“The definitive hard rock riff”, according to Lars Ulrich
If someone had to describe that guitar riff, it wouldn’t take much of an attempt to jog anyone’s memory without even having to hum it.
The four-note progression that anticipated any hard rocker’s dreams is possibly what makes Deep Purple as memorable as they are, and die-hard fans like Lars Ulrich won’t be forgetting it anytime soon.
Although the unforgettable riff cranking up the hype in ‘Smoke on the Water’ was released on the album Machine Head, Deep Purple’s attempt at attracting some mainstream attention, the song couldn’t be closer to an immortal hard rock phenomenon, which Metallica’s co-founder and drummer reveres for its power, iconic imprint, and accessibility.
“You really don’t need a guy in Metallica to tell you it’s one of the greatest rock songs of all time and certainly the definitive hard rock riff,” he told Classic Rock in 2012 after the heavy metal band contributed a version of ‘When A Blind Man Cries’ to Re-Machined: A Tribute Deep Purple’s Machine Head, an album of Machine Head covers from different artists.
“I don’t play guitar, and I can play it, my kids don’t play guitar, they can play it, the three guys walking past me down the street right this minute, who don’t even know who Deep Purple are, can more than probably play it,” he commented on the legacy of the riff.
Growing up in Denmark, American hard rock didn’t have such a profound effect on his direct sphere of influence as British bands would have had. The London-born ‘Perfect Strangers’ group was performing at the opening of Copenhagen’s KB Hallen Tennis tournament, where Ulrich’s professional player dad was going to be competing. He invited his son along to the concert, at the tender age of nine years, about which Ulrich later said, “I was completely and utterly blown away. As you can imagine, it was the loudest, coolest thing I’d ever seen”.
What stuck the most from that 1973 performance was “Ritchie Blackmore throwing his guitar up into the lighting rig, rubbing it against the speaker cabinets and playing it with his ass”, and his guitar magic is an intrinsic part of Ulrich’s diehard fandom. Other than ‘Smoke on the Water’, a big favourite Deep Purple moment of his is ‘Burn’, because it “has one of the best Ritchie Blackmore riffs ever”.
The beating heart of the iconic heavy metal band has never made a secret of his lifelong musical inspiration. Ever since a young age, for Ulrich, “Deep Purple were a whole different thing. They had a heaviness, energy and power. In my musical vocabulary, they were the extreme”. The mark they left on music can’t be ignored, but the powerful effect they had on artists of such different genres and music is a testament to their wide range of strengths.
When asked what Metallica song he’d have likes Deep Purple to cover, Ulrich stood firmly on the side of the riff: “I’ll tell you what would be fucking cool to hear, Deep Purple play ‘Orion’. Or maybe a song like ‘Welcome Home (Sanitarium)’ because it’s got a ballad-y thing going on, with a little bit of heaviness and guitar.” Who better than a super fan to know that every good song would get even better with a little instrumental break for Blackmore to go nuts on.
