Deep Purple Speed King is the song that opened In Rock, launched the Mk II era, and held the concert opener slot for eighteen months before a bus ride to Portsmouth handed that job to Highway Star.
Deep Purple In Rock (1970) — the album that opens with Speed King
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▼ Quick Navigation
- What Is Deep Purple Speed King
- From Kneel and Pray to Speed King
- The Jimi Hendrix Riff That Started It
- The Little Richard Lyrics Nobody Credits
- How Deep Purple Speed King Was Recorded
- The Woffle Intro
- Speed King as the Concert Opener
- The Night Highway Star Took the Crown
- Deep Purple Speed King and the Birth of Speed Metal
- People Also Ask
- Watch Deep Purple Speed King Live
- Deep Purple Speed King Legacy
- You Might Also Like
- Get Deep Purple In Rock on Amazon
What Is Deep Purple Speed King
Deep Purple Speed King is the opening track on Deep Purple in Rock, released June 5, 1970.
It runs 5 minutes and 55 seconds and hits harder from its first second than almost anything that had been recorded in rock to that point.
The song was also released as a single in the Netherlands and Germany, where it charted independently ahead of the album.
In the UK it appeared as the B-side of Black Night, which meant millions of listeners flipped the record and discovered it that way.
Speed King was the first song Ian Gillan ever wrote for Deep Purple, and it announced everything the Mk II lineup intended to be.
From Kneel and Pray to Deep Purple Speed King
Speed King went through several titles before it became the song on the record.
The earliest version was called Ricochet.
That became Kneel and Pray before the band settled on Speed King.
Ian Gillan described the working title Kneel and Pray in his autobiography as a reflection of where the lyrics were heading before they shifted direction entirely.
The song was one of the first pieces of music written by the new Mk II lineup after Ian Gillan and Roger Glover replaced Rod Evans and Nick Simper in 1969.
Deep Purple had played the song live for approximately eight months before they recorded the studio version that appeared on In Rock.
By the time they captured it on tape in January 1970, Speed King was already a crowd-tested, road-hardened performance.
The Jimi Hendrix Riff That Started Deep Purple Speed King
The foundation of Speed King begins with Roger Glover.
Glover composed the driving bass riff as a direct attempt to emulate Jimi Hendrix’s Fire from the Are You Experienced album.
He was not trying to copy Fire exactly.
He was trying to capture the same forward momentum and urgency that Hendrix had built into that track.
What Glover came up with was something distinctly his own, filtered through the harder, more classically informed sensibility of the Mk II lineup.
Ritchie Blackmore took the bass figure and built his guitar part around it, pushing the tempo and the aggression further than any Hendrix track had gone.
The result was something that sounded like nobody else in 1970.
The Little Richard Lyrics Nobody Credits
The lyrics of Deep Purple Speed King are assembled almost entirely from fragments of early American rock and roll.
Ian Gillan built the verses from lines lifted directly from Little Richard songs.
The first verse borrows from Good Golly Miss Molly, Tutti Frutti, and Lucille.
The second verse pulls from the soul classic Rip It Up, Elvis Presley’s Hard Headed Woman, and Chuck Berry’s Some People.
This was not plagiarism in the modern sense: Gillan was paying explicit tribute to the music that had shaped every member of the band.
Deep Purple later acknowledged their debt to Little Richard directly when they named their 1987 album The House of Blue Light after a line from Good Golly Miss Molly.
Speed King is a hard rock song built on a rock and roll foundation, and Gillan never tried to hide where it came from.
How Deep Purple Speed King Was Recorded
Speed King was recorded in January 1970 at IBC Studios in London as part of the main In Rock sessions.
Early studio recordings of the song featured Jon Lord on piano rather than the Hammond organ that appears on the finished version.
The band switched to organ before the final take, which gave the track its full weight and the signature Deep Purple sound.
The production was handled by the band themselves, giving them complete control over the arrangement and the final mix.
The song is credited to all five members: Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice.
Martin Birch engineered the sessions and would go on to work with Deep Purple across virtually their entire studio catalog.
Speed King is dedicated to Birch on the In Rock album sleeve, a rare acknowledgment of an engineer’s contribution to a band’s sound.
The Woffle Intro
The studio version of Deep Purple Speed King opens with a short instrumental introduction officially titled Woffle.
Woffle features Jon Lord playing churchy, contemplative organ chords over a quiet guitar figure before the track erupts into the full band arrangement.
The contrast between the quiet intro and the explosion that follows is one of the most effective false starts in rock history.
Woffle was cut from some later reissues of In Rock, which is a mistake: without the intro, Speed King loses the element of surprise that makes its opening so devastating.
The 25th Anniversary edition of In Rock restores Woffle to its proper place.
Deep Purple Speed King as the Concert Opener
Speed King was the first song performed at almost every Deep Purple concert from late 1969 through to mid-1971.
The band had been playing it live before In Rock was recorded, and it remained the show opener for the entire In Rock tour.
Live versions were considerably longer than the studio recording, with Blackmore and Lord extending their instrumental sections to fill arenas and test the limits of what the song could sustain.
The energy of Speed King as an opener was described by multiple reviewers from the era as something close to a physical assault.
The band understood that the first song a crowd hears sets the temperature for everything that follows.
Speed King set that temperature at maximum from the first bar.
The Night Deep Purple Speed King Lost the Opener Slot
Speed King held the concert opener position until September 13, 1971.
On that date, on a tour bus heading to Portsmouth, the band wrote Highway Star in an afternoon and performed it live that same night.
Highway Star took the opener slot immediately and never gave it back.
Speed King continued to appear in setlists through 1972 but as a mid-set or encore track rather than the show’s opening statement.
The transition from Speed King to Highway Star as the show opener marks the exact moment Deep Purple moved from the In Rock era to the Machine Head era.
Both songs are extraordinary openers.
The band simply wrote a better one.
Deep Purple Speed King and the Birth of Speed Metal
Speed King has been cited by musicologists and metal historians as one of the earliest influences on the development of speed metal.
The tempo, the aggression, the relentless forward drive, and the refusal to slow down for anything are all characteristics that would define the speed metal genre a decade later.
Bands like Motorhead, Judas Priest, and eventually Metallica drew on the template Deep Purple established with Speed King in 1970.
Most speed metal bands knew exactly where the template came from.
The connection between Speed King and the harder end of 1980s metal is not speculation.
It is cause and effect across a decade.
People Also Ask About Deep Purple Speed King
What album is Speed King on?
Speed King is the opening track on Deep Purple in Rock, released June 5, 1970. It was also released as a standalone single in the Netherlands and Germany.
Who wrote Deep Purple Speed King?
All five Mk II members are credited. Roger Glover wrote the bass riff inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s Fire. Ian Gillan wrote the lyrics using fragments from Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry songs.
What was Speed King originally called?
The song went through two working titles. It was first called Ricochet, then Kneel and Pray, before the band settled on Speed King.
Why does Speed King have a quiet intro?
The intro is a separate piece titled Woffle, featuring Jon Lord on organ. It was cut from some reissues but restored on the 25th Anniversary edition. The contrast between the quiet intro and the explosive main track is intentional.
Was Speed King a hit single?
In the UK it appeared as the B-side of Black Night. It was released as an A-side single in the Netherlands and Germany, where it charted ahead of the In Rock album release.
Is Speed King the first speed metal song?
It has been cited as one of the earliest influences on speed metal. Its tempo and aggression in 1970 were unprecedented in hard rock and directly influenced the harder end of metal that followed through the 1970s and 1980s.
Watch Deep Purple Speed King Live
Deep Purple Speed King Legacy
Deep Purple Speed King opened In Rock, opened the Mk II era, and opened concerts for eighteen months before anything came along that could replace it.
It remains one of the fastest, hardest, and most direct pieces of music Deep Purple ever recorded.
The song’s influence on the development of heavy music across the 1970s and 1980s is documented and acknowledged by the bands it influenced.
It also stands as the clearest early statement of what the Mk II lineup intended to be: harder, faster, and more aggressive than anything that had come before them.
Deep Purple Speed King is where that intention was first fully realised on record, and it has never sounded dated for a single moment in the fifty-five years since it was recorded.
You Might Also Like
Get Deep Purple In Rock on Amazon
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Deep Purple in Rock
Opens with Speed King, closes side one with Child in Time
25th Anniversary Edition includes Black Night bonus track
The Mk II lineup’s definitive opening statement
Machine Head
Highway Star, the song that replaced Speed King as opener
Number one UK album in 1972
The peak of the Mk II era
Made in Japan
The definitive live document of the Mk II lineup
Speed King, Highway Star, Smoke on the Water live
The greatest hard rock live album ever recorded
The Very Best of Deep Purple
Speed King, Highway Star, Smoke on the Water and more
The complete picture across every era
Remastered and essential
Deep Purple Speed King is the song that told the world in 1970 exactly what the Mk II lineup was capable of, and everything that came after it only confirmed what that opening track had already promised.