One of Deep Purple’s earliest hits was a cover of a Neil Diamond song—and it was so different from the original that the songwriter couldn’t hold back when asked for his opinion.
The song, “Kentucky Woman,” appeared on Deep Purple’s second album, The Book of Taliesyn, and became a Top 40 hit, reaching No. 38 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in December 1968.
But while Diamond’s original 1967 version of the song was an acoustic, country-tinged folk-pop ballad, early Deep Purple bandmates Rod Evans, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Nick Simper and Ian Paice put a hard rock spin on it one year later with a roaring guitar solo, pounding drums, and intense vocals.
When asked about the hard rock version of his song, Diamond told Rolling Stone, “Deep Purple’s heavy-metal version of ‘Kentucky Woman.’ It’s pretty radical for that song. It’s good. It’s their thing.”
Diamond once revealed that he wrote “Kentucky Woman” while on the road in Kentucky.
“I wrote “Kentucky Woman” in the back seat of a car outside of Paducah, Kentucky,” the music legend told Murray the K in an interview. “I was touring and I was just dead tired, and I probably needed some kind of companionship and that’s what I thought about, Kentucky women and unfortunately there weren’t any around or available at that time. Probably wouldn’t have written the song if there were.”
“But I wrote it in the back seat of a car, and we had just pulled into Kentucky, and my organist was driving and I said, ‘Hey Max, you gotta dig this’ and I played him the song and he said, ‘Outta sight.’ Diamond continued. “And there was ‘Kentucky Woman,’ she shines with her own kind of light.”
Diamond’s “Kentucky Woman” went to No. 22 on Billboard.
The following year, Deep Purple’s cover came at the suggestion of Lord as the record company pushed the British rock band to do covers.
“Jon suggested Neil Diamond’s ‘Kentucky Woman,'” Deep Purple bassist Simper said in an interview. “Ritchie and I both had reservations as it was a bit folky, until I suggested giving it the Mitch Ryder treatment. I had purchased several records by Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and was impressed with the aggressive drive and sheer excitement. As I outlined my idea as to how a folk song could be made to rock, the others soon latched on, and soon we had cut our next single, complete with Ron Hire and his young daughter helping out with hand claps.”
In a blurb in the Something Has Hit Me fanzine, Simper described Deep Purple’s cover of “Kentucky Woman” as “bloody good.”
Nearly 60 years later, “Kentucky Woman” is an example of how a song’s identity can completely change in another artist’s hands.
Related: The Monkees’ Biggest No. 1 Hit Was Written By a Music Legend You’d Never Expect
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