Jon Lord, 71, the keyboardist of the pioneering British hard-rock band Deep Purple, died Monday in London.
The cause was a pulmonary embolism, said his manager, Bruce Payne. Mr. Lord announced last year that he had cancer.
In songs from the late 1960s and early '70s such as "Smoke on the Water," "Hush," and the epic "Child in Time," Deep Purple laid much of the groundwork for heavy metal, drawing a blunter and fiercer sound out of the blues-based riffs common in the British invasion's first wave. - New York Times
