Released: 1972Author: Deep Purple
Producer: Deep Purple
Rating: ********* (9 out of 10)
Personnel: List of Songs:
Bass - Roger Glover Pictures of Home;Never Before;
Drums - Ian Paice Smoke on the Water;Lazy;Space Truckin'
Keys - Jon Lord
Vocals - Ian Gillan
Under the Machine Gun
March 1972
embraced joyfully, as a loving mother her newborn, two singles released from
the sixth album by an English Rock ‘n’ Roll band, Deep Purple. Highway Star indeed broke the speed of sound and a woman because
of whom Ian Gillan was tired and crying
on Never Before must have felt unwell
knowing the success that had followed not only those two singles, but
ultimately the third mighty one, Smoke on
the Water. In May 1973 as a single, but before on album from 25 March 1972,
this song had changed everything as well as its birth giving mother, Machine Head.
The album kicks
off with a half of a minute Roger Glover’s bass solo playing in turns with Ritchie
Blackmore’s leaping Fender Stratocaster, which both launch into the main
speeding riff that seems to be on drugs and out of the 1972 world, when the
fastest known song was freaking Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. However, both tempo (DP’s 174 vs BS’s 163) and riff
signature cannot compete, because powerful Paranoid
would eventually lose and nobody wants to hear that (to all devoted Black
Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne fans: Paranoid is
a true rocking horse of heavy metal). Gaining No. 19 in Guitar World’s “100 Greatest Guitar Solos” Ritchie’s under-one-minute-and-twenty-seconds
solo flares a red light among his contemporary peers that could have been
endangered by talent of the Man in
Black. Peeping round the door from the
second in a row Maybe I’m a Leo is
not the elephantine sound of thumping slow riff that alongside on the boat with
wondrous rhythm section rock that boat (Frank Loesser would like that metaphor)
with doleful tone of Gillan’s singing. Only nine verses of lyrics and a long
music sheet covered by early Heavy Metal notes cut off a listener’s coupon – staying outside a theater encouraged by
listening to rushing at breakneck speed Highway
Star and prompted to buy a ticket for the entire show when Maybe I’m a Leo breaks the window. More
moody and climbing the Mount Rushmore’s history of the band, Pictures of Home depicts all five
members mature enough to write most probably the most transcending and
sagacious song in their long as river high catalogue. Fast, but composed tempo
of this hasty group born to be wild speeds up a bit to end up on a single
shared with another enormous giant, When
a Blind Man Cries – highlands of studio spiritual talent of songwriting
that missed by whimsical “Wayward Son” Blackmore because of any reason, the
song appeared live just in 1990s, when Steve Morse joined the hands of the
British giants and extended the live performance to as long as about eight
minutes. However, a casual listener could feel a kind of insufficiency during
the end of Pictures of Home, when a
record player’s needle stops spinning around side one of Machine Head. Fortunately, side two provides the same listener with
an equivalent of atomic bomb explosion in mid paced, shuffling and rolling riff
of the most recognizable song in the Rock ‘n’ Roll history. Smoke on the Water was recorded at
Montreux Casino in Switzerland in 1971 in the first days of December as well as
all other six songs, but only this song tells a story of some stupid man with a flare gun who burned the place to the ground and this story and this song had
been introduced to the Temple of Rock forever. First couple of seconds are
taken by glorious preliminary of Fender Stratocaster chucking out the notes of
formidable, venomous riff that carries a massage: I will take your soul away;
once you have heard this destructive “music flare”, you will never get rid of
it off your head. Afterwards a marching army of bass line and Jon Lord-derived
neo-classical progressive chords mix together letting Blackmore fling out a fulminant
guitar solo gobbling a hasty scampering of Ian Paice’s large tom-toms. It all
ends just to make another dandy comeback finalized in Lord’s keyboard solo.
Loose, jazz-like intro of keys, guitar, bass solo and crowned harmonica by
Gillan of Lazy proceed into something
which is more focused jamming of well talented artists than a measured, strait
song with heterogeneous structure and wavering tempos brimful of instrumental solos.
One could think that Fireball times
influenced this particular recording, although as long as No One Came or Fools shine
as diamonds, Lazy seems to be an
interlude of rocking side two between Smoke
and cosmic Space Truckin’. The last
song most presumably contains the most metallic riffing of Blackmore tinged
with Lord’s blasting chords and tight rhythm section that lifts up the song
contemplating a space travel to the heights of stars. While Highway Star is holding the ground, Space Truckin’ is shooting at the moon
and waiving at the Earth grinning at the whole world.
On 4 December
1971 while at a Frank Zappa’s concert, some
stupid fired the roof and then the whole Montreux Casino building with a
simple flashing flare gun. There was smoke on the water and fire in the sky and
there were days from December 6 through December 21 that gave to the world one
of the finest albums ever recorded, and thankfully Roger Glover woke up one day
during the recording sessions and spoke:
Smoke on the Water. Led Zeppelin’s IV
and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid stood
the test of time with Machine Head,
but only Machine Head had influenced
more artists than it has songs on its playlist.
