Highway Star was a song that was never written; it was improvised by the band Deep Purple when they were on a tour bus to Portsmouth in 1971. A reporter joined them on their journey and asked them how they came up with songs, to which lead guitarist of the band Ritchie Blackmore grabbed on his acoustic guitars and started playing a riff of a single G string repeated over and over. At the same time, the frontman of Deep Purple, Ian Gillan, started improvising lyrics on the top of the tune provided by the acoustic guitar. That's how Highway Star was written and performed for the first time.
Then, after making little changes to it, the band played it in their live performance. It appeared on their 1972 LP Machine Head, and for a long time, it remained one of the staples of their live concerts. Deep Purple used this song as their set opener, even before they actually released it as part of any album produced by them.
According to Record World, the Highway Star resembles the tones of Led Zeppelin, and the song has the potential to bring Deep Purple out of the shambles and into the world of rock n roll. This song has the fastest tempo in the entire Machine Head album, and the iconic organ solos, along with the long classically inspired guitar, were the reasons that made people fall in love with it. Over the years after its initial release, Highway Star was covered by several artists and bands. The guitar solo present in the song is recognized as the 15th greatest guitar solo of all time out of 100 by Guitar World.
Mike Walker will be your guitar instructor, who will teach you all the required skills for learning Highway Star by Deep Purple on guitar. Mike has been playing guitar since the young age of 14, and with us, he has produced 305 guitar lessons and has contributed to 16 guitar courses. At the age of 16, Mike became fascinated with the tapping techniques on guitar, and then for the next 2 years, he dedicatedly studied all that was required to master that technique. With his guitar experience, Mike has divided this guitar lesson into 6 segments to make learning easier for you.
After you finish the guitar chord lesson of Highway Star by Deep Purple, you can check out other similar rock songs, such as Highway to Hell by AC/DC, Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd, Every Breath You Take by Police and many more, from our song lesson repository, which you can access at any time once you are logged in.
