Episode Six

Episode Six earned its chief renown through its roster that once included bassist Roger Glover and vocalist Ian Gillan, both of whom later entered Deep Purple. Between 1966 and 1969 the group issued nine British singles yet never approached the charts or forged a consistent stylistic profile. Organist and singer Sheila Carter-Dimmock stood as another central member. The band’s earliest releases leaned toward airy pop-rock harmony pieces occasionally tempered by ballads and traces of soul. Far removed from Deep Purple’s eventual sound, Episode Six sampled an unusually broad catalog, tackling songs associated with the Hollies, the Beatles, the Tokens, and Charles Aznavour plus a British hot-rod number composed by Glover. Though this scattershot approach prevented a unified identity, the singles themselves remained agreeable, and the group’s polished reading of Tim Rose’s “Morning Dew” merited greater attention than it received.

By 1967 the musicians had begun merging pop structures with psychedelic elements, achieving their strongest results on the Glover-penned single “I Can See Through You,” now regarded as one of the more striking British psychedelic rarities. The final pair of releases steered the band toward a markedly progressive outlook, foreshadowing the excesses of 1970s art rock; “Mozart Versus the Rest” in particular subjected one of the composer’s best-known motifs to a barrage of frantic electric guitars. Episode Six disbanded in 1969 once Gillan and Glover had already departed for Deep Purple.