10 Most Iconic Keyboard Songs In Rock Music
3. Highway Star - Deep Purple
Even if a band has one of the greatest keyboardists of all time, you often find yourself having to play second fiddle to the guitar most of the time. The six string has always been the main draw of this genre in the first place, and it's not easy to make your presence known when you're stuck behind an organ. You're going to have to get creative to get noticed, and Jon Lord found his way to the front based on pure power alone.
Always the classical fan in Deep Purple, Highway Star is one of the many masterpieces that Purple made, stretching the usual rock and roll song out to a 6 minute experience with multiple solos. Plugging his traditional organ into a Marshall stack, Jon had a vision for his solo, going for a classical progression that the band members originally laughed off because they thought it sounded too corny. After they turned the volume up loud, the whole solo went off the rails, creating a piece of music that sounds like what Bach would have done if he had been born a few centuries later.
In the early days, people started to forget that they were actually hearing piano, having the same amount of teeth that Ritchie Blackmore had with his guitar fireworks during his solo. Purple may not have been a progressive band in the traditional sense, but the solo to Highway Star is where keyboardists should go once they've really done their homework.