Smoke on the Water, Or, How Some Stupid with a Flare Gun Begets a Legend

Fire at the Montreux Casino, December 4, 1971 - Source: Darker Than Blue

It was 40 years ago that one of the most famous disasters in the annals of live music occurred. December 4th, 1971 was the day of the now-legendary fire at the Montreux Casino, on the Lake Geneva shoreline. Fortunately, the only thing that died that day was the historic building where the fire occurred. But out of the ashes, or out of the smoke as it were, was born one of the most legendary riff-based songs in rock history.

The lyrics of  Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" are a true tale and a rare instance where a band wrote a song about the experience of recording the album from which it came. The story is all there, told in a span of five plus minutes, over a set of chords which most if not every person who has picked up a guitar over the past four decades knows how to play, or thinks they know. More on that later.

The Deep Purple Appreciation Society has a fantastic day-by-day account of the events leading up to the fire and continuing on as Purple made a place to sweat in the days following as they recorded Machine Head. Check it out if you are so inclined. Before you do that though, here is a recording of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, as they played live on the afternoon of 12/4/71 at Montreux Casino, and the moment where a band member yells "Fire!" followed by Zappa (who coincidentally passed away on December 4th, of 1993) calmly directing his fans to leave. Jump to the 1:21:00 mark to hear it.



Fortunately you don't hear flames or screams, in fact the whole scene sounds amazingly calm. It is easy to say that between Zappa's direction and music promoter "Funky" Claude Nobs, who helped evacuate concert goers from the building, are among the reasons there was no loss of life in the fire.

One could literally write a book about the impact which "Smoke on the Water" has had on music over the course of nearly half-a-century. Everyone knows it, or is at least familiar with it. It is a go-to number for inclusion in music-based video games. Guitar retailers can surely ascribe more than a few sales to hopeful axe slingers because of the ease of playing the song's riff, which is also why attempts at setting new Guinness World records for largest guitar ensemble generally choose SOTW as the song of choice for such events.

Don't watch the whole thing. Just pause at :28 seconds in, look for the big guy in a green shirt. Yours truly is standing in front of him, sort of by myself.

As mentioned earlier, if you have played the opening riff to "Smoke on the Water" on your guitar, you might very well have been playing it wrong. Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore reveals the insidiously simple secret to it in this interview.

40 years ago, a near-tragedy became a rock music legend. And we have an unknown individual of questionable intelligence and poorly-timed used of pyrotechnics, to thank for it. Dun-dun-dah...

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