It's going to be a huge thing.' Now there's no guitar player in the world who doesn't know. It's a tune called "Smoke On The Water.'" So I listened to it. One day they were coming up for dinner at my house and they said, 'Claude we did a little surprise for you, but it's not going to be on the album. Finally I found a place in a little abandoned hotel next to my house and we made a temporary studio for them. Poor Claude and there's no casino anymore!' They were supposed to do a live gig and record the new album there. Nobs explained to how this song arose out of the ashes: "Deep Purple were watching the whole fire from their hotel window, and they said, 'Oh my God, look what happened. He is the co-founder of the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival. "Funky Claude," as in the lyrics "Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground," is Claude Nobs, a man who helped rescue some people in the fire and found another hotel for the band to stay. The B-side of the single was another version of the song, recorded live in Japan. It took off when they released it as a US single over a year after the album came out. The band did not think this would be a hit and rarely played it live. The water that provides a base for the smoke in this song is Lake Geneva, which the casino overlooked. He thought it was a great title, but was reluctant to use it because it sounded like a drug song.
Roger Glover came up with the image of smoke on the water. This prompted Ian Gillan to say "Break a leg, Frank," into the microphone after recording this for a BBC special in 1972. He then broke his leg a few days later when a fan pulled him into the crowd at a show in England. See a photo of the fire in Song Images.įrank Zappa, who is mentioned in the lyrics, lost all his equipment in the fire. The band was relocated to another hotel and recorded the album in the Rolling Stones mobile studio. The band was going to record their Machine Head album there right after a Frank Zappa concert, but someone fired a flare gun at the ceiling during Zappa's show, which set the place on fire.
I would often go a step further and try to come up with some ideas of my own with the track, or even try for example improvising a completely different guitar solo." Smoke on the Water" is a song by Deep Purple which is about a fire in the Casino at Montreux, Switzerland. And even when I do know it, I know I could still play it better so I don’t stop practicing it. Only when I reliably reach this point with a song will I think of saying to myself “Yeah, I know that song”. However, it does mean being able to:ġ) Play it all the whole way through, without mistakesĢ) While standing up (when did you last see a rock band sitting down?)ģ) While turned up loud on a real amp (not a preset on a bedroom amp which disguises your sound)Ĥ) In time and grooving with other instruments (or backing track) What is ‘performance standard’? It doesn’t mean you need to actually be performing to a big audience, as in playing in a gig or concert. That means knowing your basic parts before you would actually practice them with a group, or practice playing them through to performance standard. There’s a separate chord pattern and ending to go under the guitar solo.Įverything so far is just getting a song to a rehearsal stage. You mean one of the three previous riffs, two of which you probably don’t know? No, sorry bro. “Uh, well, wouldn’t it just be one of the riffs we’ve already had?” Easy.īro… don’t tell me you don’t know what to play here either? I’ll play that, if you just accompany me on rhythm guitar. I’ll be generous now and say you don’t need to play Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar solo. Phew, it’s quite a long one - about 50 seconds. This whole pattern will repeat another time, so your next opportunity to play the main riff is at about 2 minutes 40 seconds. So the main riff returns around 1 minute 40 seconds - that’s great, because you know what to play again (… for about the next 15 seconds).
So far so good - we’ve stood here like a tool for almost a whole minute while the song continues without us. That riff repeats twice before the main riff eventually comes back after that. Instead there seems to be another riff at the end of the verse. What’s that? Damn! The main riff hasn’t come back yet. Oh well, we’ll just wait for that main riff to come back along. Because most players have absolutely no idea what comes after the main riff in most of the songs they know. See, I know for a fact that most players in this situation simply stop playing and start looking around awkwardly.