|
Each month we will be checking
what we feel is an album that definitely may be worth revisiting.
Sometimes it is easy to forget how great some of these releases
were. Many of them went on to have significant influence on the
music of today. When going back and checking them out again you
will often find forgotten brilliance and just maybe it will give
you a new spark of inspiration for creating something awesome on
your own. (-: Thanks to Wikapedia
Machine Head is the sixth studio album released by the English
hard rock band Deep Purple. It was recorded through December 1971
in Montreux, Switzerland, and released in March 1972.
Machine Head is often cited as a major influence in the early
development of the heavy metal music genre. Commercially, it was
Deep Purple's most successful album, topping the charts in several
countries following its release. The album reached number 1 in
the United Kingdom and stayed in the top 40 for 20 weeks. It reached
number 7 in the United States, remaining on the Billboard 200 for
118 weeks.
Background
Deep Purple initially planned to record Machine
Head in December 1971, at Montreux Casino in Switzerland. A
mobile recording studio owned by the Rolling Stones had been
booked and hotel reservations made, but lead singer Ian Gillan
contracted hepatitis. Cancelling a forthcoming tour of America,
the band placed all their plans on hold, and Gillan was advised
by his doctor to spend the next few months recuperating. Nevertheless,
enthused by the new project, the band travelled to Switzerland
to begin recording.
The Casino was a large arena built in
a complex of casinos, restaurants and other entertainment
facilities. The band had performed there in May 1971 and
enjoyed both the location and its owner, Claude Nobs. Amongst
others, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath had all
performed there. The Casino closed for refurbishments each
winter, and so the band arrived there on 3 December. One
last concert date remained, following which they were to
have the location to themselves. |
 |
Recording
Frank Zappa's 4 December concert
at the Casino was made infamous when a member of the audience
fired a flare into the building's roof. Although there were no
fatalities, the resultant fire ruined Deep Purple's plans.
Nobs relocated the band to a nearby theatre called the Pavilion,
where they recorded the basic tracks for a song provisionally
titled "Title No. 1." Bass
player Roger Glover said he woke up saying the title "Smoke
on the Water" out loud, one morning. Later Gillan, based on
the title, wrote the lyrics describing the band's experience in
Montreux, recording the Machine Head album. A photograph of
the burning Montreux would ultimately be included in the gatefold
of Machine Head's album cover.
We had the Rolling Stones' mobile recording
unit sitting outside in the snow, but to get there we had to
run cable through two doors in the corridor into a room, through
a bathroom and into another room, from which it went across a
bed and out the veranda window, then ran along the balcony for
about 100 feet and came back in through another bedroom window.
It then went through that room's bathroom and into another corridor,
then all the way down a marble staircase to the foyer reception
area of the hotel, out the front door, across the courtyard and
up the steps into the back of the mobile unit. I think that setup
led to capturing some spontaneity, because once we got to the
truck for a playback, even if we didn’t
think it was a perfect take, we’d go, 'Yeah, that’s
good enough.' Because we just couldn’t stand going back again.
As a new
location the Pavilion proved to be impractical, as local residents
flooded the local police station's switchboard to complain about
the noise the band made. Although the police were prevented from
entering the building by the band's roadies, who held the venue's
doors shut, the band were quickly evicted. They searched for
other locations in which to record and settled on the Grand Hotel,
on the edge of Montreux. With the mobile recording unit parked
at the main entrance, they set up at the end of one of the building's
corridors, off the main lobby. An assortment of equipment
and sound-insulating mattresses meant that to get to the recording
van the band were forced to walk through bedrooms and across
balconies. This proved so arduous that they stopped listening
to playbacks of their recordings, instead performing until they
were satisfied with what they had.
A song entitled "When a Blind Man Cries" was
recorded during these sessions, but not included on the album.
Instead, it was used as the B-side on the "Never Before" single.
The song appears as a bonus track on the album's 25th anniversary
edition. The supporting tour for Machine Head included a trip to
Japan that would later become the double-live Made in Japan album.
Critical Response
Machine Head hit the number one
spot on the British charts within seven days of its release, remaining
there for two weeks before returning in May for a further week.
In the US, the album reached number seven, remaining in the charts
for two years.
Rolling Stone's Lester Bangs praised "Highway
Star" and "Space
Truckin's" lyrics, although he was less complimentary about
the remaining songs: "In between those two Deep Purple classics
lies nothing but good, hard-socking music, although some of the
lyrics may leave a bit to be desired." Robert Christgau
rated the album a B, writing "I approve of their speeding,
and Ritchie Blackmore has copped some self-discipline as well as
a few suspicious-sounding licks from his buddies in London."
Allmusic critic Eduardo Rivadavia called Machine Head "one
of the essential hard rock albums of all time."
Machine Head contains classical and blues
influences. Blackmore confirmed that the chord progression for
the solos in "Highway
Star" was inspired by the work of 18th-century composer Johann
Sebastian Bach. The song was actually composed by Blackmore
and Gillan at the start of the Fireball gigs on a bus travelling
to Portsmouth Guild Hall, in response to a question from a member
of the press as to how the band created their material.
Kerrang! magazine listed the album at No.
35 among the "100
Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time" in 1989.In an Observer
Music Monthly Greatest British Albums poll, Ozzy Osbourne chose
Machine Head as one of his ten favourite records of all time.
Machine Head is the subject of one of the
Classic Albums series of documentaries about the making of famous
albums. Machine Head was released on the multichannel formats
DVD-Audio (2001) in a new 5.1 channel mix and SACD (2003) with
the European quadraphonic mix, and more recently, also on SACD
on 17 August 2011, by Warner Japan in their Warner Premium Sound
series (Which has the same 5.1 channel mix as the 2001 DVD-Audio
version). |
