Yes, this is the one that features Smoke On The Water, with one of the most instantly recognisable riffs in rock history (three notes is all you need to get it). The song is about a fire in the Montreaux Hotel where Deep Purple were going to record this album (mainly for tax reasons), stymied because of a fire caused at a Frank Zappa concert when, as the song says “some stupid with a flare gun burned the whole place to the ground”. I’d never really listened closely to the lyrics before, and they’re hilariously literal, just describing the events that happened, like the band had the music already written and were just ad-libbing the lyrics as a placeholder.
The other big track on here is Highway
Star, which I’ve long held to be the best collection of absolute rock clichés
ever written (in a good way). You've got a Hammond solo from Jon Lord, you’ve
got Ritchie Blackmore’s faster and higher and faster and higher guitar solo, a
relentlessly pounding rhythm, and lyrics about being on the open road. But then
Pictures of Home take these elements and go even further.
And, to be fair, this is kind of where
those hard rock/heavy metal standards are set. Glover and Paice drive the rhythm section with
power more than finesse (but by gum there’s a great bass break in Pictures of
Home), it’s Blackmore, Lord, and Gillan that provide the scorching melodies
over the top, all blending together into some classic metal.
The album ends with the heaviest track,
Space Truckin’, a fun number with some really low riff work going on, a decade
before 2000AD’s Ace Garp. All in all,
some great Seventies rock, and it made a nice change from the softer sounds of the
albums so far in 1972.
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