An amazing thing happened on 17th Oct 2013 at the Roundhouse in Camden, London.  I stood in the audience and listened to the most famous guitar riff in rock history played by band themselves – Deep Purple !!!!. Listening to it on the radio as a teen in Delhi had been mind blowing. Watching them on stage was an out of body experience! Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” is one of the world’s greatest rock songs. Perfect music to drink loads of booze, and shout “bastard, pass the cigarette” at your friend. Strangely,for me the best part of the song is not the riff, it’s the sound of Ian Paice on the  high hats about 19 seconds into the song…But I digress….

Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Roger Glover & Ian Paice was the classic Mark 2 line up that lasted from Jul 69 – Jun 73. It gave the band amazing albums like Made In Japan & Machine Head and some of their biggest hits like Woman from Tokyo, Highway Star, Child In Time, Strange Kind of Woman, Fireball. Made In Japan is one the top five live albums ever. Anyone who disagrees with that can take it up with the Admissions Office.

Of course, in our teens in Delhi we didn’t know any of the story behind this fantastic head banging music. Deep Purple were in Montreux as a tax dodge – their accountant figured out that if they recorded outside the UK, then all income from outside the UK wouldn’t be taxed. So, they rented a mobile unit from The Rolling Stones and after touring Europe, decided to record their biggest album at the Montreux Casino’s arena prompted by Claude Nobs, the director of the Montreux Jazz Festival. The day before Deep Purple were to record at the casino, Dec. 4, 1971, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were playing a gig at the Montreux casino. Deep Purple were in the audience (the BBC Four’s “Made In Japan” video actually has the band members telling this story!). Zappa was deep into the show, playing “King Kong,” when someone in the crowd fired a flare gun at the wooden roof and “poof”, it caught fire.

“Frank Zappa and the Mothers were at the best place around,

But some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground”.

As the fire spread, Claude Nobs joined firefighters in dragging concert-goers out to safety.

“They burned down the gambling house,

It died with an awful sound.

Funky Claude was running in and out, yeah,

Pulling kids out the ground”

Deep Purple watched the fire and smoke billowing out across Lake Geneva. And the rest is Rock history    !