Deep Purple (1970) Flight of the Rat

 From their landmark heavy metal album In Rock (1970), Deep Purple transformed from a London based Psychedelia jam group with classical leanings into a heavy riff oriented rock act. Initially inspired with taking the sound of groups such as Zeppelin and Sabbath to boost their commercial success that was flagging they soon added their own style of instrumental passages to hard rock music. While it too some time to convince hard rock fans that what was missing was some Bach keyboard flourishes, it was Richie Blackmore's contributions which were key.

 Flight of the Rat is the hidden gem from the classic album, often overlooked and buried in the album, it's Purple at their best, a rare moment where they don't indulge but stay tight with a some heavy solos before the whole band descends into an all out funk session before regaining the original riff and ending on a superb drum solo. It stays sharp rather than rehashing any classical passages as they did with most of their songs sticking to a blues template that works best in hard rockand features a nice melody and lyrics by vocalist Ian Gillan. The central downstroke riff is a rip off of Communication Breakdown by Led Zeppelin, as is Sabbath's Paranoid, though it makes sense as Zep invented hard rock on their frist two albums. Also Blackmore noted they didn't know what type of music they were looking for till Zep debuted on the scene in 1968. This is the closest they came to Zep's tight fury and never would again, it's a shame it isn't the song their known for.