How Beethoven inspired Deep Purple song ‘Smoke on the Water’
Of all the progenitors of hard rock music, Deep Purple was one of the most eclectic. Having been through the pop music world as session players and working with the early iterations of the group as a knockoff version of the American act Vanilla Fudge, the band started to adapt to acts like Led Zeppelin with their Mark II lineup. Then again, they would always play more than just classic rock and roll.
As the band started riding high off their first singles, like their cover of the Joe South song ‘Hush’, Blackmore started to dislike the direction the band was going in, thinking it didn’t have that much staying power. To recharge their batteries, the new lineup began by performing a labour of love for keyboardist Jon Lord with a concert featuring an orchestra.
Although Blackmore liked the challenge of playing against some of the best players in the classical world, he was able to convince Lord to take a chance on rock after hearing Led Zeppelin, telling Classic Albums: “I felt ‘let’s give this heavy riff-y rock a chance and see it goes, and if it doesn’t work, then I’ll play with orchestras the rest of my life'”.
While singles like ‘Black Night’ hinted at something a little more sinister on the horizon, Lord was the one always pushing different classical pieces into the mix, including a zany keyboard solo in the middle of ‘Highway Star’ reminiscent of some of the more sweeping epics from the likes of Bach.
As the band started to make strides on their album Machine Head, a freak accident in the venue they were supposed to record in left them scrambling to find somewhere else before landing on The Rolling Stones’ mobile studio to use in the meantime. Making up a riff on the spur of the moment, Ritchie Blackmore began the central riff to ‘Smoke On the Water’ based around only a few chord pivots.
Although Blackmore didn’t think much of it at first, the riff became one of rock music’s most iconic melodic phrases, with a dead simple progression that any aspiring guitarist could pick up. According to bassist Roger Glover, though, even something that simple had its origins in classical music.
Though Blackmore hadn’t been the biggest fan of working with orchestras, Glover suggested that working within those confines helped him refine his riff-writing. When talking about the song’s origins, he suggested that Blackmore may have subconsciously channelled Beethoven when penning the riff, recalling the composer’s 5th symphony as its origins, saying, “You think of Beethoven, y’know. It’s so simple and yet it’s immediate”.
Glover would also describe Blackmore’s affinity for different classical arpeggios when tracking the song, playing something similar to Mozart for ‘Highway Star’. Even though Blackmore had built up a reputation as one of the finest players in the industry, Glover thinks that his skill for making some of their greatest riffs was the key to his genius, thinking that his focus on simplicity led to the song taking off.
Blackmore eventually took that love of classical music to heart in future projects, making songs that were much more elegant-sounding with Rainbow before embracing the world of Renaissance music in his later years with his outfit Blackmore’s Night. Led Zeppelin might have been the prime inspiration for Deep Purple, but Blackmore’s musical palette could only be soothed by sounds from the 16th century.
