Written by Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice
Produced by Deep Purple
From the album Machine Head, Warner Brothers Records, 1972
I associate Deep Purple with my cousin Mark. Mark's about a year younger than me, and he grew up on the opposite coast. But most summers during the '60s and '70s, we met in the middle, at our grandparents' house in Southwest Missouri. We were like brothers, young co-conspirators in the pursuit of spark. We read comic books, went fishing, watched TV, collaborated on comedy bits. And, in the mid '70s, we listened to music.
The music in question was all Mark's. I loved music as much as he did, but my music was mostly on the radio, from Badfinger to various former Beatles. Mark, on the other hand, had cassettes, and a cassette player. We listened to Mark's Deep Purple cassettes, Burn and Machine Head.
This was...1974, maybe? That sounds right. I was 14, Mark was 13. That would have been the year of the Wonder Woman TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby, and Melvin Purvis: G-Man with Dale Robertson, both of which we saw in reruns that summer. We also saw Billy Jack, either at the local movie theater in Aurora or at the mall in Springfield, and we watched weekday reruns of Batman. We had begun the summer visiting our other mutual cousins in Pensacola, then traveled with our combined families to Aurora from there. We stopped to spend the night at a Ramada Inn in Memphis the same night that the FBI was also there, pouncing on a suspect. Mark and I went to get Coca-Colas out of the vending machine shortly before those law enforcement hijinks ensued, and we were trailed back to our rooms by a federale. Good times.
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| For dramatic purposes, the role of the G-Man tailing Mark and I in Memphis will be played by the one and only Ms. Cathy Lee Crosby |
The only Deep Purple song I knew was "Smoke On The Water." I may have also known the earlier, Beatley hit "Hush," and it's possible "Woman From Tokyo" had crossed into my sovereign airspace via Syracuse's WOLF-AM. But I got a crash course in the Purple for the remainder of Mark's stay in Missouri in '74, hooking me on tracks like "What's Goin' On Here," "Might Just Take Your Life," "'A' 200," and the title song from Burn, and "Smoke On The Water" and "Highway Star" from Machine Head. We rocked. ROCKED, I say!
"Highway Star" remains the one song I most associate with that summer. We also used that cassette machine to make our own comedy tape, a simulated broadcast of an imaginary radio station called KLOD. Mark's idea, but I approved of it immediately. Teen co-conspirators. Cousins. Brothers. Friends.
Yeah, it's a wild hurricane
All right
Hold tight
I'm a highway star!
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
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