| "Fireball" | ||||||||||
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| Single by Deep Purple | ||||||||||
| from the album Fireball | ||||||||||
| B-side | "Demon's Eye" (UK) "Anyone's Daughter" (US) |
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| Released | October 1971 | |||||||||
| Format | 7" | |||||||||
| Recorded | March 1971 in London | |||||||||
| Genre | Heavy metal | |||||||||
| Length | 3:25 | |||||||||
| Label | Harvest (U.K.) Warner Bros. (U.S.) |
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| Writer(s) | Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, Ian Paice | |||||||||
| Producer | Deep Purple | |||||||||
| Deep Purple singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Fireball" is the opening song of the album of the same name by the English hard rock band Deep Purple. It was Deep Purple's second single release in 1971.
The song begins with a whooshing sound (which is a recording of the studio's air conditioner which eventually fades out) being turned on and the drums begin at bar 2 at 240 bpm.
"Fireball" is an odd song for Deep Purple as it features no guitar solo. Instead it features a bass guitar solo in the key of F#m which then modulates into an organ solo in Bm. The song ends with a fade-out, with ad-libbing from the organ. The beat is accented with a tambourine played by Ian Gillan.
"Fireball" (take 1 - instrumental), a bonus track on the remastered Fireball album, features a guitar solo near the end, at 3:30, after the fade-out of the original version.
It is one of the few Deep Purple songs to feature Ian Paice using double bass drums. When performed live, a roadie brings on another bass drum to perform the song, only to remove it when it is finished.
The noise intro to the song was a sound of an air-conditioning unit, recorded by a young assistant Mike Thorne who was helping engineer Martin Birch on this track. As Roger Glover turned to Martin and suggested the sound of a machine starting up would be a great way to get the song going (and the album) and the latter could not think of anything suitable off the top of his head, Thorne suggested the sound of an air conditioning unit (he referred to as the West Uzbekistan Percussion Ensemble) would do the trick and duly recorded it to the band's delight. Later Deep Purple members told people who asked what the sound was that it was made by a 'special' synthesizer.[1][2]
The song, using a fireball metaphor to picture a woman as an alien who makes love as a kind of magic, was one of several, based on Ian Gillan's real life experiences. "She was a complete mystery to me. This is another tale of unrequited love", was the author's comment on the song's heroine.[3].