Many years ago before the golden age of the Internet, I bought the Deep Purple album, ‘The House of Blue Light’, upon which there was a tune called ‘The Spanish Archer’. Much like their earlier comeback album, ‘Perfect Strangers’, the follow up LP was a minor metal classic, proving that the band had lost none of their swagger in the intervening years, when they went their separate ways due to internal disagreements.

‘The Spanish Archer’ was my favourite of many great tunes on the album. I would often stroll around singing it quietly to myself, and pondering as to the meaning of its lyrics. Now keep in mind, this was before the Internet gave us the ability to walk around with access to every piece of historical information, and every scrap of folklore, apocryphal tale and rumour that ever happened across the entire globe, literally in the palm of our hands. It’s hard to imagine a world like that now, but it really happened.

So, without having communications with anyone in the know, I had no way of accessing an explanation as to what Ian Gillan was singing about. I knew it was something about your girl (or boy) doing the dirty on you, for which reason this mythical Spanish archer was going to take her down. To my younger mind, the best metaphor I could come up with was that the Spanish Archer was perhaps some rare form of venereal disease, and she had passed it on to the protagonist. Most of all I was keen to learn of the history of this mythical Spanish Archer. Some sort of god of retribution for the jilted, or so I imagined.

So, just recently for no reason the song came back into my head, and lo and behold I had an iPhone in my hand. So I Googled – What do the lyrics of Deep Purple’s Spanish Archer mean?

And I pressed the button, and waited.

And then, twenty-nine years after I first posed that rhetorical question, the answer came to me in thirty seconds.

Spanish Archer – Urban Dictionary – dumping your boy/girlfriend as in the Spanish Archer, giving them the el-bow.

El bow. Get it?

Twenty-nine years Deep Purple, just to find out it was all a cheap bit of Cockney rhyming slang!

Well pardon me but I can’t help feeling a little bit let down by this, Purple. You came back to us in 1984 and gave us two great albums, proving you hadn’t lost it, and then, while we were still basking in the musical beatitude of having you back in our lives, you started fighting amongst yourselves (again) and buggered off.

I dunno, Gillan had such a great voice and you were all such consummate musos and ‘Perfect Strangers’ and ‘The House of Blue Light’ are two great albums, and this is such a great song about… a cheap bit of Cockney rhyming slang. I feel like a piece of my youth just died.

Then you came back again just a couple of years ago to do a retirement tour, but Jon Lord was dead, and there was some old bald guy singing… and it was Ian Gillan, without that lovely long mane of hair.

And… somehow that was the worst thing of all, Purple, because rock gods aren’t supposed to grow old and die. Because if you get old, it means that I’m getting old too.

Heavy rock gods in particular are not supposed to get old. Even bloody Lemmy died. Who would have thought that thirty years of heavy smoking, copious amounts of booze and drugs, and shagging thousands of sketchy metal chicks could be bad for your health? Lucky bastard!

All the rock legends are popping off – Prince, Bowie, and if they’re not dying, they’re just sagging, balding, greying reduced versions of the beautiful objects they once were. Rob Halford no longer looks like a gay Tim Brooke Taylor, but rather a fat old man. Christ, and when did Glen Danzig morph into the Predator???

But saddest of all, The Spanish Archer – the El-bow. Ian Gillan, I forgave you for Black Sabbath’s ‘Born Again’, but I can’t forgive you for growing old and giving me the el-bow.