Since its release as part of the British hard rockers’ landmark 1972 LP “Machine Head”, “Smoke on the Water” has enjoyed a reputation as one of the most immediately recognizable songs in all of rock.
In addition to being driven by a delightful earworm of a lick (whose effectiveness and simplicity meant that countless players made their first steps on the electric guitar by learning it), the fourth and final single from Deep Purple’s sixth studio album also had its lyrics tell one of the wildest true stories in rock history.
Of course, the whole ordeal of a fire engulfing the Montreux Casino during a Frank Zappa gig and making it harder for Deep Purple to record the follow-up to 1971’s “Fireball” would be well-known to anyone who’s heard the song (and if you’re reading this, chances are you’d know those lyrics by heart already).
Speaking to “Eska Rock” in a new interview, Roger Glover also highlighted that there were no immediate big plans for “Smoke on the Water” — i.e. that it began as just another jam following the intense experience (transcription via Killer Guitar Rigs):
“Ritchie [Blackmore] is the instigator of most of the riffs, but not all of them — some, I do. Usually, it’s an odd kind of band because we start with the instrumental first. We don’t even think about what the songs are about until afterwards.”
“And that’s because the musicians in the band are so good that they just love to play. So Ian Gillan, with my help, tends to sort of wait until the backing tracks are finished, and then figure out what’s gonna go on top, which is backwards to what most people do.”
Reflecting on the legendary song’s origins, Glover said:
“‘Smoke on the Water’ happened because when the fire stopped us from using the casino. [Funky] Claude Nobs — who was in charge — managed to find another venue. It’s like a small theater not far. We sat up there and started to record, but we only managed to do one track, which was around about midnight on that day.”
“And it was just a jam, we didn’t know what it was going to be. It was a mid-tempo with a kind of interesting riff. And we just threw out a very quick arrangement, and then the police stopped us.”
“Five days later, we managed to find the Grand Hotel and get set up in there. We were desperate right now, because we only had the Rolling Stones Mobile [Studio] for three weeks. We thought, ‘Three weeks is enough to make a record.’ Well, now it’s less than two weeks. It was short. So we were really up against the wall.”
He added:
“And I think maybe that helped. It kind of brought us together as a band. We were trapped in this situation. We had to finish this album. And we’re running out of time.”
Not unlike Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”, “Smoke on the Water” was recorded at a pinch as Deep Purple was racing against time to finish the record:
“We were short one song, and we thought, ‘Well, let’s listen to that thing we did in the small theater.’ And after the fire, I’d said to myself — I actually woke up in bed one morning and said — ‘Smoke on the water!’ out loud to an empty room. And I thought, ‘Wow, that’s an interesting title for a song!'”
“So that’s what we used, and so let’s write a song about what happened here. So the lyrics and songs come from real life. They come from stories of things that happen to us, or things we read in the newspaper, or whatever it is. It’s all part of where the lyrics come from. The whole thing is very instinctive. We rely on instinct.”
