Delving into the names in the Deep Purple tree yields some unexpected riches.

Reggie McBride, who shows up in the sadly shortlived Tommy Bolin Band in 1976 played on Billy Preston’s album ‘It’s My Pleasure’, released in ‘75, also featuring Stevie Wonder on harmonica on a couple of tracks.

Billy Preston, best known, probably, for his incredible performance of ‘That’s The Way God Planned It’ in the concert for Bangladesh, and the collaboration ‘With You I’m Born Again’ with Syreeta, about which, well, opinions may differ, also of course, worked with the Stones, where he overlapped for a year with Ronnie Wood (read about it here in Rock’s Back Pages, and view the Kinks, Stones, Pretties tree here – Ronnie is right at the bottom).    

Ronnie Wood is the brother of singer Art Wood, and they played together, with Rod Stewart, Kenny Lane, Kenney Jones and Ian MacLagan in Quiet Melon, which, when Art left to take up graphic design, would evolve through the Small Faces into the Faces. But before that, Art Wood was founder of the modestly titled Artwoods, a band with Jon Lord on keyboards, which is where the Deep Purple tree begins. Got all that?

We are working on an interactive version of the Rock Family Trees that will do all this for you in a few clicks. Not there yet, but one day …