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The story of “Smoke on the Water”…

Deep Purple Live Video.

“Smoke on the water” was inspired by the fire at the Montreux Casino. A look back at this evening of December 4, 1971…

On December 4, 1971, the quiet town of Montreux in Switzerland was about to give in to the bacchanalia of rock. That evening, Frank Zappa and his group, The Mothers of Inventions, performed at the Casino as part of their European tour.

45 years after the casino fire, Zappa returns to Montreux - rts ...
Frank Zappa

Montreux Casino – Interior views | Riviera-Images
Grand Vestibule of the Montreux Casino

After eighty minutes, as they perform the title King Kong, the report of an alarm gun rang out. Immediately, the ceiling burst into flames, which surrounded the first rows. Zappa told the crowd to keep calm and use the emergency exits, but it was by jumping out of the windows of this room located on the first floor that the audience escaped. The place ends in ashes. No casualties have been reported.

Is Montreux burning? - rts.ch - Mordicus
Fire of December 4, 1971

Among the survivors, safe but traumatized, are all the members of Deep Purple. They came to Montreux to record their sixth album, Machine Head and were, as such, to take over the casino the day after the Zappa concert.

Machine Head album creating history: Casino stage and record the ...

Gathered in the window of a restaurant, they watch the fire die down while a curtain of smoke obscures Lake Geneva. Bassist Roger Glover found the image disturbing and thought it would make a good song title. Ian Gillan, singer, imagines his lyrics: a factual and chronological description of the night's events. The conjunction of the two would give a kind of documentary work, entitled Smoke on the water.

Deprived of a recording location, the group still set about producing their album in the following days. Briefly relocated to the Le Pavillon theater, they were expelled manu militari by the Swiss police after complaints of noise from the neighborhood. It is at the Grand Hôtel, an abandoned establishment located on the outskirts of the city, that they land to record Machine Head on the Rolling Stones' mobile studio.

The album Machine Head released in March 1972 with the first single Never before and placed first in the English, Australian, French, Danish, Finnish, German, Canadian and Yugoslav charts. The single, which the group thought would become a hit, went completely unnoticed. Roger Glover declared: “However, we had worked on it: a nice bridge, careful playing, appropriate mixing…”

It wasn't until May 1973 that Warner Bros. Records, the group's American record label, decides to release Smoke on the water in 45 rpm, which reached fourth place on the Billboard. Despite relative success in Europe at the time, the song became legendary thanks to its first fifty-two seconds: a guitar riff repeated six times, destined to become the most famous riff, all instruments combined, in the entire history of the music.

Paroxysmal emblem of guitar music, the introduction of Smoke on the water will often be compared by its author, Ritchie Blackmore, to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

More down to earth, Roger Glover will focus on the event that triggered the myth: “I had never seen such a fire. The building exploded like a mushroom cloud. The last day of check-in at the Grand Hotel remains for us as important an event as the fire itself. We left him without knowing our future. After being thrown around, we thought the world was against us. We were angry. This is undoubtedly what contributed to the success of Smoke on the water"

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