When it all was over, we had to find another place
The Casino was nothing but ashes, leaving Deep Purple with nowhere to record. Soon, the search was on for a new location. Claude Nobs, always eager to make up for their loss, found them the Pavilion: a theatre in the centre of town. Work began, though not without difficulty, as Roger Glover recalls:
After dinner, we started jamming round a new riff of Ritchie's that for now would be called "Title #1". With no idea about what the lyrics might be, we sketched out a quick arrangement, organising verses, hooks and solos. It was well past midnight when we started going for actual 'takes' and after two false starts we finished the first, and as it turned out, the only complete take.
What we didn't know, as we put down our instruments to go out to the mobile and listen to the result was that the roadies had been desperately holding the doors shut against the police, who were attempting to enter and stop us working. Thankfully they managed to hold them off long enough for us to finish the song. Apparently the noise level was such that we were keeping the entire town awake and there had been numerous complaints from irate residents.
Obviously it would be impossible to do any more work that night and the protest put paid to the idea of recording the album there. After all, we often worked at night and having some kind of time restriction was not a handicap with which we could live.
Back to the drawing board.
Claude, despite having lost his entire Casino, soon went on the search for another venue. Meanwhile, the band found themselves able to do nothing productive for the next five or six days.
Swiss time was running out -- it seemed that we would lose the race
The Rolling Stones' mobile studio that they had hired was proving to be of no use during this time, with all the money they had spent on it being wasted. And Swiss time was indeed running out -- any longer and they might not be able to complete the album. (Recording had already been delayed earlier by Ian Gillan contracting hepatitis.) Finding a suitable place was proving a problem, however:
What we needed was actually difficult to find; enough space in which the band could set up, a decent enough sound, a parking place for the mobile studio, and somewhere where we could make a lot of noise late at night. Montreux didn't appear to be big enough any more so we started looking in the surrounding countryside for a barn or something, but it was winter in the mountains and nothing appeared to be remotely acceptable. Just remote.
During one of these lost and searching days, I awoke one morning in my room at the Europe and, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, with eyes still closed, heard myself say the words "smoke on the water" to the empty room. Opening my eyes, I wondered if I had actually said it out loud, or had I been dreaming? No, I concluded, I'd actually spoken those words. Mentally filing it away, I thought nothing more about it until later, when I told Ian Gillan. "Sounds like a drug song," he observed and, since we were devoutly a drinking band, we dismissed it.
We ended up at the Grand Hotel; it was empty, cold and bare
But with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside, making our music there
With a few red lights, a few old bits, we made a place to sweat
No matter what we get out of this, I know -- I know we'll never forget
At last, a location was found: the Grand Hotel. It was closed, allowing them to make as much noise as they wanted, with wide corridors suitable to record in. But the sound needed controlling, thus some modifications needed to be made:
First of all a carpenter was hired to construct a temporary but substantial wall, closing off the foyer from the corridor. Mattresses from a couple of the hotel rooms were used as further insulation for both sound and heat. This took a precious couple of days, during which a feverish amount of activity was taking place. The gear was unloaded and set up, Ian's drums having their own little booth at the point where there was a T-junction in the corridor, Jon and Ritchie's equipment at opposing ends of the main corridor, and my bass amplifier in one of the guest rooms. An industrial heater was rented since the hotel's own system was off for the season. The mobile was parked as close to the front entrance as possible and chocks put in front of the wheels to stop it rolling down the incline. Wires and cables started snaking their way all over the place, and microphones were set up.
“We had the Rolling Stones’ mobile recording unit sitting outside in the snow, but to get there we had to run cable through two doors in the corridor into a room, through a bathroom and into another room, from which it went across a bed and out the veranda window, then ran along the balcony for about 100 feet and came back in through another bedroom window. It then went through that room’s bathroom and into another corridor, then all the way down a marble staircase to the foyer reception area of the hotel, out the front door, across the courtyard and up the steps into the back of the mobile unit. I think that setup led to capturing some spontaneity, because once we got to the truck for a playback, even if we didn’t think it was a perfect take, we’d go, ‘Yeah, that’s good enough.’ Because we just couldn’t stand going back again.” -- Ritchie
Jon was a great character; wonderful. I mean… you know, he’s not been in the band for nearly 10 years but we were still in very close contact. And Jon was kind of like… we all looked up to him. He was there when Roger and I joined the band ’69 and he had a lot of… he was a fun guy; very bright, great sense of humour but he had gravitas as well.
When he… when we got the news, we were in Nashville in session there and we kind of expected it but it was still a terrible blow. And so it all went quiet for a while, needless to say, and then we started recalling the good times – as you do. His spirit is very much in the record; in the music. In fact I remember writing a line at the time: “Souls having touched are forever entwined.” And that got into one of the songs and so he’s there in the music.
I don’t think he’ll ever be away from it really, because he created the foundation of Purple. I mean… there was so many influences coming in but his… a bit of rock and roll, soul, blues, folk music and all that sort of thing but his input of orchestral composition and jazz were profound, to say the least.
From a recent interview with Ian Gillan on Jon Lord's legacy
Smoke on the Water, a song boasting possibly the most recognisable guitar riff in the world, is one of rock's genuine classics. What's more is that every word in the song is true, revealing a remarkable story about how the song (and the album it was on) came to be made.
We all came down to Montreux, by the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile -- we didn't have much time
Deep Purple arrived at the Montreux Casino on 3 December 1971. They had hired the Rolling Stones' mobile studio to record their next album, Machine Head, and would do so at the Casino.
Roger Glover:
The sound that live recordings had -- open and exciting, unlike most studio recordings which were dry and muted -- meant that enthusiasm for the idea of recording an album in a live setting was high. Our accountant, Bill Reid, had also informed us that if we wrote and recorded anywhere out of England, our tax situation would be improved. Say no more. The Casino at Montreux, Switzerland, a venue that we had played in once or twice, seemed a promising choice; it was a fair sized hall, it had a good sound, and it was available for a month. Furthermore, Claude Nobs, the man in charge of the place, seemed eager and willing to steer us around any obstacles that might be in our way.
The venue would close for the winter, in order for refurbishments to take place, but there was just one gig left for the year.
Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around
Courtesy of Claude Nobs, the band had all received tickets to the concert by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, to be held at the Casino in the afternoon of 4 December.
To avoid confusion we had decided that it would be better not to unload our equipment until Zappa's was out of the building -- in retrospect a fortuitous decision. Claude had set aside a small seating area to ensure a modicum of privacy and so the entire band and crew attended the show which commenced, I seem to recall, at the unusual time of 3.00pm.
But some stupid with a flare gun burnt the place to the ground
About an hour into the set, sparks were seen high up by the decorative bamboo ceiling over the audience. The band stopped playing. We didn't know it at the time but apparently someone had fired a flare gun into the ceiling. Hurried whispers took place before a deadpan Frank announced that no one should panic but there was a... FIRE! With that he rushed off the stage followed by his amused and bewildered band. There followed instructions for the building to be evacuated and people started filing out in a fairly orderly fashion.
Funky Claude was running in and out, pulling kids out the ground
Claude Nobs really was the hero of that day, as Roger remembers:
There was little or no panic except for a few broken windows and some kids being trapped in the basement, fortunately rescued by Claude.
Roger wasn't too bothered by the danger at first, though; he recalls being more interested by the band's synthesisers...
At this point there was barely a hint of a fire, just a few wisps of smoke hanging around where the sparks had been seen. I walked outside and found that somehow I had become separated from the rest of the band. Unaware of any danger I wandered back into the building to see if they were still inside. I remember standing in front of the now empty stage in the deserted auditorium and inspecting Zappa's gear. The attraction was that he had synthesisers and, since these strange new instruments were then the cutting edge of music technology, I was interested to see what they looked like. I was impressed; he had two of them.
However, my band mates were not around, so I wandered out again. I say 'wandered' because that is what it felt like. There was no panic as such, no urgency, no sense of impending doom.
They burned down the Gambling House; it died with an awful sound
Roger had by then made his way outside and rejoined the band. Soon, the panic arose:
Within minutes, the place was an inferno, and I do not use the word lightly.
The Casino was a large structure, eight or ten stories high, housing not only the concert hall that we were going to use, but several bars, restaurants, discos, convention areas and of course the large gambling rooms. Flames roared out and black smoke filled the sky. Fire engines came racing up and finally a sense of urgency was evident, alas too late. We retreated back to the comparative safety of the Europe Hotel and watched in awe as the huge building burned away, putting on its last spectacular show.
For a while, there were fears for the surrounding buildings, especially an adjacent high rise apartment block, but as it turned out the Casino, along with Frank Zappa and the Mothers' equipment, would be the only casualties.
Ritchie's like a terrier or pit bull. He gets hold of something and won't let go. He has a vision of what he wants, and he'll fight and fight until he gets what he wants.
Pictures from the re-recording of Smoke on the Water for Rock Aid Armenia in 1989. Featuring: Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Geoff Beauchamp, Paul Rodgers, Chris Squire, Roger Taylor, Tony Iommi, Keith Emerson, Dave Gilmour, Brian May, Bryan Adams and Bruce Dickinson. Taken from an article of Q magazine reporting on the sessions, which can be read here.
The official website for Rock Aid Armenia (where more pictures and info on the sessions can be found)
The video of the finished track
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