“You can’t release that, we were p****d!” – The Making of ‘Black Night’ by Deep Purple

Originally published in Uncut, December 2011

Useful with a guitar, yes. As the 1960s turned into the 1970s, however, Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple’s tremolo arm-riding lead guitar genius, had discovered another weapon of choice with which he was no less effective – the catapult. While Deep Purple made their leap from garage rock singles sensation (the so-called “MKI” line up) to the free-roaming heavy rock of their classic “MKII” formation, Blackmore, from the passenger seat of the band’s Bentley, would play havoc with the public.

“On the way to a gig, we’d stop at the greengrocer’s and get a load of gooseberries, so that Ritchie could shoot them at passers-by and people cleaning windows,” explains bassist Roger Glover, himself soon sucked into the enigmatic guitarist’s pastime. “The fashion caught on, and we all got catapults and gooseberries. We were like a tank, protected on all sides, gooseberries flying.”

Their fruit missiles dispatched, on arrival at their gigs, Blackmore and his rejuvenated lineup of Deep Purple (old hands Jon Lord – keyboards and Ian Paice – drums), joining new boys Roger Glover (on bass, replacing Nicky Simper) and Ian Gillan (on vocals, replacing Rod Evans) to display an aptitude for a different kind of resourcefulness.

Playing a mixture of “MKI” songs and new material fresh from their rehearsal room at Hanwell Community Centre in west London, Purple MKII were charging towards their mission statement: the hairy, improvisational and very heavy rock’n’roll of Deep Purple: In Rock, and its lead-off single, a rather leaner, but no less heavy proposition called “Black Night”.

“The simplicity and the inspiration of it are the important thing,” says drummer Ian Paice, some 42 years on from their No 2 hit. “The lyric was simple, the riff was catchy. The drumming was ridiculous. You can’t plan it. That moment of creativity had to be like that – it was that moment in time…”

The Key Players

Ian Gillan (Vocals)

Ian Paice (Drums)

Roger Glover (Bass)

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IAN GILLAN: I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue – and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country – they had something new and very exciting.

ROGER GLOVER: My first impression of them was that they all had new clothes on. I wasn’t very wealthy at the time, which is an understatement. I was also impressed with their look: they had a dark look about them which I didn’t like at first, a bit dangerous. But when I met them, they weren’t like that at all. Apart from possibly Ritchie.

GILLAN: They were rich, and their hairdos were pretty scary – someone had put some work into them; they were organised. I remember my first meeting with Ritchie, I had a lousy cold and all my tissues fell out over the floor, I felt about two feet tall.

IAN PAICE: Looking back, there was a feeling that where Jon, Ritchie and I were going, Rod, as a vocalist, couldn’t come with us. He had a nice voice, but a balladeer’s voice, so he was pushing reality when he had to sing hard songs. Nicky was happier with what had come before, than with what was coming. It’s not a put-down because he was a fine bass player and a lovely bloke, but through the course of a lot of gigs, a year’s touring, you could see three of us moving in one direction, with one who couldn’t come with us, and one who didn’t want to. The only solution was to freshen it up, and get people who could do it, who were a bit more open-minded.

GLOVER: I didn’t really know them before I joined, but I knew they’d been a hit in the States. Ian Gillan and I had a songwriting partnership. They offered him the gig and a bit later, they gave me the gig. My audition was recording a song called “Hallelujah”. At the end, Jon Lord came up and said, “We’ve had a chat, would you like to join our band?”

PAICE: In Rock was a leap forward by virtue of the fact that Roger and Ian could create something from nothing – Ian, his off-the-wall lyrics, and Roger, he’s an amazing creator of riffs. With the virtuosity of Ritchie and Jon, it lent itself to so many options musically. Within a couple of weeks of rehearsing and writing it was obvious there was going to be a totally different outcome. It was very satisfying… you never knew what was going to happen next.

GLOVER: There was an incredible chemistry at those first writing sessions. “Speed King” was written on the first day, then “Child In Time” on the first or second day – in this old gym in Hanwell on the outskirts of London.

PAICE: We didn’t say we needed a single – management said we needed a single. They said, “You’ve got a day off between these two shows, why don’t you go into De Lane Lea and knock out a single?” That was how they thought you did it. You just go in there and come out with something wonderful, and they’d make a lot of money.

GLOVER: Jon had had his day with Concerto For Group And Orchestra, and I think that rankled a bit with Ritchie, as they were co-partners of the whole affair. We did it, but once that was done, Ritchie said, “It’s hard rock now. If it’s not dramatic or exciting, it doesn’t belong on this album.” So they were the kind of bywords for the album. “Black Night” was written after In Rock was finished, and the management said, “We need a single.” We were a bit pompous, a bit like “Well, we’re an albums band, not a singles band…” So they said, “OK, let’s not call it a single, let’s call it a ‘lead track’.” So we went to De Lane Lea for a day to record a lead track.

PAICE: So we duly went into the studio at 10am, without an idea. We jammed all day, and by 6pm we had zilch, so we said, “Shall we go and have dinner?” So we went and had dinner, came back again, and again… zilch. So at about 9.30, we said, “Enough of this. Shall we go to the pub?” Round the corner was a nice, happy little boozer called the Newton Arms [33 Newton St, London WC2], so we drank far more than was good for us – not paralytic, but certainly losing touch with reality. Then we went back to the studio.

GLOVER: I seem to remember Ian Gillan attempted to clear the top shelf of the rare bottles. We got good and drunk, then Ritchie and I went in the studio first – he played the riff, and I said, “That’ll do…” and he said, “No, I was just playing Ricky Nelson’s ‘Summertime’.” I said, “Well, I’ve never heard it, let’s do it anyway.”

PAICE: Well, we weren’t thinking too clearly at this stage of the game, so we thought, ‘That sounds all right…’ So we started on that. Jon was getting these nice chords. Ritchie said, “We need some drum fills.” And, we’d lost interest by this point, so I thought, ‘What won’t fit?’ So there’s this bluesy shuffle, and I decided to break the four beats into three. The fills worked against the part of the song, and each time one came, they became more complex. So now at least, Ian had something to work with. But he was in the same state as the rest of us.

GLOVER: We finished the music about 1am. Gillan and I sat down on the floor with our back to this big pillow. We thought that the title of the Arthur Alexander tune “Black Night” was pretty good, so we stole that. We were having a laugh, because we thought the whole thing was a waste of time now, so we wrote the most banal lyrics we could. We just banged it out. I went to bed that night thinking, ‘That’ll be some obscure B-side or something.’

PAICE: We never saw singles, trying to find them… you’d see the wood, not the trees. “Smoke On The Water”, we thought, was just an album track. It took an exec at Warners in the US to say, “We’ll edit it and put it out as a single…” We didn’t see it. We thought “Never Before” was the single – if you listen to it now, it’s the weakest track on Machine Head. Leaving the commercial decisions to other people seemed to work a lot better for us. We didn’t see it. We were playing music, having a ball. Recording was a necessary evil, but the fun was playing and touring.

GLOVER: The management were over the moon. They said, “That’s it, you’ve done it.” We said, “You can’t release that, we were pissed.” But they did, and it changed our lives. It bears out the philosophy I have that what you do when you’re not looking is much better than what you do when you are… if you use your brain in music, it’s all over. Your first aim is best. I don’t remember putting them on, but there are handclaps on there.

“IF YOU USE YOUR BRAIN IN MUSIC, IT’S ALL OVER. YOUR FIRST AIM IS BEST.”

GILLAN: It’s got handclaps on it? Wow! I don’t think we were anti-commercial. But we were anti-contrivance, and like Zeppelin, we found dignity throught the music we were playing. It wasn’t slung together by a producer and a publisher. We decided we were going to take hold of our music and let it evolve organically.

PAICE: With all the great stuff, you do get the odd problem. Like when you’re mixing, and you’ve got three guys saying “My bit’s more important than yours.” There’s Martin Birch trying to keep sanity, with five pairs of hands on the faders. Sometimes it was to the detriment of the end product, but if you’re proud, you do want it to be heard. There can be a bit of a fight on the faders.

GILLAN: Martin was new school. We’d all been through the BBC audition and the pipe smokers in the control booth. It was a load of Horlicks – the way things were. Like all young vandals, we wanted to have it our way. Martin was one of the new-thinking engineers. He understood that with electric guitar and with drums playing in an abandoned fashion, you needed a new approach. We tried to get a live feel – the purpose of engineers up to then was to throw a blanket over everything so you had a bone-dry sound.

PAICE: Martin became like the sixth member of the band – he would have a word. When you have some prickly personalities, that stranger in the room can smooth the waters. He was incredibly aware. His attention was great.

GLOVER: We did Top Of The Pops after it had become a hit – you have to support the record, but we made our point by not plugging our guitars in. We didn’t take it too seriously. We wanted to be ourselves and not pushed into any… slot.

GILLAN: I know Ritchie hated TOTP – it was associated with pop. Rock music had its own constituency, its own steering wheel. It was beyond the control of the establishment, and we saw TV as the enemy. Later on in some territories, it became very significant. We close with it in most places. “Smoke On The Water” is in the set, but “Black Night”… people go home singing that riff!