Speed King
(Deep Purple In Rock, 1970)
“I always liked Deep Purple, and my favourite album of theirs is In Rock. It has one classic song after another. They always used to come up with great riffs, and Speed
King is hard to beat. It’s a great, energetic song that shows every member of the band doing what they did best. Gillan’s vocals and the keyboards of Jon Lord… They were such great musicians.”
TONY IOMMI
“We liked it so much that we covered it on our album Inspirations. When Deep Purple wrote Speed King, I suspect they felt the way I did on the day I wrote Motorcycle Man. I wrote that in about thirty seconds. I had the chorus, wrote down the lyrics and never even bothered to go back and see whether they made any sense. Speed King is a great song but the lyrics – which reference Little Richard – sound like they were written in a bit of a hurry. Maybe Ian Gillan had had a drink or a smoke, I don’t know. Gillan influenced me a lot because he didn’t always use that slow, bluesy phrasing, he liked to scream.”
BIFF BYFORD, SAXON
To me, Speed King and the In Rock album were the blueprint for what The Sweet aimed at. Don’t believe me? Go and listen to Brian Connolly and company on Sweet Fanny Adams, which came out four years later. Both albums rocked hard. And Ian Gillan was about as good a rock singer as there’s ever been. Majestic stuff!”
GREG HART, CATS IN SPACE
“I like that song Speed King. It does a lot in a very short amount of time. And Ritchie Blackmore is one of the coolest-looking guitar players around. He’s like a sorcerer. I tip my wizard’s hat to him.” PELLE ALMQVIST, THE HIVES
makes you feel super-tough. It also has a great trading section where Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord compete to see who has the biggest musical biceps. It’s a little less driving than some of their other well-known tunes, but what it might lack in velocity it makes up for in groove. Just good oldfashioned hard rock mayhem.”
SHAMUS CURRIE, THE SHEEPDOGS