Knocking at Your Back Door
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| "Knocking at Your Back Door" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Deep Purple | ||||
| from the album Perfect Strangers | ||||
| Released | December 1984 (US) | |||
| Recorded | August 1984 | |||
| Genre | Hard rock | |||
| Length | 7:05 | |||
| Label |
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| Songwriter(s) | ||||
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| Deep Purple singles chronology | ||||
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"Knocking at Your Back Door" is a song by the British hard rock band Deep Purple, the first track of the album Perfect Strangers, which was released in September 1984. The song was written by Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. The track received heavy airplay at the time, playing on heavy rotation. It was used by the Seattle SuperSonics in their lineup intro during home games.
Background
The song is lyrically about anal sex, as it uses various sexual innuendos throughout the song. Ian Gillan commented:
There's this guy named Redbeard, from a radio station down in Texas. He phoned me up after it had been played on every radio station in America and said, "Is this what I think it's about?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "It's amazing, every radio station in America is playing a song written about anal sex and they don't even realize what's going on." And I was like, well it's not in-your-face anal sex, it's just a joke. It just came about with the lyrics. It's no big deal. But it's a humorous thing and not meant to be offensive. And I think it was just an afterthought. It certainly wasn't what inspired the song.[1]
The song, released as a seven-inch single and CD single with "Perfect Strangers" on the B-side, in October 1984. In Canada, the B-side of the single was the instrumental "Son of Alerik", while in Japan, Spain and the United States a version with "Wasted Sunsets" was released.
"Knocking at Your Back Door" was a permanent part of the band's live set until 1994 and sporadically since then. Live albums that include the track are: Nobody's Perfect (1988), In the Absence of Pink (1991), Come Hell or High Water (DVD, 1994), Live in Europe 1993 (2007), and Live at Montreux 2011 (2011)
Charts
| Year | Single | Nation | Chart | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | "Knocking at Your Back Door" | United States | Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks[2] | 7 |
| United States | Billboard Hot 100 | 61 | ||
| UK | Top 75 Singles | 65 |
References
- ^ Martin Popoff The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time, p. 319, at Google Books
- ^ "Billboard singles chart history-Deep Purple". Retrieved 21 February 2009.
