Jon Lord - Telegraph His first taste of pop stardom, however, came backing The Flowerpot Men, who had a major hit in 1967 with the flower power era cash-in Let's Go To San Francisco. The bassist Nick Simper also played with The Flowerpot Men and, after an abortive attempt to set up a group with Chris Curtis of The Searchers, Lord formed his own band with Simper, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, drummer Ian Paice and singer Rod Evans. Initially called Roundabout, they changed their name to Deep Purple, quickly establishing a big sound built around Blackmore's bluesy guitar and Lord's organ which, unusually at the time, featured as the lead instrument on their first hit single, a cover of Joe South's Hush. From the outset, Lord - who systematically avoiding using the Moog synthesizer so in vogue with many of his contemporaries - was intent on using Deep Purple as a vehicle for his ideas for fusing classical and rock. There were plenty of classical references on the albums The Book Of Taliesyn (1968) and Deep Purple (1969), and his synthesis of genres came to even greater fruition in 1969 with Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a landmark work performed at London's Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold. With Ian Gillan now installed as lead singer, the performance was considered a seismic development for rock music, for it occurred even as the tumultuous impact of Purple's more rock-driven live shows earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as "the globe's loudest band." By flirting with both classical music and thunderous arrangements, Deep Purple, in tandem with other bands such as Emerson Lake and Palmer and Led Zeppelin, were laying the groundwork for heavy metal music. The group's best-known hit, Smoke On The Water, co-written by Lord, was very much in the conventional rock style. It first appeared on the band's 1972 album Machine Head, with Lord's distorted organ imitating Blackmore's guitar melody line so effectively that it became a test piece for aspiring guitarists. Indeed, so many guitarists played the tune to try out new instruments that some shop owners put up signs banning Smoke On The Water and Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven from being played on the premises. After a series of conflicts, Deep Purple split in 1976, and Lord went on to make an album - Malice In Wonderland - with Ian Paice and an old friend, Tony Ashton, under the name Paice, Ashton & Lord. He then joined another powerhouse blues-rock band, Whitesnake. It was with Whitesnake that he finally conceded defeat to the synthesizer, adding it to his banks of keyboards in order to experiment further with sounds and effects. During this time, however, he continued to pursue his classical fusions, notably with Sarabande (1976), on which he worked with Philharmonia Hungaria and German conductor, Eberhard Schoener (Lord finally premiered it on stage in 2010). Widely respected as one of the finest musicians in the rock firmament, he made guest appearances on numerous other albums by such artists as Graham Bonnet and Cozy Powell before, in 1984, re-forming Deep Purple for a triumphant world tour, six more studio albums and international sales that topped 150 million records, all of which cemented the group's reputation as one of the world's most successful bands. Finally, in 2002, Lord left, full of ideas as ever and still firmly of the belief that the traditional parameters of rock were too constrictive. He continued to push rock's established musical boundaries and, in 1988, released perhaps his best solo record, Pictured Within, an ambitious and highly personal concept album featuring singer Sam Brown written partly in response to the death of his mother. Other notable projects included playing piano on George Harrison's posthumously released album Brainwashed (2002); a 2004 collaboration with Abba's Anna-Frid Lyngstad; his Durham Concerto commission from Durham University (2007) with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Northumbrian piper Kathryn Tickell; and his 2010 album To Notice Such Things, inspired by his friend, the late dramatist Sir John Mortimer. During his final illness he was working on a concerto for Hammond organ and on material for a projected new band, Who Cares, to include his old Deep Purple colleague, Ian Gillan. Jon Lord married, in 1969 (dissolved 1981), Judith Feldman, with whom had a daughter. With his second wife, Vickie, he had another daughter. Jon Lord, born June 9 1941, died July 16 2012