On this day in 1972, the Deep Purple LP “Machine Head” went to #1 on the UK Albums Chart (May 13)
As previous recording sessions had been slotted into the group's gigging schedule, Deep Purple wanted to dedicate time to record an album away from the typical studio environment, hoping it would result in a sound closer to their live shows.
They hired the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio for recording, and block-booked the Montreux Casino as a venue, but during a Frank Zappa concert immediately before the sessions, the casino caught fire when somebody in the audience fired a flare gun towards the rattan-covered ceiling, and the venue burned to the ground.
After a week of searching for an alternative venue, including a session at a nearby theatre that was abandoned due to noise complaints, the band managed to book the Grand Hotel, closed for the winter, and converted it into a live room suitable for recording.
These events, particularly the casino fire, became the inspiration for the song "Smoke on the Water".
The "smoke on the water" that became the title of the song (credited to bass player Roger Glover, who related how the title occurred to him when he woke from a dream a few days later) referred to the smoke from the fire spreading over Lake Geneva from the burning casino as the members of Deep Purple watched from their hotel.
“Machine Head” is Deep Purple's most commercially successful album, reaching #1 in the UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Denmark.
There were four singles released from the album; “Never Before”, “Lazy”, “Highway Star”, and “Smoke on the Water”.
The album also has fan favourites like “Space Truckin’”, and “Pictures of Home”.
Kerrang! magazine ranked Machine Head at #35 on their "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time" list.
Click on the link below to watch “Pictures of Home” with the brilliant drum intro:
On this day in 1972, the Rolling Stones released the double LP “Exile on Main St.” (May 12)
The Stones' first double album went all the way to #1 in the US and many other countries around the world, and is arguably their best body of work; a real rootsy rock and roll record exploring subtle variations of the genre…
Back in 1972, Mick Jagger’s take on the album was:
“This new album is f***ing mad. There's so many different tracks.
It's very rock & roll, you know.
I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over. Since I've left England, I've had this thing I've wanted to do.
I'm not against rock & roll, but I really want to experiment.
The new album's very rock & roll and it's good. I mean, I'm very bored with rock & roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere.
You've got to explore the sky too.”
In 2020 the LP was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, (the highest ranking Rolling Stones album), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame placed the album #6 on the "Definitive 200" list of albums that "every music lover should own."
In 2010, the re-released album entered the UK Album Chart at #1, almost 38 years to the week after it first went to #1. It also re-entered at #2 in the US charts
So the Stones became the first band to have a studio album return to #1 that many years after it was first released.
In 2012, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The iconic cover shot is from an already existing photograph by documentary photographer Robert Frank, an outtake from his seminal 1958 book The Americans named “Tattoo Parlor" but possibly taken from Hubert's Dime museum in New York City.
The image is a collage of circus performers and oddities, such as "Three Ball Charlie", a 1930s sideshow performer from Humboldt, Nebraska, who holds three balls (a tennis ball, a golf ball, and a "5" billiard ball) in his mouth; and Joe "The Human Corkscrew" Allen, pictured in a postcard-style advertisement, a contortionist with the ability to wiggle and twist through a 13.5-inch (34 cm) hoop.
Here’s one of the classic tracks from this great LP....
On this day in 1973, the Led Zeppelin LP “Houses of the Holy” went to #1 on the US Billboard 200 Albums Chart (May 12)
(*Unfortunately I can’t post the cover because the post quickly gets deleted!)
Led Zeppelin’s fifth studio album was yet another superb musical offering...
Both guitarist and producer Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had installed home studios, which allowed them to arrive at the “Houses of the Holy” recording sessions with complete compositions and arrangements.
It’s a stylistically diverse album compared to Zeppelin’s earlier albums, containing fan favourite songs like “The Song Remains the Same", “Over the Hills and Far Away", “D'yer Mak'er", "The Rain Song" and "No Quarter".
The cover was the first for the band to be designed by Hipgnosis and was based on a photograph taken at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
One of my earlier posts on this album was removed by Facebook due to the album cover not conforming to community standards, so I’ve altered it…
“Houses of the Holy” went to #1 in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada, #2 in Finland, #3 in the Netherlands, Japan, and Austria, #4 in Norway, and #8 in Germany.
In 2020, the album was ranked at #278 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Click on the link below to watch “Over The Hills and Far Away”:
On this day in 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released the LP “Are You Experienced” (May 12)
One of the most historically significant debut albums of all time, as Hendrix established himself as a unique and innovative talent on the rock music scene, intertwining his blues rock sensibilities with the psychedelia of the day.
It peaked at #2 in the UK, #3 in Norway, #5 in the US, #15 in Canada, and #17 in Germany.
Rolling Stone ranked “Are You Experienced” 30th on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
In 2010, the magazine placed four songs from the US version of the album on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379).
In 2005, the record was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress in recognition of its cultural significance to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Click on the link below to watch “Hey Joe”:
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Billy Squier was born William Haislip Squier in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on this day in 1950 (May 12)
His breakthrough came in 1981 when the debut single from his triple-platinum “Don’t Say No” LP was released.
Following a small but fairly successful summer tour with Alice Cooper in 1980, Squier got in contact with Queen guitarist Brian May and proposed him to produce his next album.
Due to scheduling conflicts, May declined, but he recommended Reinhold Mack, who had produced Queen's most recent album “The Game”.
Squier and Mack joined forces to produce “Don't Say No”, which earned rave reviews and spawned three hit singles, including “The Stroke”.
This album was a real blueprint for all the 80s hard rock BonJovi-style bands within the arena rock genre, bridging the gap between power pop and hard rock.
“The Stroke” went Top 5 in Australia, Top 10 in Canada, and Top 20 in the US, confirming Squier’s rising star.
It was also was named the 59th best hard rock song of all time by VH1.
If you’ve only listened to “The Stroke” from “Don’t Say No”, have a listen to the rest of the album.
It’s a beauty.
Despite releasing nine albums throughout the 80s and 90s, Squier couldn’t replicate the success of that early 80s period of his career…
Click on the link below to watch “The Stroke”:
On this day in 1967, Procol Harum released the single “Whiter Shade of Pale” (May 12)
It was Procol Harum’s debut single…
The instantly recognisable, mesmerizing, Bach-inspired keyboard riff, and soulful vocals by Gary Brooker propelled the song to greatness, becoming one of the most commercially successful singles in history, and one of the anthems of the so-called Summer of Love in 1967.
Originally, the writing credits only listed Brooker and Keith Reid, but nearly 40 years after this song was released, Matthew Fisher, who played the organ in the recording, filed a lawsuit claiming that he deserved songwriting royalties for his contributions, and in 2009 after an appeal, the courts finally found in his favour.
Keith Reid wrote the lyrics of every song released by the band that is not an instrumental or a cover, and was an official member of Procol Harum, attending all their recording sessions and most of their concert performances, despite having no performance role in the band.
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” originally had two extra verses which the band used to play when they did the song live, but they were not included on the single because it made the song nearly 10 minutes long.
In 2004 the United Kingdom performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited recognised it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years and “Rolling Stone” ranked "A Whiter Shade of Pale" #57 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
In 1998, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
There are more than 1000 known recorded cover versions of this song.
Just let that sink in....
It’s also appeared on the soundtracks of movies such as “The Big Chill” and “Tour of Duty”, and it was a #1 song virtually all around the world (#5 in the US)
John Lennon was a fan of the song, and Billy Joel has also nominated it as one of his favourites.
An absolute classic....
This week in 1975, the Sweet single “Fox On The Run” debuted on the Australian Charts at #82 (May 12)
“Fox On The Run” was the first Sweet single written by the actual band and not their producers, the prolific songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.
Here’s how it happened, according to Classic Rock on Loudersound.com…
The song was originally an album track on “Desolation Boulevard”, but was re-recorded by the band for this single release….
“Just before Christmas [1974],” guitarist Andy Scott recalled, “everybody just happened to be at my house when the managing director of RCA called to say:
‘We’re not getting the right answers from Mike and Nicky, but we really believe that Fox On The Run could be a hit’.
And a week later we were in Ian Gillan’s studio, where nobody knew us; keeping things cloak and dagger was vital.”
Scott acted as producer, and actually added an element that would prove crucial:
“The rest of the band had gone to the pub when I incorporated that pulse-type synthesiser sound at the start and stuck it onto the end as well,” he remembered. “Everyone loved it.”
“Those lyrics were hastily written in the pub before recording the song for the album, hence the fact that it lacked a final verse,” Scott laughed. “We vowed that when we re-recorded it we would re-write the words, but never did.”
The single did extremely well on the Australian charts, clocking up six weeks at #1 between August and September 1975.
It went on to become the best charting single for that year in Australia…
It was also #1 in Germany, Denmark and South Africa, and a Top 5 hit in the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
Click on the link below to watch the clip of this brilliant blast from the past:
This week in 1980, the Tom Petty single “Refugee” peaked on the Australian charts at #24 (May 12)
The second single from their acclaimed album “Damn the Torpedoes” also went to #2 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, #15 in the US, #23 in Belgium, and #24 in the Netherlands.
"Refugee" has gone on to be widely regarded as one of Petty's best songs.
In 2017, Billboard ranked the song #10 on their list of the 20 greatest Tom Petty songs, and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the song #2 on their list of the 50 greatest Tom Petty songs.
The song's co-writer, guitarist Mike Campbell said "Refugee" was one of the first songs he wrote, and recounted, “I just wrote the music and handed it to Tom, and he put the words over it, and when he did he found a way to make the chorus lift up without changing chords.”
In a November 2003 interview with Songfacts, Campbell recalled recording “Refugee":
“We just had a hard time getting the feel right. We must have recorded that 100 times.
I remember being so frustrated with it one day that - I think this is the only time I ever did this - I just left the studio and went out of town for two days.
I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
It worked - this is a brilliant rock track…
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1989, the Real Life single “Send Me An Angel ‘89” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #72 (May 13)
The original version was released in 1983…
After its release, the debut single from their debut studio album “Heartland” made it all the way to #1 in Germany and New Zealand, #2 in Switzerland, #6 in Australia, #9 in Austria, #18 in Canada, #19 in Spain, and even got to #29 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
This was a massive result for a debut single from an Aussie band.
The new version released in 1989 as "Send Me An Angel '89”, peaked at #22 in New Zealand, #26 in the US (surpassing the ‘83 release), and #51 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
As previous recording sessions had been slotted into the group's gigging schedule, Deep Purple wanted to dedicate time to record an album away from the typical studio environment, hoping it would result in a sound closer to their live shows.
They hired the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio for recording, and block-booked the Montreux Casino as a venue, but during a Frank Zappa concert immediately before the sessions, the casino caught fire when somebody in the audience fired a flare gun towards the rattan-covered ceiling, and the venue burned to the ground.
After a week of searching for an alternative venue, including a session at a nearby theatre that was abandoned due to noise complaints, the band managed to book the Grand Hotel, closed for the winter, and converted it into a live room suitable for recording.
These events, particularly the casino fire, became the inspiration for the song "Smoke on the Water".
The "smoke on the water" that became the title of the song (credited to bass player Roger Glover, who related how the title occurred to him when he woke from a dream a few days later) referred to the smoke from the fire spreading over Lake Geneva from the burning casino as the members of Deep Purple watched from their hotel.
“Machine Head” is Deep Purple's most commercially successful album, reaching #1 in the UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Denmark.
There were four singles released from the album; “Never Before”, “Lazy”, “Highway Star”, and “Smoke on the Water”.
The album also has fan favourites like “Space Truckin’”, and “Pictures of Home”.
Kerrang! magazine ranked Machine Head at #35 on their "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time" list.
Click on the link below to watch “Pictures of Home” with the brilliant drum intro:
On this day in 1972, the Rolling Stones released the double LP “Exile on Main St.” (May 12)
The Stones' first double album went all the way to #1 in the US and many other countries around the world, and is arguably their best body of work; a real rootsy rock and roll record exploring subtle variations of the genre…
Back in 1972, Mick Jagger’s take on the album was:
“This new album is f***ing mad. There's so many different tracks.
It's very rock & roll, you know.
I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over. Since I've left England, I've had this thing I've wanted to do.
I'm not against rock & roll, but I really want to experiment.
The new album's very rock & roll and it's good. I mean, I'm very bored with rock & roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere.
You've got to explore the sky too.”
In 2020 the LP was ranked #14 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, (the highest ranking Rolling Stones album), and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame placed the album #6 on the "Definitive 200" list of albums that "every music lover should own."
In 2010, the re-released album entered the UK Album Chart at #1, almost 38 years to the week after it first went to #1. It also re-entered at #2 in the US charts
So the Stones became the first band to have a studio album return to #1 that many years after it was first released.
In 2012, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
The iconic cover shot is from an already existing photograph by documentary photographer Robert Frank, an outtake from his seminal 1958 book The Americans named “Tattoo Parlor" but possibly taken from Hubert's Dime museum in New York City.
The image is a collage of circus performers and oddities, such as "Three Ball Charlie", a 1930s sideshow performer from Humboldt, Nebraska, who holds three balls (a tennis ball, a golf ball, and a "5" billiard ball) in his mouth; and Joe "The Human Corkscrew" Allen, pictured in a postcard-style advertisement, a contortionist with the ability to wiggle and twist through a 13.5-inch (34 cm) hoop.
Here’s one of the classic tracks from this great LP....
On this day in 1973, the Led Zeppelin LP “Houses of the Holy” went to #1 on the US Billboard 200 Albums Chart (May 12)
(*Unfortunately I can’t post the cover because the post quickly gets deleted!)
Led Zeppelin’s fifth studio album was yet another superb musical offering...
Both guitarist and producer Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had installed home studios, which allowed them to arrive at the “Houses of the Holy” recording sessions with complete compositions and arrangements.
It’s a stylistically diverse album compared to Zeppelin’s earlier albums, containing fan favourite songs like “The Song Remains the Same", “Over the Hills and Far Away", “D'yer Mak'er", "The Rain Song" and "No Quarter".
The cover was the first for the band to be designed by Hipgnosis and was based on a photograph taken at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
One of my earlier posts on this album was removed by Facebook due to the album cover not conforming to community standards, so I’ve altered it…
“Houses of the Holy” went to #1 in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada, #2 in Finland, #3 in the Netherlands, Japan, and Austria, #4 in Norway, and #8 in Germany.
In 2020, the album was ranked at #278 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Click on the link below to watch “Over The Hills and Far Away”:
On this day in 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released the LP “Are You Experienced” (May 12)
One of the most historically significant debut albums of all time, as Hendrix established himself as a unique and innovative talent on the rock music scene, intertwining his blues rock sensibilities with the psychedelia of the day.
It peaked at #2 in the UK, #3 in Norway, #5 in the US, #15 in Canada, and #17 in Germany.
Rolling Stone ranked “Are You Experienced” 30th on its 2020 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
In 2010, the magazine placed four songs from the US version of the album on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time: "Purple Haze" (17), "Foxy Lady" (153), "Hey Joe" (201), and "The Wind Cries Mary" (379).
In 2005, the record was one of 50 recordings chosen by the Library of Congress in recognition of its cultural significance to be added to the National Recording Registry.
Click on the link below to watch “Hey Joe”:
Singer, songwriter and guitarist Billy Squier was born William Haislip Squier in Wellesley, Massachusetts, on this day in 1950 (May 12)
His breakthrough came in 1981 when the debut single from his triple-platinum “Don’t Say No” LP was released.
Following a small but fairly successful summer tour with Alice Cooper in 1980, Squier got in contact with Queen guitarist Brian May and proposed him to produce his next album.
Due to scheduling conflicts, May declined, but he recommended Reinhold Mack, who had produced Queen's most recent album “The Game”.
Squier and Mack joined forces to produce “Don't Say No”, which earned rave reviews and spawned three hit singles, including “The Stroke”.
This album was a real blueprint for all the 80s hard rock BonJovi-style bands within the arena rock genre, bridging the gap between power pop and hard rock.
“The Stroke” went Top 5 in Australia, Top 10 in Canada, and Top 20 in the US, confirming Squier’s rising star.
It was also was named the 59th best hard rock song of all time by VH1.
If you’ve only listened to “The Stroke” from “Don’t Say No”, have a listen to the rest of the album.
It’s a beauty.
Despite releasing nine albums throughout the 80s and 90s, Squier couldn’t replicate the success of that early 80s period of his career…
Click on the link below to watch “The Stroke”:
On this day in 1967, Procol Harum released the single “Whiter Shade of Pale” (May 12)
It was Procol Harum’s debut single…
The instantly recognisable, mesmerizing, Bach-inspired keyboard riff, and soulful vocals by Gary Brooker propelled the song to greatness, becoming one of the most commercially successful singles in history, and one of the anthems of the so-called Summer of Love in 1967.
Originally, the writing credits only listed Brooker and Keith Reid, but nearly 40 years after this song was released, Matthew Fisher, who played the organ in the recording, filed a lawsuit claiming that he deserved songwriting royalties for his contributions, and in 2009 after an appeal, the courts finally found in his favour.
Keith Reid wrote the lyrics of every song released by the band that is not an instrumental or a cover, and was an official member of Procol Harum, attending all their recording sessions and most of their concert performances, despite having no performance role in the band.
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” originally had two extra verses which the band used to play when they did the song live, but they were not included on the single because it made the song nearly 10 minutes long.
In 2004 the United Kingdom performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited recognised it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years and “Rolling Stone” ranked "A Whiter Shade of Pale" #57 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
In 1998, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
There are more than 1000 known recorded cover versions of this song.
Just let that sink in....
It’s also appeared on the soundtracks of movies such as “The Big Chill” and “Tour of Duty”, and it was a #1 song virtually all around the world (#5 in the US)
John Lennon was a fan of the song, and Billy Joel has also nominated it as one of his favourites.
An absolute classic....
This week in 1975, the Sweet single “Fox On The Run” debuted on the Australian Charts at #82 (May 12)
“Fox On The Run” was the first Sweet single written by the actual band and not their producers, the prolific songwriting team of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman.
Here’s how it happened, according to Classic Rock on Loudersound.com…
The song was originally an album track on “Desolation Boulevard”, but was re-recorded by the band for this single release….
“Just before Christmas [1974],” guitarist Andy Scott recalled, “everybody just happened to be at my house when the managing director of RCA called to say:
‘We’re not getting the right answers from Mike and Nicky, but we really believe that Fox On The Run could be a hit’.
And a week later we were in Ian Gillan’s studio, where nobody knew us; keeping things cloak and dagger was vital.”
Scott acted as producer, and actually added an element that would prove crucial:
“The rest of the band had gone to the pub when I incorporated that pulse-type synthesiser sound at the start and stuck it onto the end as well,” he remembered. “Everyone loved it.”
“Those lyrics were hastily written in the pub before recording the song for the album, hence the fact that it lacked a final verse,” Scott laughed. “We vowed that when we re-recorded it we would re-write the words, but never did.”
The single did extremely well on the Australian charts, clocking up six weeks at #1 between August and September 1975.
It went on to become the best charting single for that year in Australia…
It was also #1 in Germany, Denmark and South Africa, and a Top 5 hit in the US, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Austria, Norway and Switzerland.
Click on the link below to watch the clip of this brilliant blast from the past:
This week in 1980, the Tom Petty single “Refugee” peaked on the Australian charts at #24 (May 12)
The second single from their acclaimed album “Damn the Torpedoes” also went to #2 in Canada, #3 in New Zealand, #15 in the US, #23 in Belgium, and #24 in the Netherlands.
"Refugee" has gone on to be widely regarded as one of Petty's best songs.
In 2017, Billboard ranked the song #10 on their list of the 20 greatest Tom Petty songs, and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked the song #2 on their list of the 50 greatest Tom Petty songs.
The song's co-writer, guitarist Mike Campbell said "Refugee" was one of the first songs he wrote, and recounted, “I just wrote the music and handed it to Tom, and he put the words over it, and when he did he found a way to make the chorus lift up without changing chords.”
In a November 2003 interview with Songfacts, Campbell recalled recording “Refugee":
“We just had a hard time getting the feel right. We must have recorded that 100 times.
I remember being so frustrated with it one day that - I think this is the only time I ever did this - I just left the studio and went out of town for two days.
I just couldn't take the pressure anymore, but then I came back and when we regrouped we were actually able to get it down on tape.”
It worked - this is a brilliant rock track…
Click on the link below to watch:
On this day in 1989, the Real Life single “Send Me An Angel ‘89” debuted on the US Billboard Hot 100 at #72 (May 13)
The original version was released in 1983…
After its release, the debut single from their debut studio album “Heartland” made it all the way to #1 in Germany and New Zealand, #2 in Switzerland, #6 in Australia, #9 in Austria, #18 in Canada, #19 in Spain, and even got to #29 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
This was a massive result for a debut single from an Aussie band.
The new version released in 1989 as "Send Me An Angel '89”, peaked at #22 in New Zealand, #26 in the US (surpassing the ‘83 release), and #51 in Australia.
Click on the link below to watch:
