…The only trouble is, the footage is silent.

Deep Purple fan-site The Highway Star is reporting that footage of Deep Purple’s legendary Made In Japan concerts has been unearthed.

Seven reels of silent 8mm footage filmed at the Purps’ famous August 1972 Japanese concerts have been found.

Rumours of such film have persisted for years, and now their existence has been verified.

Audio recordings of these three concerts formed the basis of the mighty 'Made In Japan' album released in 1973 and the 'Live In Japan' 3CD released in 1993.

We assume some enterprising soul will be able to splice sound and vision together, which will lead to the next obvious development: a 'Made In Japan DVD'. But we must stress there’s no firm news about this, although a small segment of the Japanese film is being used on an upcoming Purple DVD set titled 'History, Hits & Highlights'.