Speed King
| Speed King | |
|---|---|
| Deep Purple | |
| publication | June 1970 |
| length | 5:49 4:22 (US Version) 7:25 ( Made in Japan Version) |
| Genre (s) | Heavy metal , hard rock |
| Author (s) | Ritchie Blackmore , Roger Glover , Ian Gillan , Jon Lord , Ian Paice |
| Label |
Harvest Records (Europe) Warner Bros. (USA, Japan) |
| album | Deep purple in rock |
Speed King is a riff-heavy hard rock song by the British band Deep Purple , which was written in the course of 1969 and released in June 1970 as the opener of the studio album Deep Purple in Rock and as a single . Speed King is one of the trend-setting and most important songs by Deep Purple and applies to the style of the later metal varieties such as speed and thrash metal .
The music magazine Eclipsed wrote with regard to the introduction of the title Speed King: "Blackmore fragmented in just fifty seconds, the usual conventions of the Beat era, and made the sixties pop music to history." The magazine Ultimate Classic Rock listed SpeedKing place 3 of the top 10 Deep Purple songs.
Emergence
Speed King was created in 1969/1970. The riff is based on Ritchie Blackmore's preference for Jimi Hendrix on his song Fire . Speed King, which was called Kneel & Pray at the beginning , was performed by Deep Purple during various live performances before its album was released and thus brought into the final version. One of the first versions was released on the album Live in Montreux 69 .
Style, Success and Legacy
The song is a double synonym for hard rock and deep purple and connects Ian Gillan's rock 'n' roll roots of the 1950s with the style of the newly burgeoning hard and loud rock. Werner Faulstich presents the song as a prime example of hard rock in his book The Culture of the Seventies : “The piece begins with an instrumental introduction in which two opponents are introduced: a wild rock guitar and a gentle organ. Two basic lines and their contrast thus indicate that all rock music of the seventies was shaped by: hard versus soft. "
This contrast between hard and soft is also evident in the long solo part of the piece. This begins with a "duel" characteristic of Deep Purple in the style of a " call and response " part between Jon Lord's organ and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar; Blackmore's Stratocaster guitar sounds very soft and dark here (played on the neck pickup, with the tone control turned down a lot). This part is replaced by a brilliant, hard, but melodic guitar riff, which in the studio version was mixed with an overdub guitar played in parallel , and which forms the transition to the next verse. This instrumental part of the piece is considered to be one of the best in the playing together and against each other between Lord and Blackmore.
Subsequently, Deep Purple took the riff as a loan for their other songs such as Fireball , Space Truckin ' , Mistreated and Stormbringer . In 1983 Black Sabbath released the song Trashed with Ian Gillan as the singer , in which Joel McIver sees parallels to Speed King . In 1987 Deep Purple named their studio album The House of Blue Light after a text passage from the title Speed King.
Live performances
Deep Purple used the song from mid-1969 to early 1972 as the opener of their concerts. Contrary to the studio version, the song got out of hand into a jam session of up to 15 minutes . On the 1972 album Made in Japan , it was played as an encore after being replaced as the opener by Highway Star . In 1984 the song came back to the live program with the reunion of the classic Mark II line-up , in which it no longer remained an integral part as an opener, but mostly as an encore to this day.
useful information
- There is also a 4:25 piano version of Speed King , which was released on the 25th Anniversary Edition of In Rock .
- Cover versions exist among others of the bands Thin Lizzy (as Funky Junction ), Venom and Primal Fear .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Claudia Jusits: Urban Plague. The history of speed / thrash metal. At: evolver.at.
- ↑ Quoted from: Jürgen Roth , Michael Sailer : Deep Purple. The story of a band. Hannibal, Höfen 2005, ISBN 3-85445-251-9 , p. 13.
- ↑ Top 10 Deep Purple Songs. At: UltimateClassicRock.com.
- ^ Dave Thompson: Smoke on the Water. The Deep Purple Story. P. 74.
- ↑ Jerry Bloom: Black Knight. Ritchie Blackmore. P. 132.
- ^ Jürgen Roth, Michael Sailer: Deep Purple. The story of a band. Edition Hannibal, Höfen 2005, ISBN 3-85445-251-9 , p. 115.
- ↑ Werner Faulstich: The culture of the seventies. P. 132.
- ^ Jürgen Roth, Michael Sailer: Deep Purple. The story of a band. Edition Hannibal, Höfen 2005, ISBN 3-85445-251-9 , p. 246.
- ↑ Jürgen Roth, Michael Sailer: Deep Purple, the history of a band. Verlagsgruppe Koch GmbH / Hannibal, 2005. p. 268.
- ^ Joel McIver: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Omnibus Press, London 2009.