"Mistreated" is a song by the English rock band Deep Purple taken from their 1974 album Burn. The song was written by the band's guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and new vocalist David Coverdale, who, along with new bassist Glenn Hughes, brought new blues and funk elements to the band.
History
At live performances Hughes would introduce "Mistreated" as a song that Blackmore had written about two years prior to Burn.[1] Inspired by the Free song "Heartbreaker", the song had been considered for the band's earlier album Who Do We Think We Are, but Ritchie held it back. When work on Burn started, Coverdale wrote the lyrics to "Mistreated", and it is the only song on Burn where he sings the lyrics entirely himself. In the booklet of the 30th Anniversary Edition of Burn, Coverdale commented on the recording of the vocals on "Mistreated":
"We recorded "Mistreated" from 11pm to 7:30 in the morning. I heard the first playbacks and thought it was terrible. It was so bad I just sat down and cried because I wanted it to be so good. Then the next night we had another session and I did it on the second take. It's like progressive blues. I wasn't raised in a shack by the railroad tracks but I've still had emotional hassles and that's the only kind of blues I can interpret. I tried very hard because I knew it was essential to get the strong emotive quality the song needs. The thing I wanted was for somebody listening to the song to think: 'I know what he's talking about' and get the feeling, then the song would be worth it. It's essentially a physical feeling. The reason it didn't come off straight away was simply that I was trying too hard."
The longest track on the album, the song shifts gear and builds to a climax, Blackmore launching into a rapid solo, with Coverdale and Hughes building a wall of multi-tracked backing vocals before the song's end.
After Deep Purple broke up in 1976, David Coverdale continued performing "Mistreated" with his band Whitesnake (which has also included former Deep Purple members Jon Lord and Ian Paice) until the early 1980s and briefly again in 1997. Live versions of the song are featured on the band's albums Live at Hammersmith and Live...in the Heart of the City. Whitesnake covered "Mistreated" for the 2015 studio album The Purple Album, which consists entirely of songs Coverdale originally recorded with Deep Purple.
