“Space Truckin” by Deep Purple

"Space Truckin'" closes out Machine Head, Deep Purple's 1972 album, and it's the band hauling the whole juggernaut into orbit. Ritchie Blackmore has said it began with the half-step riffs in the chorus, sparked by Neal Hefti's theme for the Batman TV show, and when he asked Ian Gillan whether he could put words over it, Gillan came back with a tale of trucking round the cosmos.

It's pure hard rock comic book: Blackmore's riff clanking like a spaceship hull, Jon Lord's Hammond organ roaring underneath, Roger Glover and Ian Paice pounding out a groove that could level a city block. The band produced it themselves with Martin Birch engineering, and a year later it resurfaced as the B-side of a Filipino pressing of "Smoke on the Water".

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.