“Black Night” – Single by Deep Purple
B-side “Speed King” (UK) / “Into the Fire” (US)
Released 5 June 1970
Label Harvest (UK) / Warner Bros. (US)
Songwriters Ritchie Blackmore,Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice
Producer Deep Purple
Charted No.66 in US and No.2 in UK.
Bands often complain about record companies putting pressure on them to produce a hit song, but in many cases, these tactics work. That was the case here, as Deep Purple bass player Roger Glover explained in a 1988 interview with Metal Hammer. Said Glover: “I love the way that song was born. It happened one night in the studio after we finished Deep Purple In Rock and the management were screaming for a single, because there wasn’t an obvious single on the album. So we thought that we’d humor them, because we never thought of ourselves as a singles band. We spent a whole afternoon trying to get a riff and nothing happened. Round 7:30 we decided to go down to the pub and stayed there until closing time and came back to the studio completely drunk wherupon Ritchie (Blackmore) picked up the guitar and started playing what was to become ‘Black Night’ and we said ‘yeah, that sounds great let’s do that.'”
According to Glover, the guitar riff was “inspired” by Ricky Nelson’s 1962 version of “Summertime.”
All Deep Purple fans know the song “Black Night,” a rare hit single from a heavy metal band, but what inspired it? Lyric-wise it does not amount to much, but according to Ian Gillan in Wait For The Ricochet: The Story of Deep Purple In Rock, the title came from a song recorded by Arthur Alexander.
“Black Night” made its way into the setlist soon after release, generally as the first encore. It was not played in full after Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left the band in 1973, but snippets were often played by Ritchie Blackmore as part of his improvisations. On the reformation of Deep Purple in 1984, it returned as part of the main set list. The song is featured on many Deep Purple live albums.
