Child In Time, from the album Deep Purple In Rock. set to Vietnam War Footage

"Child in Time" is a song by English rock band Deep Purple, taken from their fourth studio album, Deep Purple in Rock, released in 1970. The track is loosely inspired by the Cold War and runs over ten minutes.

Ian Gillan said that the organ riff in "Child in Time" is based on It's a Beautiful Day's 1969 song "Bombay Calling". It's a Beautiful Day in return borrowed Purple's "Wring That Neck" and turned it into "Don and Dewey" on their second album Marrying Maiden (1970). The song started with organist Jon Lord playing "Bombay Calling", which the band then re-arranged and changed the structure. Gillan had never heard the original song, and created lyrics about the Cold War to fit the music, later saying it "reflected the mood of the moment". The band then worked out instrumental lines to accompany this.

With themes of war and inhumanity, the song is regarded as a heavy metal anthem and an example of art rock.

A staple of the Deep Purple live concerts in 1970–73 and later after their initial reunion tours of 1985 and 1987–88, the song was not featured regularly at concerts after 1995. It was re-added to the setlist for the band's 2002 European tour, with its final appearance in Deep Purple's live set was at Kharkiv's Opera Theatre's scene in March of that year.

A live version appeared on the 1972 live album Made in Japan. Other live versions can be found on the Scandinavian Nights/Live in Stockholm live album, recorded in September 1970 and the BBC recordings released as Deep Purple In Concert. Gillan also featured a live jazz-influenced version of the song in his Ian Gillan Band project of the late 1970s on Live at the Budokan album.

"Child in Time" was ranked no. 1 on Radio Veronica's "Super All-Time List" in 1989. The song ranked at no. 16 in Guitarist's 1998 readers poll of Top 100 Guitar Solos of All-Time. English disc jockey John Peel's 1976 list of Festive Fifty featured the song at no. 25. It was second, third or fourth place for many years on the annual Dutch Top 2000 songs of all time.

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