But, when it caught, it went up like a fireworks display." The "Funky Claude" running in and out is referring to Claude Nobs, the director of the Montreux Jazz Festival who helped some of the audience escape the fire.
I remember there was very little panic getting out, because it didn't seem like much of a fire at first. "It was probably the biggest fire I'd ever seen up to that point and probably ever seen in my life" said Glover. The "smoke on the water" that became the title of the song (credited to bass guitarist Roger Glover, who related how the title occurred to him when he woke from a dream a few days later) referred to the smoke from the fire spreading over Lake Geneva from the burning casino as the members of Deep Purple watched from their hotel. Although there were no major injuries, the resulting fire destroyed the entire casino complex, along with all the Mothers' equipment. At the beginning of Don Preston's synthesizer solo on "King Kong", the place suddenly caught fire when somebody in the audience fired a flare gun toward the rattan-covered ceiling, as mentioned in the "some stupid with a flare gun" line.
This was to be the theatre's final concert before the casino complex closed down for its annual winter renovations, which would allow Deep Purple to record there. On the eve of the recording session, a Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention concert was held in the casino's theatre.
The lyrics tell a true story: on 4 December 1971, Deep Purple were in Montreux, Switzerland, to record an album ( Machine Head) using a mobile recording studio (rented from the Rolling Stones and known as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio-referred to as the "Rolling truck Stones thing" and "a mobile" in the lyrics) at the entertainment complex that was part of the Montreux Casino (referred to as "the gambling house" in the song lyric). Opening verse and chorus of "Smoke on the Water", recollecting the fire.
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