This morning’s CarTune is one of the great speeding ticket generators: from Deep Purple’s 1972 album Machine Head, “Highway Star.”
Like “Radar Love,” featured previously at MCG, “Highway Star” is one of those songs that, when you hear it come over the car radio, causes your right foot to apply additional pressure to the throttle pedal as your right hand reaches over to the radio to give the volume control a big twist. The involuntary response will send you 20 mph over the speed limit before you know it.
Nobody gonna take my car
I’m gonna race it to the ground
Nobody gonna beat my car
It’s gonna break the speed of sound
Considered one of the founding documents of Heavy Metal, Machine Head was Deep Purple’s sixth and biggest selling album. Along with “Highway Star,” the LP also featured two more great war horses of ’70s album rock radio, “Space Truckin” and “Lazy,” and the song that launched a million garage bands, “Smoke on the Water.” Doot Doot doo…
The live performance below is from a concert in Denmark in 1972, just before Machine Head was released, and features what many fans regard as the band’s classic lineup: drummer Ian Paice, bassist Roger Glover, Jon Lord on keyboards, Ian Gilliam on vocals, and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. They never sounded better.
This was shot right about the time I was first started going to rock shows, without my parents’ full knowledge of course. That wall of Marshall amps and speakers brings back some great memories.
Even though I wasn’t into hard rock that much, every car guy was required to have Machine Head on eight-track. It may very well have been playing when I got that first speeding ticket in the ’69 Sport Fury.
I wore out several copies of this 8 Track and drove the neighbors crazy.