10 Perfect Hard Rock Songs That Are Ridiculously Long

For all of the psychedelic jams that were happening in the late '60s, you also had the British Blues Boom going on across the pond. Around the same time that the Grateful Dead were talking about the more sunny side of life, the likes of Led Zeppelin were already coming to the forefront, brandishing a new kind of rock and roll that was a lot more aggressive. In the wake of Zeppelin though, Deep Purple hadn't forgotten the importance of trailing back into the blues every now and again.

Though Deep Purple In Rock has all the trappings of great hard rock singles like Speed King, Child in Time really is the centerpiece of the entire record. Being one part classical and one part rock and roll, the song reads like a slow plodding ballad at first, as Ian Gillan talks about all of the sadness that he's seen going on around him. Once we get past the initial idea though, the middle section is a tour de force of intensity, as the band slowly builds up to a stirring climax and Gillan reaching for notes that sound like a banshee howling from the other side of consciousness.

In fact, this is the kind of intensity that not even Purple would be able to reach again, as Gillan retired the song from the setlist so to never put his vocal cords through those kind of acrobatics again. When he was firing on all cylinders though, this was the kind of song that taps into the more spiritual side of what hard rock had to offer.