Deep Purple Highway Star is one of the most explosive opening tracks ever recorded, written on a tour bus in 1971 and performed live before it ever appeared on an album.
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- Born on a Bus to Portsmouth
- The Riff That Started Everything
- Deep Purple Highway Star: Blackmore’s Bach-Inspired Solo
- Jon Lord and the Organ Solo
- Deep Purple Highway Star on Machine Head
- The Song That Opened Every Show
- What the Lyrics Are Really About
- People Also Ask
- Watch Deep Purple Highway Star Live
- Deep Purple Highway Star Legacy
- You Might Also Like
- Get Machine Head on Amazon
Born on a Bus to Portsmouth
Deep Purple Highway Star did not begin in a recording studio.
It began on a tour bus rolling toward Portsmouth in the autumn of 1971.
A journalist on board asked the band how they actually wrote songs.
Ritchie Blackmore picked up an acoustic guitar and started hammering a single G note over and over.
Ian Gillan leaned over and started improvising lyrics about cars, speed, and the road flying past the window.
Roger Glover looked out at the highway and said the two words that became the title.
That night, Deep Purple played an embryonic version of the song in Portsmouth.
They had written it in an afternoon and performed it in front of an audience the same evening.
That is how fast this band worked when they were at their peak.
The Riff That Started Everything
Deep Purple Highway Star opens Machine Head with one of the most direct statements of intent in hard rock history.
The song kicks in without introduction, without buildup, without ceremony.
Blackmore’s guitar drives forward at a tempo that does not let up for six minutes and nine seconds.
The riff is built on a descending pattern that feels inevitable, like something that had always existed and just needed someone to find it.
Ian Paice’s drumming locks in from the first bar and never gives an inch.
Roger Glover’s bass runs beneath the riff like a second engine.
The whole band understood immediately that this was the song that had to open the record.
Nothing else on Machine Head could have done that job.
Deep Purple Highway Star: Blackmore’s Bach-Inspired Guitar Solo
Ritchie Blackmore typically improvised his guitar solos in the studio.
Deep Purple Highway Star was the exception.
Blackmore told Guitar Player magazine that the Highway Star solo was one of the only solos he worked out completely at home before recording.
He drew on Bach’s classical harmonic structures to build a solo that moves in sequences rather than random phrases.
The result is a guitar solo that sounds composed rather than improvised, structured rather than instinctive.
It stands apart from almost everything else happening in hard rock in 1972.
Most guitarists at the time were leaning into blues improvisation.
Blackmore brought counterpoint and classical logic to a song about cars and speed.
That collision of influences is exactly what made Deep Purple different from every other band of their era.
Jon Lord and the Organ Solo
The guitar solo gets most of the attention, but Jon Lord’s organ solo on Deep Purple Highway Star is equally remarkable.
Lord follows Blackmore’s solo with a keyboard run that matches it in speed and complexity.
The two solos sit side by side in the song’s midsection, creating a conversation between guitar and organ that nobody else in rock was having.
Lord drew on his classical training at the Royal College of Music to build his solo with the same sequential logic Blackmore used.
There is no wasted space anywhere in Deep Purple Highway Star.
Every second earns its place.
Deep Purple Highway Star on Machine Head
Machine Head was recorded in December 1971 at the Grand Hotel in Montreux, Switzerland using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio.
The original Montreux Casino had burned down days before recording was due to begin, directly inspiring Smoke on the Water.
Deep Purple scrambled to find a new location and ended up recording in a hotel corridor and ballroom.
That unconventional environment gave Machine Head its raw, live-room sound.
The band released Machine Head on March 30, 1972, and it went straight to number one in the UK.
Highway Star was released as a single in Japan in July 1972 and in the US in September 1972.
Radio programmers on both sides of the Atlantic preferred the full six-minute album version over the edited single cut.
You can trace the band’s full singles history starting with Hush in 1968, the track that first broke Deep Purple in America.
The Song That Opened Every Show
Deep Purple Highway Star became the band’s standard concert opener before it even appeared on a studio album.
The band had been playing it live throughout their UK tour in autumn 1971, months before Machine Head was recorded.
When the album came out, the song was already road-tested and crowd-proven.
It remained a set opener through the mid-1970s and returned to that role during the Mk II reunion tours of the 1980s and 1990s.
Even lineups that had never played together could open with Highway Star and immediately establish authority.
It does not need context or buildup.
It arrives and takes over.
What the Deep Purple Highway Star Lyrics Are Really About
The lyrics Ian Gillan improvised on that bus to Portsmouth are about one thing: moving fast and not stopping.
The narrator is obsessed with his car, his woman, and his speed.
There is no metaphor being stretched here and no deeper message being hidden.
Gillan was watching the road through a tour bus window and wrote exactly what he saw and felt.
That directness is the song’s greatest lyrical strength.
It does not try to be clever.
It tries to be fast, and it succeeds completely.
People Also Ask About Deep Purple Highway Star
What album is Highway Star on?
Highway Star is the opening track on Machine Head, released March 30, 1972.
Who wrote Deep Purple Highway Star?
All five members of the classic Mk II lineup are credited: Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice.
How long is Highway Star?
The album version runs 6 minutes and 9 seconds. An edited single version ran 2 minutes and 58 seconds but radio stations ignored it in favour of the full cut.
Did Highway Star chart?
The single did not chart in the US or UK, but Machine Head reached number one in the UK and the song became one of the most played tracks on FM rock radio throughout the 1970s.
What inspired the Highway Star guitar solo?
Ritchie Blackmore drew on the classical compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, making it one of the earliest examples of Bach-influenced guitar soloing in hard rock.
Watch Deep Purple Highway Star Live
Deep Purple Highway Star Legacy
Deep Purple Highway Star has appeared in films, television episodes, video games, and advertising campaigns for over fifty years.
It was featured in Dazed and Confused (1993) and appeared in multiple episodes of That 70s Show.
The song has been covered by artists ranging from Judas Priest to Symphony X.
Guitar World and Rolling Stone regularly place Blackmore’s solo among the greatest guitar solos ever recorded.
The Machine Head 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe edition released in 2022 included multiple live versions of Highway Star from across different decades.
It is one of a handful of songs from the early 1970s that genuinely shaped what hard rock became.
Deep Purple Highway Star remains the defining proof of what this band was capable of when everything was working at once.
You Might Also Like
Get Machine Head on Amazon
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Machine Head
The album that contains Highway Star and Smoke on the Water
Essential listening for any rock fan
One of the greatest hard rock albums ever recorded
Deep Purple in Rock
The album that launched the Mk II classic lineup
25th Anniversary Edition with bonus tracks
Child in Time and Speed King on one record
Fireball
The underrated Mk II album between In Rock and Machine Head
25th Anniversary Edition with 28-page booklet
Strange Kind of Woman and the title track
The Very Best of Deep Purple
The perfect starting point for new listeners
Highway Star, Smoke on the Water, and more
Remastered across every era of the band
Deep Purple Highway Star is the song that told the world exactly what this band was and exactly what they could do, and fifty years later nothing has changed that verdict.