The Terrors of Recording: The Deep Purple song they almost got arrested for
Rock and roll stars are not meant to be the most law-abiding citizens in the world. If fans found out that Keith Richards spent most of his downtime sitting in his hotel room watching TV instead of living up to his rockstar stereotype, there’s a good chance they would feel at least a little bit cheated. Deep Purple may have come up in the era that promoted a hedonistic lifestyle, but they got the police called on them for doing the one thing they were supposed to do.
It’s not like the band couldn’t get into bad behaviour when they wanted to. Ritchie Blackmore famously went against the program every time he had the chance, including hiding during the California Jam Festival to ensure the band could go on after sunset. Controlling the set may be a bit of a dick move, but no one can get in the way of a band putting something down in the studio.
As the group started working on what would become Machine Head, they hit a major stumbling block when the venue they were set to record in burned down during a Frank Zappa concert. While they may have dodged a bullet by not loading their gear into the venue as planned, the hunt was on for a new studio in the middle of Switzerland.
After finding an abandoned hotel that looked like something right out of The Shining, the band decided to use The Rolling Stones’ mobile studio to record most of the record. Amid the songs they had already been working out, like ‘Highway Star’, Ian Gillan already had the makings of a song about their bizarre circumstances with ‘Smoke on the Water’.
Even though the song has given the world one of the greatest guitar earworms, the band was determined to get it right on the mobile before the week was out. It’s one thing to work into the hours of the night in a regular studio…it’s a completely different studio when you’re doing it in a little suburban town in the Swiss Alps.
As bassist Roger Glover recalled, the entire band were in the middle of recording when police began trying to break the door in, telling Classic Albums, “Just as we were doing the take of what would eventually be ‘Smoke on the Water’, the police were there. And our roadies were holding the door shut because, apparently, we were keeping up the entire town of Montreux”.
Then again, the entire world would feel the pain of hearing the song repeatedly for the next few years. I mean, if you think hearing the song every time you walk into a guitar shop gets old really quick, just imagine how it feels while the band went through take after take and probably played it pretty poorly while they tried to get themselves together for the final record.
If the band had cops outside the studio, you could hardly tell while listening to the music. Compared to the hard rock edge of the rest of the album, there’s a certain laid-back groove to the song that makes it almost impossible to resist when you hear those first notes blaring out of the speakers.
Blackmore would end up thanking the police by the end of things, though, saying that if it weren’t for them, they would have never gotten the final take of the song. Deep Purple may have been able to make different strides every time they made a record, but if they had continued on for a few more takes, chances are they would have left this album in handcuffs rather than with an all-time classic.
