Jon Lord – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Deep Purple – Woman from Tokyo

Thanks to Dave for posting this song. It was a response to Dave asking us about songs that mention a city on Turntable Talk. This one and Nashville Cats came to mind…but I went with the Purple.

This song is all about the riff…it is a memorable riff… The song has drive and suspense. The dynamics are great after the middle section when the intro riff is reintroduced. What made Deep Purple different from other hard rock bands at the time was the Hammond C3 organ played by Jon Lord. In this song the Hammond sounds as mean as the guitar.

The song was inspired by Deep Purple’s first tour of Japan in 1972. The band was struck by the contrast between the crowded bustling, modern city of Tokyo and the traditional aspects of Japanese culture. Tokyo is personified as a woman.

Woman from Tokyo was on the album Who Do We Think We Are released in 1973. The band members were dealing with exhaustion from constant touring and the pressure to deliver another hit album. The album did quite well peaking at #4 in the UK, #15 on the Billboard Album Charts, and #11 in Canada.

Deep Purple wasn’t a singles band, but this one got a lot of airplay on radio. The song peaked at #60 on the Billboard 100 and #55 in Canada in 1973. That surprises me because I did hear this one a lot growing up.

The band never liked it very much. They didn’t start playing it live until they re-formed in 1984 after their 1976 split. Roger Glover insists that no real live versions of this song existed until the 80s despite being on live compilation albums from their 1970s period.

Because of endless touring and fatigue, Ian Gillan gave a six-month notice stating that he was leaving the band after fulfilling all his commitments in 1973. After lead singer Ian Gillian left Deep Purple in 1973, they had two other lead singers before reforming in 1984…and they were David Coverdale and Joe Lynn Turner. To me though…Ian Gillian is the singer I think of when I think of Deep Purple.

Ritchie Blackmore: “We were in Japan, and it was an incredible experience for us. The song came out of our admiration for the country and the fans there. Tokyo had a lasting impression on us.”

Ritchie Blackmore: “I wanted ‘Woman from Tokyo’ to have a strong, catchy riff that would stay with the listener. The middle section was intended to give it a different feel, almost like taking the listener on a journey.”

Ritchie Blackmore: “The recording sessions for ‘Who Do We Think We Are’ were tough. There was a lot of tension in the band, but ‘Woman from Tokyo’ was one of the moments where things came together well.”

Woman from Tokyo

Fly into the rising sun
Faces, smiling everyone
Yeah, she is a whole new tradition
I feel it in my heart

My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me

Talk about her like a Queen
Dancing in a Eastern Dream
Yeah, she makes me feel like a river
That carries me away

My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me

But I’m at home and I just don’t belong

So far away from the garden we love
She is what moves in the soul of a dove
Soon I shall see just how black was my night
When we’re alone in Her City of light

Rising from the neon gloom
Shining like a crazy moon
Yeah, she turns me on like a fire
I get high

My woman from Tokyo
She makes me see
My woman from Tokyo
She’s so good to me

Deep Purple – Space Truckin’

I had a relative that played this song to death…but I didn’t mind. Machine Head is a great hard rock album.

The intro to this song is worth the price of admission. Jon Lord’s organ has a filthy dirty sound. The half-step riffs in the refrain were inspired by the theme music for the Batman TV program 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.

Machine Head peaked at #1 in the UK, #1 in Canada, and #7 in the Billboard Album Charts in 1972. Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice – are all credited as writers of this song.

This song actually got into space when the astronaut Kalpana Chawla took a copy of the Machine Head album with her on board the Space Shuttle Columbia, which sadly disintegrated before it could land back on Earth during its 2003 mission. Chawla got to know Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse, which is why she brought the album with her. Morse wrote a song called “Contact Lost,” which appeared on the 2003 Deep Purple album Bananas in memory of Chawla and the others on board.

The album Machine Head was recorded in a hotel. The plan was to use the Montreux Casino in Switzerland as a studio to help capture their live sound, but the day after they got there, it burned down during a Frank Zappa concert. We all know that story told so well as told in Smoke On The Water.

They ended up recording this at the Grand Hotel and they used the Rolling Stones mobile unit that Zeppelin and a few others used at that time. That was a genius idea…you could have a studio in your house or an old castle somewhere if you wanted.

Ace Frehley covered this song in 2020.

Space Truckin

Well, we had a lot of luck on Venus
We always had a ball on Mars
We’re meeting all the groovy people
We’ve rocked the Milky Way so far
We danced around with Borealis
We’re space trucking ’round the the stars

Come on, come on, come on
Let’s go space truckin’
Come on, come on, come on
Space truckin’

Remember when we did the moonshot?
And pony trekker led the way
We’d move to the Canaveral moonstop
And every ‘naut would dance and sway

We got music in our solar system
We’re space truckin’ ’round the stars

Come on, come on, come on
Let’s go space truckin’
Come on, come on, come on
Space truckin’

The fireball that we rode was moving
But now we’ve got a new machine
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah the freaks said
Man those cats can really swing

They’ve got music in their solar system
They’ve rocked around the Milky Way
They dance around the Borealis
They’re space truckin’ everyday

Come on, come on, come on
Let’s go space truckin’
Come on, come on, come on
Space truckin’

Yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, space truckin’
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Build-A-Band

Remember Build-A-Bear? Well this is the rock edition. I think this post may go under…” looked great on paper but…” but lets give it a try. Have you ever thought about if you could have a pick of any musicians living or dead and bring them together in their prime…what combinations would you come up with?

Who would you pick if you could pick anyone? We have a time machine so don’t worry…Jimi Hendrix is just a trip away. This is a discussion my friends and I have once in a while. I always wondered what a band with Keith Richards and John Lennon together would have sounded like…probably as raw as you could have sounded…a band with Big Star’s Alex Chilton and the Beatles Paul McCartney? It would be interesting.

There are many musicians I have left out…most likely they were here in previous editions that I’ve gone through in the past few weeks.

Now… I would want to make at least two or three different bands…a rock, hard rock, and a pop/rock band. Now I could go on and on…Soul, Blues, Funk, Country/Rock, and even Heavy Metal. Who would you pick? What would your “dream” band be? If I had time I would have listed around 10 different kind of bands…but these 3 will do for now.