![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/morse3.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/airey2.jpg)
Classic Rock magazine rehashes the story we’ve heard a million times by now — how Smoke came to being. This includes an undated quote from Blackmore (that was at some point subjected to a rather poor OCR, and had to be corrected by us): I was jamming with Ian Paice at a soundcheck, because we […]
Read more »The desk of useless facts in our trainspotting department reports that at some point in time the stretch of the central street in Montreux called Grand Rue was renamed Avenue Claude-Nobs. Such that the building known as Le Petit Palais, that was the venue of the first Machine Head session — y’know, the one that […]
Read more »The Guardian has a piece on the casino burning down and associated shenanigans as a part of their How we made series. With input from Roger Glover and Ian Paice. RG: There’s a great photograph of singer Ian Gillan with his notebook open and the first two verses written. I’m sat opposite him listening to […]
Read more »Back in 2016, when Deep Purple were performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Simon Robinson arranged a visit of Roger Glover and Don Airey to the building that used to be The Grand Hotel in 1971. Here is Roger talking about the events that unfolded 45 years prior right where it happened.
Read more »Ritchie Blackmore tells the story of writing and recording of Smoke on the Water.
Read more »A lifestyle/travel publication TimeOut (somewhat belatedly) reviews the 2024 Montreux Jazz Festival: There are few riffs more recognisable than the four-note sequence of ‘Smoke On The Water’. It’s been 53 years since a fire destroyed Montreux Casino during a Frank Zappa concert; a scene which members of Deep Purple watched from afar and would later […]
Read more »NME reviews the 2024 Montreux Jazz Festival and starts right with the most important in our quarters: “We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline,” growls Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan, erupting after what could arguably be the most iconic riff ever gets a bigger reaction than any guitar part could – […]
Read more »Deep Purple has performed at the Montreux Jazz festival on July 8, 2024. This year, the festival added a new venue — an open air stage on the town’s central square, with Lake Geneva right behind the stage. This is where the band has played their set. Smoke on the Water was accompanied by the […]
Read more »Frank Zappa bassist Jim Pons was onstage performing with Zappa when someone in the audience fired a flare gun into the ceiling of the casino in Montreux and burned down the building in December 1971 – the inspiration for Deep Purple’s “Smoke On the Water.” Hear him tell his version of the story here. With […]
Read more »Deep Purple are performing again at the Montreux Jazz Festival this year on July 8, and the day before, on July 7 Ian Gillan, Ian Paice, and Roger Glover will be participating in a workshop event held by The Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation (MJAF). If Montreux is known far and wide, it’s thanks in no […]
Read more »
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing