![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/mcbride2.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/airey3.jpg)
Running in and out
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 produced backing track for Smoke and was unceremoniously terminated by the police on noise complaints — now has street address of Av. Claude-Nobs 1, 1820 Montreux, Switzerland. While the very posh Montreux Palace Hotel across the street, the home of Funky Claude’s Bar is at #2.
This concludes our public service announcements for today.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The Pavillion is what it was called back then. It was the bed track that was recorded there, not the backing track. Montreux is missing an “r” in your version above.
April 25th, 2026 at 19:59The term “backing track” has gotten a whole new meaning nowadays since it’s the term used for what many bands use onstage now to enhance the sound, or for effects that are hard to replicate live as we know. Bands also used backing tracks where the vocals were excluded for singback on TV-shows etc, the whole mix from the album but no vocals. So backing track was a regular term back then. Bed tracks was also a known term of course, both are correct though for the time when they did Machine Head.
April 27th, 2026 at 19:44I was being a little retentive there. Ha.
April 28th, 2026 at 00:20That’s a good thing, James, no worries.
April 28th, 2026 at 11:46Montreux Palace Hotel across the street, the home of Funky Claude’s Bar is at #2.
That’s the next European weekend away sorted! Funky Claude’s Bar has a cocktail menu which includes a “Smoke On The Water”.
There’s also a Funky Claude’s in Geneva airport.
April 30th, 2026 at 11:39