Deep Purple
Black Night

The Deep Purple started making a name for themselves in Italy with this 1970 single, which, although it didn't soar high in our charts, still came close to the legendary Friday Hit Parade, the one presented on the radio by the late lamented Lelio Luttazzi. In reality, their debut single “Hush” had already made some waves three years prior, but it was mostly successful in the USA and thus had a very weak echo here at home.

The story of “Black Night” is quite well known among enthusiasts: the Purple proudly played their freshly recorded album “In Rock” to their record label, brimming with grit, power, performance skill, rich in both vocal and instrumental spectacular sections… but the classic question from the business men wasn't long in coming: “Yes, but the single, the chart-topping hit, where is it?”.

“Where is it?... it's this one! The one at the beginning!” (that is, “Speed King”) the musicians tried to retort. “Nah! Too noisy, convulsive, virtuosic. Go back and offer us another one!”. So, the band had no choice but to return to the studio, loitering for a long time before focusing on a riff by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, more or less cribbed from an old Ricky Nelson song. A trip to the nearest pub for a salutary alcoholic break put things in order, heating up the energy and cohesion of the young musicians, and upon returning to the studio, everything came out in a rush, in a few hours.

Quite something: the intricate introductory phrase one-time credited to bassist Roger Glover, the swing rhythm, and especially the formidable, imaginative, inventive drumming breaks of the very young but already excellent Ian Paice, at every transition between riff and verse; then Gillan's singing inserted, as logic and opportunity require, between the syncopations of bass/guitar/organ in unison. The singer's habitual laziness, the little time available, and the resentment towards the record men all worked together towards the drafting of lyrics as rough and rudimentary as ever, with rhyme schemes as the only contrivance, serving no other purpose than adding the vocal instrument to the others and thus worthily completing the kaleidoscope of timbral colors necessary for a good rock piece.

The solo by the talented Blackmore also bends to the urgency of the situation, not seeking brilliantly alternative melodic lines as used in more thoughtful and better moments, resolving itself more superficially in a series of gritty and obstinate licks, filled with bending and blows with the tremolo arm, erupting with maximum possible spectacle and hardness. His cathartic moment is right at the beginning, with a harmonic taken and immediately transformed, with unprecedented, wide tremolo arm manipulations at breaking frequencies. The result is an animal-like squeal of great effect, also a training ground for legions of budding guitarists and not, along with many other memorable instrumental passages by this seminal and influential musician. It should be pointed out that the Purple’s super guitarist was able to reach such levels of pitch distortion thanks to a special vibrato arm, much thicker, longer, and heavier, and therefore more powerful, than the standard one fitted by Fender. The Stratocaster of those years (black, with a light maple fingerboard) was later replaced by others, on which Blackmore no longer intended to make the same modification to the tremolo, losing that highly effective extreme use of the effect.

The same extreme tremolo arm manipulation is found again in the opening of the B-side of the 45 rpm “Speed King”, a much more qualitative and spectacular piece in Purple's history, even though less commercial than “Black Night”. The earth-shattering free form sequence of about thirty seconds (which, as already mentioned, also opens the band's masterpiece album “In Rock”), with all four instrumentalists making noise before calming down on the liturgical notes of Jon Lord's Hammond, proved to be as shocking and disorienting as ever back in 1970.

In a somewhat progressive manner, the band structures the piece in different phases, first with the double false start chaos + organ, then a head start with the sung part where, again, Gillan travels more through phonetics than the strict meaning of the phrases (but what a voice! Ferocious…), then it moves to a savory and rolling half-jazz half-blues instrumental duel between guitar and organ, then the instruments tighten the rhythm again with a somewhat arranged crescendo by the usual intricate bassist Glover, which resolves into a final verse, barked by Gillan's immaculate and powerful throat with even more grit than before, up to the final emphasis with distorted organ breaking the eardrums and the last gasps of guitar: a true historic rock piece in itself, with no other message than the aesthetic beauty of such a display of power, ferocity, communication, and musical brotherhood.

A perfect record of an exhilarating era for rock: on the first side simplicity, showmanship, accessibility, universality; on the second speed, dynamics, eclecticism, strength, desire, fun.