Smoke On The Water Deep Purple

Описание: Smoke On The Water Album: Machine Head (1971)
by Deep Purple

This song took inspiration from a fire in the Casino at Montreux, Switzerland on December 4, 1971. The band was going to start recording their Machine Head album there right after a Frank Zappa concert, but someone fired a flare gun at the ceiling during Zappa's show, which set the place on fire.

Deep Purple was in the audience for the show, and lead singer Ian Gillan recalls two flares being shot by someone sitting behind him that landed in the top corner of the building and quickly set it ablaze. Zappa stopped the show and helped ensure an orderly exit.

Deep Purple watched the blaze from a nearby restaurant, and when the fire died down, a layer of smoke had covered Lake Geneva, which the casino overlooked. This image gave bass player Roger Glover the idea for a song title: "Smoke On The Water," and Gillan wrote the lyric about their saga recording the Machine Head album.

The band was relocated to the Grand Hotel in Montreux, where they recorded the album using the Rolling Stones' mobile studio. They needed one more song, so they put together "Smoke On The Water" using Gillan's lyric and the riff guitarist Ritchie Blackmore came up with. The result was a song telling the story of these strange events just days after they happened - the recording sessions took place from December 6-21.

In an interview with Gillan, he explained: "We set the gear up in the hallways and the corridors of the hotel, and the Rolling Stones' mobile truck was out back with very long cables coming up through the windows. We tried to re-create an atmosphere in a technical sense the best we could. And when we went to write the lyrics, because we were short on material, we thought it was an 'add-on track.' It was just a last-minute panic.

So, the riff and backing track had been recorded on the first day as a kind of soundcheck. There were no lyrics. The engineer told us on the last day, 'Man, we're several minutes short for an album.' So, we dug it out, and Roger and I wrote a biographical account of the making of the record: 'We all came out to Montreux...'"

The session where they put down the backing track took place at a dance club in Montreux called the Pavilion, where they tried to record after the casino burned down. The "Smoke On The Water" track was all they accomplished there because locals complained about the noise and police shut them down. The rest of the album, and the "Smoke On The Water" vocal, was recorded at the Grand Hotel.

Frank Zappa, who is mentioned in the lyrics, lost all his equipment in the fire. He then broke his leg a few days later when a fan pulled him into the crowd at a show in England. This prompted Ian Gillan to say "Break a leg, Frank," into the microphone after recording this for a BBC special in 1972.
Deep Purple bass player Roger Glover had some doubts about the title: he knew it was great but was reluctant to use it because it sounded like a drug song.

Ritchie Blackmore has an affinity for renaissance music, which he writes and performs in his duo Blackmore's Night. He says that he first took an interest in the form in 1971 when he saw a BBC program called Wives of Henry VIII, and that there is indeed a trace of Renaissance in "Smoke On The Water." "The riff is done in fourths and fifths - a medieval modal scale," he explained on MySpace Music. "It makes it appear more dark and foreboding. Not like today's pop music thirds."

The band did not think this would be a hit and rarely played it live. When they did, though, it got a huge reaction. They included a live version from a show in Osaka on their 1972 live album Made In Japan, which was a huge seller. The album was released in America in April 1973, over a year after Machine Head was released there. This earned the song a lot more exposure and convinced Deep Purple's people to release it as a single in America in May. The song didn't peak at #4 in the US until July 28, 1973; by this time, Deep Purple had another album out (Who Do We Think We Are) and the Mark II lineup that recorded the song had broken apart, with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover leaving the band.

"Funky Claude," as in the lyrics "Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground," is Claude Nobs, a man who helped rescue some people in the fire and found another hotel for the band to stay. He is the co-founder of the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival.