Deep Purple - Fireball (1971)

As a pre-teen, learning to play the guitar and bass, I was mostly listening to hard rock, grunge and trash metal bands such as Guns n' Roses, Nirvana Metallica and Megadeath. Around this time, radio started playing Eurotechno and I personally couldn't understand why anyone would want to listen to that stuff. Any music that didn't have overdriven guitars sounded a bit lame to me. Then again, the bands I mentioned were going out of fashion and because I didn't like the new stuff that was coming out, I turned my focus on history of metal. My father had old LPs from 70s bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep and these records opened up the world of 60s and 70s rock to me. Deep Purple was one of the heaviest bands of the 70s and also really melodic, which made it really good contender to win me over. They were one of my favourite bands for a few years.



My father had Deep Purple in Rock on vinyl, which I got when my father didn't replace his broken record player with a new one and I owned a few Deep Purple compilations myself. Fireball I ended up owning a much later when I went through the LPs at my grandmother's house. There were lots of albums there left by my father and some of my uncles. I don't know who originally owned this album, it might've been my dad, but I was glad to take this one to my collection. It has some familiar songs I knew from the compilation albums, but it was a new acquaintance as an album.

The album starts with the title-track Fireball, which is one of the best songs by Deep Purple in my opinion. Or definitely was when I was a pre-teen. The fast drumming in the song is quite spectacular, but the most astonishing thing about the song is the solo battle between Richie Blackmore in guitar and John Lord in keyboards. The keyboard solo in this song is insanely good! No No No is a bluesy rock song that was quite common style in the early 70s. These kinds of songs were never my favourites because they weren't particularly melodic and I craved for catchy melodies. Demon's Eye similarly was one of the songs I didn't much care for from my compilation albums, but I've later on understood just why it was on the compilation albums. The bluesy rolling of the song is quite excellent now that I understand more about the band dynamics and rhythm. Anyone's Daughter sounds very different from other Deep Purple songs. It's a folk song almost like one of Bob Dylan's. Had I owned this album as a younger boy, I'm sure I wouldn't have particularly liked this song. Now I do like this kind of genre, but I don't think Deep Purple is necessarily the best band in writing songs like this. The Mule shows the talent of the band much clearer. The drums and guitars are quite masterful. The songwriting isn't particularly interesting though and the melody is kind of boring. The interesting thing about this song is the combination of hippy era psychedelia and hard rock rhythms. Fools continues this more psychedelic approach in the beginning until the song properly kicks in with Ian Gillan's raspy vocals. The rest of the song is quite a typical Deep Purple rock song. The album ends with No One Came, which is probably the heaviest of the songs on the album. It's not difficult to see where the roots of heavy metal lay when you listen to songs like this along with Black Sabbath's early albums.

Listening to this album after a long break really reminds me how skilful the players often were in these 70s hard rock bands. It's kind of difficult to find this kind of virtuosity in any other genre since. All the players in this band are absolute masters of their instruments. I saw Deep Purple live twice in Helsinki and even though all the band members were quite old back in the 90s when I saw them, it was a thrill to see them play their instruments so skilfully. If I think about the best keyboard players of all times, John Lord's name is quite high on the list. I also really appreciate Ian Gillan's raspy rock vocals.

There's a kind of "music video" made for Fireball. The audio is from the album, but the video shows the band play the song live. It does show how the band looks live, but you don't get the full experience without the live sounds. It's just interesting to look at the audience and how funny they look dancing to this music.

Many people look back to the bands they listened to as pre-teens and are a bit ashamed of their taste in music back then, but having listened to bands like this, I definitely have nothing to be ashamed of. I don't listen to this stuff that much anymore, but whenever I do, I can totally see why I was so into this music back then.

Listen to the album on Spotify.