Trivia / Machine Head (Album)

• Troubled Production: Largely chronicled in "Smoke on the Water". The band had rented The Rolling Stones' mobile recording studio and had planned to record the album at Montreux Casino during annual renovations, but during the preceding Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert, everything went to shit:
  • But some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground: During said concert, some idiot in the audience fired a flare gun at the ceiling, causing a catastrophic fire that reduced the casino to burning rubble and ashes. The Mothers lost all their equipment in the fire, causing Zappa to become bitter that the calamity gave Deep Purple their Signature Song. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but it was close because a bunch of kids tried to shelter in the casino and were only saved by Montreux Jazz Festival manager Claude Nobs, who once served as a volunteer firefighter and realised the casino wasn't safe.
  • But Swiss time was running out; it seemed that we would lose the race: With their initial plans literally burned to the ground and a deadline to return the studio to the Stones rapidly approaching, the band then tried to record at a nearby theatre, but the session echoed for about five miles and woke the locals up, and they were only able to record backing tracks for what became "Smoke on the Water" before the police kicked them out for noise pollution.
  • With a few red lights, a few old beds, we made a place to sweat: After a week of scouring Montreux for a venue where they could record without pissing the locals off, they ended up using the Grand Hôtel de Territet, which was closed for the winter, as their venue. However, navigating the MacGyvered monstrosity they turned one of the corridors into proved so impractical, that the band stopped listening to in-progress recordings.

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