One summer, I don’t think I was old enough to drive, Deep Purple was on tour for Machine Head. Best I can recall. It was, for me, a Deep Purple summer. Saw them, live, and I’m guessing I had to sneak out and sneak in, but the memory is clouded with age.
As a silly trope, their one song is oft-repeated in entertainment, and I’m unsure of the antecedents for this repetition, and as an ear-worm? Those opening chords get stuck in my head.
I think back to radio that played whole album-sides at time, and how that one album, “Machine Head,” was probably proto (hair-heavy) metal of some sort.
Part of it, though, taps that younger version of me, with more hair, more “bad attitude,” and probably raging desires and appetites that are all more tame these days.
On the album I’ve got running in the background, even now, Smoke on the Water is followed by Lazy, and that’s, arguably, a better song, although, honestly, not nearly as popular. Something about the organ introductions, the opening bars, that plays on something. Then again, this is merely raucous music for an era. It was loud, strident, affirmative, and it played to that outlaw teenager that I perceived that I was.
It’s summer music, and almost every summer for the last few decades, somehow, this music cycles back up, so that makes it classic? Classic rocks? Classical rock? Proto metal?
The wikipedia entry called it, “Deep Purple, Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath the unholy trio of British Hard Rock in the early 70’s.”
Maybe if I watched more TV, or if I even paid attention to the music channels, the “Where are they now” shows, I’d be better informed.
