Deep Purple Black Night is the band’s highest-charting UK single, a number two hit born in a pub after six fruitless hours in the studio, and one of the most infectious hard rock singles ever cut in a single session.
Deep Purple In Rock (1970) — the album era that produced Black Night
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▼ Quick Navigation
- What Is Deep Purple Black Night
- The Pub Where Black Night Was Born
- The Gershwin Riff Nobody Talks About
- The Arthur Alexander Title Connection
- How Deep Purple Black Night Was Recorded
- Deep Purple Black Night on the UK Charts
- Why Black Night Was Not on In Rock
- The Song That Closed Every Show
- Metallica, Bruce Dickinson, and the Covers
- People Also Ask
- Watch Deep Purple Black Night Live
- Deep Purple Black Night Legacy
- You Might Also Like
- Get Deep Purple In Rock on Amazon
What Is Deep Purple Black Night
Deep Purple Black Night is a hard rock single released on June 5, 1970, the same day as the In Rock album.
It peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart and topped the NME and Melody Maker charts outright.
It remains Deep Purple’s highest-charting UK single to this day, sitting above Smoke on the Water, above Highway Star, above everything.
The song runs just 3 minutes and 28 seconds, which makes it one of the most concise things the Mk II lineup ever recorded.
It was written, recorded, and finished in a matter of hours after the band gave up trying to write it and went to the pub instead.
The Pub Where Deep Purple Black Night Was Born
When Deep Purple in Rock was finished, EMI came to the band with a specific request: they needed a hit single to promote the album.
The band sat in the studio for six hours trying to write one.
Nothing came.
So they went to the nearest pub and stayed there for a while.
Roger Glover and Ritchie Blackmore eventually went back to the studio.
Blackmore picked up his guitar and started jamming on a riff.
The rest of the band gathered around and Black Night came together in the room.
Roger Glover later described the process in a 1988 interview with Metal Hammer: the song was essentially an accident that happened after the serious attempt had failed.
That is one of the most common stories in rock history, and it is almost always true.
The songs that come easy are usually the ones that last.
The Gershwin Riff Nobody Talks About
The riff that drives Deep Purple Black Night is closely based on the riff from Summertime by George Gershwin, specifically Ricky Nelson’s 1962 rock recording of the standard.
Blackmore took that figure, stripped it down, sped it up, and ran it through a Marshall stack.
The transformation is complete enough that most listeners never make the connection.
This kind of unconscious or deliberate borrowing from older material was common practice in the early 1970s.
Led Zeppelin did it constantly.
What Deep Purple did with the raw figure is entirely their own: the riff became something heavier, faster, and more aggressive than anything Gershwin ever imagined.
The same instinct for riff transformation that produced Black Night would show up two years later on Smoke on the Water.
The Arthur Alexander Title Connection
The title Deep Purple Black Night did not come from the mood of the song or from a band brainstorm.
Ian Gillan has said the title came from a song recorded by Arthur Alexander in 1964.
Alexander was a black songwriter from the American Deep South, more influential than famous, who recorded a song also called Black Night.
That song traced back even further to a 1951 recording by Charles Brown, written by Jessie Mae Robinson, the first black woman to become a member of ASCAP.
Deep Purple’s Black Night shares only the title with those earlier recordings.
But the chain of influence running from a 1950 blues recording to a 1970 British hard rock single is the kind of hidden history that makes rock music endlessly interesting.
How Deep Purple Black Night Was Recorded
Black Night was recorded in May 1970 at De Lane Lea Studios in London, separate from the main In Rock sessions.
It was credited to all five members: Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice.
The recording was fast and direct, reflecting the spontaneous way the song had been written.
Jon Lord’s organ sits beneath Blackmore’s guitar throughout, filling the spaces between the riff with the same Hammond weight he brought to Child in Time.
Gillan’s vocal is looser and more playful than his work on the album, which suited the song’s more straightforward approach.
Ian Paice drives the track from behind the kit with the kind of locked-in groove that made him one of the most respected rock drummers of the era.
Deep Purple Black Night on the UK Charts
Deep Purple Black Night was released on June 5, 1970 and became a hit by August of that year.
It peaked at number two on the official UK Singles Chart.
It topped both the NME and Melody Maker charts, which were considered equally authoritative at the time.
It also reached number one in Switzerland and peaked at number four in Ireland, making it the band’s only Irish Top 10 hit.
In the United States it reached number 66, which was respectable for a hard rock track in 1970 but nothing close to what it achieved at home.
The song proved that Deep Purple could write a commercial hit without compromising the heaviness that defined their album work.
That balance between accessibility and power is what separates the great hard rock bands from everyone else.
Why Deep Purple Black Night Was Not on In Rock
Black Night was recorded after In Rock was already completed and was released as a standalone non-album single.
This was standard practice in the UK at the time: singles and albums were treated as separate commercial products, and including a hit single on an album was considered bad form.
The only exception was the Mexican pressing of In Rock, which included Black Night on the tracklist.
The song was eventually added to the 25th Anniversary edition of Deep Purple in Rock as a bonus track, which is where most listeners find it today.
Its absence from the original album meant that buyers in 1970 had to purchase both the album and the single to get the complete picture of what the band was doing that summer.
Most of them did exactly that.
The Song That Closed Every Deep Purple Black Night Show
Black Night entered the Deep Purple setlist immediately after its release in the summer of 1970.
Unlike Highway Star, which opened shows, Black Night was typically played as the first encore, the reward the crowd got for cheering loud enough.
It remained in that position through the peak years of the Mk II lineup from 1970 to 1973.
When Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left in 1973, the song was dropped from the full setlist, though Blackmore occasionally played fragments of the riff during his improvisations on stage.
When the Mk II lineup reformed in 1984, Black Night came back as a main set staple and stayed there for years.
The song’s simplicity made it the perfect live vehicle: every version could be stretched or compressed depending on the energy in the room.
Metallica, Bruce Dickinson, and the Covers
Deep Purple Black Night attracted serious attention from the next generation of heavy music acts.
Metallica played the opening riff of Black Night during their 1989 tour encores, a nod to the song’s status as a foundational hard rock text.
Bruce Dickinson recorded a live version as the B-side of his 1990 solo single Dive Dive Dive and performed it regularly during his Tattooed Millionaire tour.
American death metal band Deicide covered the song on their 2006 album The Stench of Redemption, rewriting the lyrics entirely.
Post-punk group The Fall integrated Black Night into a medley with their own composition Cash ‘n’ Carry in 1982, a version eventually released in 2002.
A song that can be covered by Metallica, Bruce Dickinson, Deicide, and The Fall without losing its identity is a song built on something genuinely universal.
People Also Ask About Deep Purple Black Night
What chart position did Black Night reach?
Black Night peaked at number two on the UK Singles Chart and topped both the NME and Melody Maker charts. It remains Deep Purple’s highest-charting UK single.
Is Black Night on the In Rock album?
No. Black Night was a non-album single in 1970. It was added to the 25th Anniversary edition of In Rock as a bonus track.
What riff is Black Night based on?
The riff is closely based on Ricky Nelson’s 1962 rock recording of Gershwin’s Summertime. Blackmore transformed it into something heavier and faster.
Where did the title Black Night come from?
Ian Gillan has said the title came from a song recorded by Arthur Alexander in 1964, which itself traces back to a 1951 Charles Brown recording written by Jessie Mae Robinson.
How long did it take to write Black Night?
The band spent six fruitless hours trying to write a single, went to the pub, came back, and wrote Black Night in a fraction of that time. The entire process from pub to finished recording took one session.
Watch Deep Purple Black Night Live
Deep Purple Black Night Legacy
Deep Purple Black Night proved in 1970 that hard rock could produce genuine pop chart hits without sacrificing any of its weight or aggression.
It sits at the intersection of accessibility and heaviness that most bands spend entire careers trying to find.
The song charted again in the UK in 1980 when it was included on the Deepest Purple compilation, reaching the top five a full decade after its original release.
That kind of longevity across two separate chart runs is rare for any song in any genre.
Fifty-five years after Blackmore picked up his guitar in that London studio, Deep Purple Black Night remains the band’s most commercially successful moment and one of the most perfectly constructed hard rock singles ever recorded.
You Might Also Like
Get Deep Purple In Rock on Amazon
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Deep Purple in Rock
The album that defined the Mk II sound — Black Night era
25th Anniversary Edition includes Black Night as bonus track
Child in Time, Speed King, and the full Mk II debut
Machine Head
Highway Star, Smoke on the Water, the Mk II peak
Number one UK album on release in 1972
Essential for any hard rock collection
Made in Japan
The definitive Deep Purple live album
Black Night, Child in Time, Smoke on the Water live
The greatest hard rock live album ever recorded
The Very Best of Deep Purple
Black Night, Highway Star, Smoke on the Water and more
The complete picture across every era
Remastered and essential
Deep Purple Black Night is the accidental hit that became a permanent fixture, the song born in a pub that outlasted everything the band spent six careful hours trying to write.