The the the, de de the the, the the the, duh duh…
I mentioned it to Ian (Gillan, singer) and he said: “Yeah, sounds like a drug song, we’d better not do that.”
We all know it. It’s the riff that every aspiring guitarist tries out as soon as they pick up their instrument. “Smoke On The Water” is one of the most well-known and famous riffs of all time.
This story is also quite famous. The water is, of course, Lake Geneva. And the smoke was a fire in the casino during a Frank Zappa gig at the Montreux Jazz Festival in December 1971. Deep Purple were in the hall, managed to escape the fire and wrote the song that would appear on their album Machine Head the following year.
Look further
Last Monday (8th), Deep Purple returned to Montreux and played a set at the 58th edition of the same festival that included a specially presented version of the track.
As the iconic riff started, a curtain at the back of the stage rose to reveal a sparkling Lake Geneva bathed in smoke. Frontman Ian Gillan asked the audience to sing the riff and the 5,000-capacity crowd obliged, getting louder and louder before the drums kicked in. It was obviously something special.
The man who came up with the riff – Ritchie Blackmore – wasn’t there, having left Deep Purple in the early ’90s. Blackmore has claimed he was inspired by Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which also features a simple four-note chorus, but he didn’t come up with it – it was part of Purple’s final live jam, Mandrake Root, for several years. The guitarist had previously used the riff during his time with Screaming Lord Sutch and The Savages.
Look further
The title, however, comes from bassist Roger Glover, who said he got it after waking up from a dream a few days later: “I said it in an empty room. And then I kind of woke up for real and said, ‘What did I just say? Smoke on the water?’
“I have no idea what that meant. I mentioned it to Ian (Gillan, singer) and he said, ‘Yeah, sounds like a drug song, we’d better not do that.'”
The fire itself had started during the Zappa show when someone fired a flare gun into the rattan-covered ceiling (hence the phrase “some fool with a flare gun”). The fire spread quickly, and although no one died in the ensuing inferno, it looked eerie and hellish from the distance of Purple’s hotel room.
“It burned all afternoon, all evening, all night,” Glover recalls. “The next morning we looked at it and there it was, gone. It was a terrifying sight.”
The band had come to Montreux with the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio in tow, planning to record their next album in the casino itself. But now that they had no venue, they moved to the Pavilion Theatre. When they had to leave because of noise pollution from local residents, they made their way to the Grand Hotel.
As a latecomer to Purple’s new song inventory, Smoke On The Water was not initially considered a candidate for the album. “It was just another riff, like Into The Fire,” Ian Gillan recalled in a 2022 MusicRadar interview. “We didn’t make a big deal out of it and it wasn’t considered as a song for the album. It was a jam session at the first soundcheck.”
“We didn’t work on the arrangement – it was a jam session. Smoke only made it onto the album as a filler because we didn’t have enough time. On vinyl, 38 minutes is the optimal time if you want good quality – 19 minutes per side – and we were about seven minutes short and we had a day left. So we dug out the jam session and added vocals.”
Armed with Glover’s title, Gillan quickly scribbled down some lyrics: “As it was the last track, there was a lot to write. It ended up being a biographical account of the making of the Machine Head album. ‘We all came to Montreux…’ and so on!” In fact, one of the best things about Smoke On The Water is its sober, diary-like lyrics. Gillan’s words have no deep or profound meaning: this is simply what happened.
The album Machine Head was released in April, just five months after the fire – music was moving fast in those days – and was another huge success for the band, reaching number one in the UK and number seven in the US. But Smoke surpassed its predecessor, achieving a level of popularity far beyond anything Purple had recorded before.
It has been covered many times and was revived in 1989 by Rock Aid Armenia, a charity ensemble that raised money for earthquake victims in Armenia that year. Along with Satisfaction and Seven Nation Army, it is arguably the most famous guitar riff of all time.
Look further
The man who came up with the title is aware of its enduring appeal. Roger Glover once noted in an interview with Metal Hammer: “I think ‘Smoke On The Water’ is the biggest song Purple will ever have and there’s always pressure to play it.”
“It’s not the best live song. It’s a good song, but you just kind of drag yourself through it. The excitement always comes from the audience.”
