Jeff’s Playlist: Machine Head

Deep Purple — Machine Head

When I was young, I was sent to my grand­par­ents in the sum­mer for extend­ed peri­ods of time. This was con­ve­nient for my par­ents because both sets of grand­par­ents lived in Indianapolis, so Mom and Dad could get me out of their hair for quite a bit of time. I would stay with my dad’s par­ents and do gar­den work. Grandma had a nice yard and gar­den, and it was quite fun. Then I would stay with my mom’s par­ents and run errands with grand­ma all day. We would do fun things and go out to eat a lot in the evening when grand­pa would get home. I pre­ferred this set of grand­par­ents. Grandpa was an oral sur­geon down­town, and Grandma and I would vis­it him often. Downtown was a neat place. In fact, all of Indy was neat. Grandpa did a lot of work on my teeth; I had many problems.

On my trip there in 1972, my broth­er Greg sent me on an urgent mis­sion. Machine Head had been released, and he couldn’t find it any­where around Hoptown. My mom’s par­ents lived with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the Keystone Mall, which had a fab­u­lous record store. I found the album and bought it. I was so proud of myself.

Album infor­ma­tion

Track list­ing
All tracks are writ­ten by Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice.

Side one
No.      Title    Length
1.         “Highway Star”         6:05
2.         “Maybe I’m a Leo”    4:51
3.         “Pictures of Home”  5:03
4.         “Never Before”          3:56

Side two
No.      Title    Length
5.         “Smoke on the Water”         5:40
6.         “Lazy” 7:19
7.         “Space Truckin’ ”       4:31

Total length:  37:46

Personnel
Deep Purple
Ritchie Blackmore – gui­tars
Ian Gillan – vocals, har­mon­i­ca on “Lazy“
Roger Glover – bass
Jon Lord – key­boards, Hammond organ
Ian Paice – drums, percussion

Production
Martin Birch – engi­neer­ing, mix­ing with Deep Purple
Jeremy “Bear” Gee – assis­tant engi­neer
Nick Watterton – tech­ni­cian, Rolling Stones Mobile Studio oper­a­tor
Ian Hansford, Rob Cooksey, Colin Hart – equip­ment tech­ni­cians
Shephard Sherbell – pho­tog­ra­phy
Roger Glover and John Coletta – cov­er design

Released       March 30, 1972
Recorded       December 6–21, 1971
Studio            Grand Hotel (Montreux, Switzerland) and the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio
Length            37:46
Label             Purple
Producer        Deep Purple