{"id":697853,"date":"2026-05-27T12:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/697853\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:39:13","slug":"smoke-on-the-water-by-deep-purple-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/697853\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke On The Water by Deep Purple: The Story Behind The Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep Purple<\/a>\u2019s Mark II line-up released many great songs, but none have echoed down the years like Smoke On The Water. Released in 1972, it\u2019s one of the greatest rock songs of all time for at least two reasons. Firstly, it has that riff, one of the most memorable sequences of four notes ever arranged. Secondly, it deserves a prize from the Campaign For Plain English thanks to its helpfully literal lyrics, which detail the most iconic gig-gone-wrong in history.<\/p>\n

The band \u2013 Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Roger Glover (bass), Jon Lord (organ) and Ian Paice (drums) \u2013 had visited Montreux, near Lake Geneva in Switzerland (\u2018We all came down to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline\u2019) in order to record a new album in a mobile studio without delay (\u2018To make records on a mobile, we didn\u2019t have much time\u2019). See? Add to this the immortal chorus line about a fire near the lake (\u2018Smo-o-oke on the water!\u2019) and there really isn\u2019t much room for misinterpretation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As for that opening riff, it\u2019s one of those patterns that you hear once and you never forget, largely because every guitar store in the world has someone playing it. Lord played the riff in unison with Blackmore on a Hammond organ through an overdriven guitar amp to make up Purple\u2019s signature sound: together, the pair pretty much defined the tone of an entire genre of early-70s bombastic rock. Glover and Paice do what the best rhythm sections always do \u2013 play minimally and stay the hell out of the way \u2013 and it\u2019s left to Gillan to deliver a typically belting vocal performance.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Deep Purple – Smoke On the Water (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"Deep<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

As is so often the case with these epoch-shaping songs, neither Blackmore nor Lord had any inkling when they wrote Smoke On The Water that it would become such a huge hit and endure for decades to come. In fact, the song wasn\u2019t intended to be a single at first, and only came out a year after the parent album, Machine Head<\/a>, had become a hit in its own right in 1972. When the single appeared, it was significant that its B-side was an in-concert version of the same song, which had become a live favourite among Purple fans in the months since its appearance on the LP.<\/p>\n

Smoke On The Water was born in the most unassuming manner, as Blackmore once said: \u201cI was jamming with lan Paice at a soundcheck, because we often used to get to the shows early. I said to lan, \u2018Give me a time or a measure that we haven\u2019t played lately\u2019, and he put down that particular beat, and I just went straight into that riff. It\u2019s related to a medieval way of playing, because in those days they played a lot in parallel fourths. That riff wouldn\u2019t sound the way it does if it wasn\u2019t played in parallel fourths. But Paicey and I just went through it and it sounded like a backing track. I feel that we did things in Purple which were a lot better than that, that didn\u2019t go anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song\u2019s legacy is assured, believe us. For example, several attempts have been made to gather thousands of guitarists and have them play the main riff simultaneously, thus breaking a Guinness World Record. It also appears on more movie soundtracks than we can mention here, and has been covered by a plethora of groups from \u2018Weird\u2019 Al Yankovic to Black Sabbath<\/a> \u2013 who played a heavier version of the song when Gillan joined them for the Born Again album<\/a> in 1983.<\/p>\n

Deep Purple – Smoke On The Water (Live) – YouTube
\n\"Deep<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Subsequent versions of Purple, both with and without Gillan and Blackmore, have also played the song endlessly. Whether you enjoy these later renditions or not is probably down to how much of a purist you are about bands whose line-ups change over the years.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Perhaps unusually, the song remains as popular with the band as if does with the fans. As Gillan once said, \u201cThe thing about Smoke On The Water is that I don\u2019t know how many thousands of times I\u2019ve sung it, but I\u2019ve never once thought \u2018Oh no, not tonight\u2019. Every time it\u2019s been fantastic. It\u2019s a simple song, it has a simple structure, it\u2019s got a narrative lyric, so it\u2019s always a story which has its own value. Smoke On The Water tells a story, and I think it will have its own spirit, its own life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enthusiasm for the song has spread across generations of musicians, Gillan also reported. \u201cWe once rehearsed with Joe Satriani<\/a> in Japan, and Joe knew everything. When we were packing up to leave, he said, \u2018Aren\u2019t we gonna do Smoke On The Water? And we said, \u2018Well\u2026 we assumed you knew it, but we can run through it if you like\u2019. So he started playing, turned to me with a big smile and said, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m playing Smoke On The Water with Deep Purple!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deep Purple\u2019s Mark II line-up released many great songs, but none have echoed down the years like Smoke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-697853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}