1983. He later expressed frustration that he was a poorly paid hired-hand, but fans saw little of this discord and Whitesnake's commercial success kept him at the forefront of readers' polls as heavy rock's foremost keyboard maestro. His dissatisfaction (and Coverdale's eagerness to revamp the band's line-up and lower the average age to help crack the US market) smoothed the way for the reformation of Deep Purple Mk II in 1984.

Jon Lord's last Whitesnake concert took place in the Swedish TV programme Måndagsbörsen on 16 April 1984.

During his tenure in Whitesnake, Lord had the opportunity to record two distinctly different solo albums. 1982s Before I Forget featured a largely conventional eight-song line-up, no orchestra and with the bulk of the songs being either mainstream rock tracks ("Hollywood Rock And Roll", "Chance on a Feeling"), or – specifically on side two – a series of very English classical piano ballads sung by the mother and daughter duo Vicki Brown and Sam Brown (wife and daughter of entertainer Joe Brown) and vocalist Elmer Gantry as well as piano and synthesiser instrumentals such as Burntwood, named after Lord's stately Oxfordshire home at the time. 

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