On this day · 55 years ago · 1971
55 Years Ago Today: Deep Purple Released Fireball in the US
Deep Purple's fifth studio album hit American shelves July 9, 1971, assembled in scraps of studio time between tour dates. It became one of the records that taught a generation of guitarists what hard rock could sound like.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Deep Purple released Fireball, their fifth studio album and the second with the Mark II lineup of Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Roger Glover, and Ian Paice, in the United States on July 9, 1971. Recorded in fragments between September 1970 and June 1971 around a packed touring schedule, it reached number 32 on the Billboard 200 and later hit number one in the UK, Germany, and Sweden. Lars Ulrich and Yngwie Malmsteen have both cited it as formative listening.
Assembled between tours
Deep Purple released Fireball, their fifth studio album, in the United States on July 9, 1971. It was the second record from the Mark II lineup, the configuration of Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Roger Glover, and Ian Paice that had already turned the band's fortunes around a year earlier with In Rock.
Fireball didn't come together the way a hard rock landmark is supposed to. Per Ultimate Classic Rock's account, sessions began in September 1970 with only one song finished, "Anyone's Daughter," inspired by Blackmore's love of country guitar pickers and by Ten Years After's Alvin Lee. The band kept getting pulled away for touring commitments in Germany, Scotland, and beyond, snatching studio time wherever the calendar allowed. "Strange Kind of Woman," recorded that January, went out as a single in February to keep the band visible while the album stayed unfinished. It became a UK top-10 hit and, ironically, a preview of a record that was nowhere near done.
A deadline from Warner Bros.
The final push came only because Deep Purple's American label was losing patience. Warner Bros. wanted a new album ahead of the band's already-booked July 1971 US tour, so management finally carved out real studio time that spring. "Demon's Eye," the last song finished, came together in June, weeks before release. That scramble is also why the US and UK pressings differ: the American version substitutes "Strange Kind of Woman" for "Demon's Eye," since Warner Bros. wanted the already-proven single on the domestic release.
The record still landed. It hit number 32 on the Billboard 200 in the US, helped along by Deep Purple's tour slot opening for Rod Stewart and the Faces. When the UK edition arrived that September, it became the band's first of three UK number-one albums, and topped charts in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium too.
Reception inside the band split down the middle. Blackmore later called the sessions "a bit of a disaster," telling an interviewer, "managerial pressure, we had no time... I just threw ideas to the group that I thought up on the spur of the moment." Gillan disagreed, naming it one of his favorites of the band's catalog for how it opened up "tremendous possibilities of expression," even while admitting the novelty track "Anyone's Daughter" was "a good bit of fun, but a mistake."
Fireball's afterlife has outrun its reputation inside the band. Metallica's Lars Ulrich has said he bought his own copy within 12 hours of seeing Deep Purple live in Copenhagen in 1973, crediting the show and the record together with pulling him into hard rock. Yngwie Malmsteen has told a similar story: his older sister handed him Fireball at age eight, and it "changed everything."
Power Slinky Cobalt (.011–.048)
Why this one: A heavier gauge built for the thick, aggressive tone Blackmore-style riffing wants, not a claim about what Blackmore himself strung his Stratocaster with in 1971.