Essential songs: Deep Purple's "Black Night" (1970)

“Black Night” has something of the appeal of a vintage motorcycle. Brutish and primal, this gutsy British boogie is propelled along by its central riff as by a large, thumping engine. If it were possible to park this song in a garage, it would leave a puddle of oil on the floor.

Despite being Deep Purple’s highest-selling single, the track was not drawn from In Rock, the band’s fourth album. Instead, “Black Night” was released as a radio-friendly single to promote In Rock, ironically outshining that album in posterity. According to vocalist Ian Gillan, the song’s title was inspired by the lyrics of an old Arthur Alexander blues song, while the tempo was borrowed from the roadhouse-boogie style characteristic of Canned Heat. The lyrics are fairly perfunctory—Gillan admits they were hastily written in a pub at the end of a fruitless studio session aimed at producing a single.

More important is the way Jon Lord’s churning Hammond organ fuses with Ritchie Blackmore’s brooding guitar to produce a new element on the periodic table of rock—like lead, only heavier. An interesting footnote to this quintessential metal riff is that, according to guitarist Blackmore, it took unlikely inspiration from the guitar line on Ricky Nelson’s cover of the George Gershwin jazz standard “Summertime.”

True, the track is not without its precedents. Blackmore’s raygun-style, whammy-bar excursions owe no small debt to Hendrix, while Ian Gillan’s vocal takes cues from the declamatory style of the traditional bluesman. Be that as it may, “Black Night” signaled that a new breed of heavy rock had awoken—and that its future was not bright, but dark as midnight.