The album’s remaining six songs were recorded there along with solo overdubs and vocals for “Smoke on the Water.” There, the band used mattresses and red lightbulbs to transform a long, high-ceilinged corridor into a studio. But that night, they were able to tape only the basic instrumental track for “Smoke on the Water” before the police arrived to evict them for waking the entire neighborhood.ĭeep Purple then relocated to the shuttered Grand Hotel in neighboring Territet. In need of a new site that would allow Deep Purple to reproduce its loud live sound, the band moved to Le Pavillon, a nearby theater. 4, the night before the first scheduled recording session, the venue caught fire. Invited to the Swiss resort town by the founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, Deep Purple was due to record its album in the spacious Montreux Casino. This is important because where the band wound up recording had a major impact on the album’s booming sound. To thrive initially, British rock bands had to make a loud, slamming statement to draw a following at gigs and to stimulate record sales and chart activity.ĭeep Purple’s “Machine Head”-named for the adjustment knobs at the top of the electric guitar and bass-was recorded in December 1971 in Montreux, Switzerland. Unlike FM in the U.S., the U.K.’s BBC did not extensively feature hard rock on Radio 1 until the 1970s and wasn’t in stereo until the late 1980s. “Machine Head” was part of a hard-rock album revolution that began in the U.K. 4 on Billboard’s pop chart in July ’73 did “Machine Head” climb the album chart, peaking at No. Not until “Smoke on the Water” was issued and soared to No. In FM’s infancy, most teens first heard “Smoke on the Water” on AM radio, a year after the release of “Machine Head.” Initially, Purple, the band’s own label, put out three other songs as singles, but all failed to chart in the U.S. Even today, the album is ferocious and among the first hard-rock albums to exploit rhythm and the exceptional musicianship of all bandmembers, particularly guitarist It’s the band’s most successful record, selling more than two million copies. The song first appeared on “Machine Head,” Deep Purple’s sixth studio album, which was released on March 25, 1972. In the early 1970s, the fanfare and song touched a primal nerve with many post-Woodstock teens and marked a turning point in rock’s shift to cast-iron instrumentals and wailing solos. The four power chords that open Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” are still one of hard rock’s most recognizable riffs.
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