The album Deep Purple recorded entirely in a hotel
It was a simple enough plan – British hard rock pioneers Deep Purple were going to record their sixth studio album, Machine Head, at the Montreaux Casino. Under the watchful eye of Claude Nobs, who also ran the Montreaux Jazz Festival, the band had their eye on using the performance stage as a recording studio, with the possible idea of creating a half live/half studio recording. All they had to do was wait for the final performance at the casino before it closed down for the winter.
That performer was Frank Zappa and his backing band, the Mothers of Invention. At the very last show, before the stage was set to be reserved for Deep Purple, a member of the audience fired a flare gun into the ceiling. The resulting flames completely engulfed the casino. Although nobody had been hurt, Deep Purple were now stuck in Montreaux without a studio to record in.
Initially, the solution was to pack up the band’s gear and ship over to the Pavilion, a theatre that was close by. Nobs helped the band book the theatre, but Deep Purple’s loud volume eventually caused noise complaints that got them evicted from the venue. At one point, the band’s crew had to literally hold the doors shut while they were recording so that the police couldn’t get in.
With resources running low, it was time for something desperate. By this point, the band were looking for any building that could allow them to play at loud volumes undisturbed. The majestic Hôtel des Alpes-Grand Hôtel on the outskirts of Montreaux was the unlikely solution. The Grand Hotel had been empty and largely abandoned by this time, which gave Deep Purple the perfect setting to record their music without having to worry about disturbing guests.
At the end of a corridor in the main lobby, the band set up their equipment and began recording Machine Head. Instruments and amps were strewn throughout different rooms and parts of the hallway in a haphazard manner. It all fed into the mobile recording truck that was stationed outside. After a certain point, Deep Purple stopped listening to playbacks of their takes because it was too difficult to get in and out of their setup stations.
“We had the Rolling Stones’ mobile recording unit sitting outside in the snow,” Richie Blackmore recalled to Guitar World. “Once we got to the truck for a playback, even if we didn’t think it was a perfect take, we’d go, ‘Yeah, that’s good enough.’ Because we just couldn’t stand going back again.”
The band’s experiences were the inspiration behind ‘Smoke on the Water’, which recounts the fire that put them in the Grand Hotel in the first place. Although it was an unconventional studio, the Grand Hotel wound up being the perfect solution for Deep Purple, with classic songs like ‘Highway Star’ and ‘Space Truckin’ coming out of the sessions. For his help and adaptability, Nobs was given a credit in the album’s liner notes and a shout-out in the lyrics to ‘Smoke on the Water’ as “Funky Claude”.
Check out ‘Highway Star’ down below.
