Who Do We Think We Are
1973 studio album by Deep Purple
Who Do We Think We Are is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Deep Purple, released on 12 January 1973 in the US and in February 1973 in the UK. It was Deep Purple's last album by the Mark II line-up with singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover until 1984's Perfect Strangers.
Musically, the record showed a move to a more blues-based sound, even featuring scat singing. Although its production and the band's behaviour after its release showed the group in turmoil, with frontman Gillan remarking that "we'd all had major illnesses" and felt considerable fatigue, the album was a commercial success. Deep Purple became the top-selling U.S. artist in 1973. The album featured the energetic hard-rock single "Woman from Tokyo," which while scarcely played in concert during the 1970s, would become a live staple from the band's 1984 reunion onward.
Recording
Who Do We Think We Are was recorded in Rome in July 1972 and Walldorf near Frankfurt in October 1972, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.
"Woman from Tokyo," the first track recorded in July, is about touring Japan for the first time (e.g. the lyric "Fly into the Rising Sun"). The only other track released from the Rome sessions is the outtake "Painted Horse." The rest were recorded in Frankfurt after more touring (including Japan, which yielded Made in Japan). The group, riven with internal strife, struggled to come up with tracks they agreed upon.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Who Do We Think We Are” as 1973 studio album by Deep Purple. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1973 studio album by Deep Purple. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q614833. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1984 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Who Do We Think We Are” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.