"Space Truckin'" is a song by British hard rock bandDeep Purple. It is the seventh and final track on the Machine Head album and its lyrics talk of space travel. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore claims in that the song composition started with the half-step riffs in the refrain, which were inspired by the theme music for the BatmanTV programme composed by Neal Hefti. Blackmore asked singer Ian Gillan if he could write any lyrics over the riff, and the rest of the song evolved from there.
Live performances
When it was first performed live, the band appended an instrumental that was originally part of the song "Mandrake Root" from their first album but gradually evolved into a showcase for Jon Lord's Hammond organ and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar solos. This usually took the length of the overall song to over twenty minutes, and it was always performed as the last number of the main set. A good example of this arrangement can be found on the Made in Japan album, wherein Blackmore also quotes the "cello" solo of "Fools" off Fireball. Jon Lord played his solo through a ring modulator or played some of it on an ARP synthesizer. Meanwhile, Ritchie Blackmore usually split the guitar solo into two halves, a quiet section with just drums, then a loud section with the full band. The second half was often when Blackmore would smash his guitar, play it with his feet or throw it into the air. One of the most infamous incidents where that happened was at the California Jam festival in 1974, where he dropped one guitar over the edge of the stage, smashed a second against a TV camera, then set his amplifier on fire, which then subsequently exploded. When Deep Purple reformed in 1984, this extended arrangement was reworked, and later included snippets of other songs. During the Man Of All Ages tour, the final part of the song, which originally featured high-pitched screaming by Gillan, instead featured high-pitched guitar in the same key as his original vocals. On the remastered version of their 1982 album Live in London, there is a 31-minute-long live version of the song. It consists of a lot of improvising from the band members and in one part of the song they play the main riff from "Child in Time".
The song appeared in the film Lords of Dogtown, the documentary Warren Miller's Dynasty and video game .
The 1997 remix of the song was featured in the first and last episodes of Ash vs Evil Dead.
"Space Truckin'" played in orbit as a wake-up call for the Red Team on Flight Day 3 of the crew of STS-107; it was specially played for Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla, who was later one of the seven crewmembers killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She was a fan of the band and traded e-mails with several group members while in space. Guitarist Steve Morse, vocalist Ian Gillan, bass guitarist Roger Glover, drummer Ian Paice and keyboardist Don Airey were in the midst of recording "Bananas" when the disaster occurred. Chawla had taken three CDs onboard Columbia: Deep Purple's landmark 1972 album Machine Head, 1996's Purpendicular and Rainbow's 1978 album Down to Earth. To honor her, Deep Purple wrote "Contact Lost" as the final track to closeout their LP.
Personnel
Ian Gillan – vocals
Ritchie Blackmore – guitar
Roger Glover – bass guitar
Jon Lord – keyboards
Ian Paice – drums, percussion
Cover versions
Dream Theater covered this and the whole Made in Japan album.
Arjen Anthony Lucassen's Star One covered the song during their 2002 European tour, as seen on the Live on Earth DVD.
