How the Swiss police got in the way of Deep Purple creating ‘Smoke on the Water’

“smoke on the water” is one of the greatest hits of the deep purple and features an iconic riff, played thousands of times by guitarists around the world. The history of the track’s creation, however, is somewhat troubled, as revealed by several members of the band.

In an interview with Classic Rock Magazine (via NME), the drummer Ian Paice commented on the “quite hostile” situation they faced with the police in Switzerland, where they recorded “smoke on the water.”

The band was playing in a trailer after the Montreux Casino catch fire by using flares inside the venue. They planned to record the disc machine head there, but they were forced to change their plans.

The police decided to knock on the trailer door, as the music from the deep purple was very high, according Paice: “There was no soundproofing and we were recording that night. Infernal noise!” “We did ‘smoke on the water‘ right there. I came up with the riff on the spur of the moment. Ian It is Roger Glover joined me,” added the guitarist Ritchie Blackmoreone of the founders.

“We were in the trailer listening to some of the takes and there was a slamming sound on the door. It was the local police, who were trying to stop us because of the noise. We knew they might shut everything down. We told them martin birch, our sound engineer: ‘Let’s see if we can get one last take.’ Meanwhile, they were outside, banging and drawing weapons… It was getting pretty hostile,” he continued.

The solution was to lock the doors of the place until they managed to record the last take they wanted, before the police ended the night of recording the deep purple… and it worked!