Burning Riff

My first hard rock album was Deep Purple's Made in Europe. I was about 13-14 years old and it was a pirated cassette which was freely (legally?)  distributed in Indonesia. The price was IDR 1000 or about USD 50 cents. I remember I was amazed seeing the drum kit shown on the cover of the album. I was in a band at that time. Our church has a set of musical equipment (including a sax which no one know to play it). I played keyboard. Our drum kit is an ordinary one. Nothing compared to Ian Paice's kit.

I love all the songs in the album but my favorite song was Burn. I thought the riff was fantastic. I did not know this 'riff' term at that time but  to me the sound was fantastic. It was imprinted rather deeply in my head that I was using it as the standard for other hard rock song. I would be disappointed not hearing that sound in any hard rock song. I would not think that a song deserves to be called hard rock without that riff.

At that time I was learning to play guitar. To my delight I was able to mimic that riff rather easily. To be honest I did not expect that. I did not know the term 'power chord' at that time but I observe that the riff was based on two notes of the chords progression. I quickly realized that this two notes appeared very frequently in many hard rock songs. 

Have listened to this album I wanted to hear more Deep Purple's songs. I adored Ritchie Blackmore guitar playing. I thought he was my first guitar god. Soon I discovered that David Coverdale was not Deep Purple only singer. There was another singer called Ian Gillan. Later I found in another cassette Gillan singing the life version of Lazy Gillan scream was great. I think both singers were great in their own ways. I would not think Deep Purple would be who they were if they only had one singer.

In the 80s I met some of my elementary school mates in a church youth gathering. We had a chance to play Deep Purple song called Black Night on stage. The song has great bassline and I really loved it as I played bass at that time. We did not rehearse before the show. But all of us knew the song so well that I remember the gig went OK.

I listened to many bands later on but Deep Purple had built the foundation of my love of hard rock.