Connection map — RRL brand art (no free-licensed photo of Bob Ezrin exists, so we drew his web instead)
Bob Ezrin
Some producers have a sound. Bob Ezrin has a fingerprint — theatrical, cinematic, unafraid of a children’s choir — and it shows up on records that seem to have nothing to do with each other: Alice Cooper’s breakout run, Lou Reed’s Berlin, KISS’s Destroyer, Peter Gabriel’s first solo album, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and Deep Purple’s entire late-career revival.
That’s why he’s in the lab as a person, not a footnote in other bands’ credits. Producer DNA is the connective tissue this site loves most: one node, six universes, and none of those records sound the way they do without him in the room.
Pull a thread
Deep Purple Broke Up in July 1976. Fifty Years Later, Bob Ezrin Just Produced Their 24th Album.
Deep Purple’s management announced the band’s dissolution on July 19, 1976. Almost exactly fifty years later, SPLAT! landed as studio album number twenty-four. The thread connecting those two dates runs through one producer, who spent 1976 in a studio with KISS.
The day the machine stopped
In the summer of 1976, Deep Purple was over, with none of the usual hedging about hiatuses or solo projects. The official announcement came through the band’s management on July 19, 1976, though the machine had seized up months earlier, on a stage in Liverpool.