It’s a guitar riff for the ages. “Dam, dam, daaaam. Dam, dam, da-daaaaam!” The intro to the Deep Purple hit “Smoke On The Water” entices even people who don’t have much interest in hard rock to play the air guitar. Over 50 years after the song’s release, Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan remembers. “The song was just a gap filler,” says the 78-year-old in an interview with the German Press Agency in London. “Our album was too short.”
Classics of rock history
“Machine Head” is the name of the album, which was recorded under special circumstances in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1971. The song “Smoke On The Water” tells about this. Deep Purple’s sixth studio album is now considered an absolute classic in rock history. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary, “Machine Head” was reissued on a large scale with a slight delay. The “Anniversary Deluxe Edition” was released on Friday with new mixes and lots of bonus material.
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“It’s really a shock,” says Gillan over tea in a London recording studio, noting that the recordings date back over 50 years. “Because we still play some of the songs live, of course, the album is still alive for us.” In addition to “Smoke On The Water,” which Deep Purple always play as the last song at their concerts before the encores, there are “Pictures Of Home “, “Highway Star” and “Lazy” usually in the set. “That’s why the album never faded. It was never gone. There’s something alive about it.”
Deep Purple originally wanted to record with a mobile recording studio in a concert hall in the Montreux Casino. The band had already performed there. But before the recording, there was a catastrophic incident at a Frank Zappa concert in the casino when an audience member caused a fire. “But some fool with a flare gun burned the place to the ground,” Gillan sings in “Smoke On The Water.” “We ended up at the Grand Hotel.”
Milestone in career
For several weeks, Gillan and his then colleagues in the so-called Mark II line-up – bassist Roger Glover, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, organist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice – stayed in the Grand Hotel, which was closed in winter. There they built the “Rolling Stones Mobile Studio,” which had once belonged to Mick Jagger and Co. Their plan was to capture the live atmosphere better than in a traditional recording studio.
They were not aware that they would create a milestone in their career with “Machine Head”. “Did we know it was going to be important? No!” says Gillan. “Did we enjoy it? Yes, it was fantastic!” The group has never worked together so harmoniously again. “The trouble started later, when we made (the album) Who Do We Think We Are.”
The “Anniversary Deluxe Edition” with the old cover of the album. Photo: Universal Music/dpa
The now iconic rock song about prehistory was seven minutes long and wasn’t actually suitable as a single. “Our fans liked him at the concerts, but the general public didn’t know him unless they bought the album. You definitely didn’t hear it on the radio.” Until a record company representative saw the enthusiastic reaction of the audience at a concert in the USA and then shortened the song to three minutes. “Boom! Suddenly it was playing non-stop on the radio because it fit the format,” says Gillan. “It was just a stroke of luck that he was there that night and made that decision.”
Historical relevance
The “Machine Head – Deluxe Anniversary Edition” contains a completely new mix of the album, for which Dweezil Zappa, son of Frank Zappa, who died in 1993, was responsible. It was the record company’s idea. “When I heard that I thought: Oh yeah, what a great idea!” says Gillan, amused. The new mix sounds “totally different,” says the graying singer. “I don’t understand much about it, but I have absolute respect for it.”
The box with LP, 3 CDs, Blu-Ray, booklet and various memorabilia also includes a remastered version of the original mix, a concert recording from 1972 from London and a previously unreleased recording from 1971 from the Casino Montreux, which later burned down, in limited sound quality. “Because of historical relevance,” it says on the back of the box. In fact, the rough recording is an exciting and worth listening to the times.
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Despite all the nostalgia and the entertaining stories of the past, Ian Gillan is already looking forward again. He has long been working on the next studio album with his long-time bandmates Roger Glover and Ian Paice, keyboardist Don Airey, who joined later, and new guitarist Simon McBride. It will be Deep Purple’s 23rd. The next tour is also planned. In October the rock veterans will also be coming to Luxembourg for a concert.
Deep Purple in the Rock Hall
On October 31st the cult band will play in Esch/Belval at the Rockhal. Further information and tickets for the concert are available at www.atelier.lu.
