Now regarded as the “Beethoven’s 5th” of rock and roll, “Smoke on the Water” became a surprise hit in the summer of ’73 thanks to its simple, massive guitar riff. Despite being a hard-rock track, the first single from Machine Head reached #4 on the Billboard pop charts. That bulldozer riff, however, belied the album’s genesis.
The quintet, working with engineer Martin Birch (in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio van), planned to record in the empty Montreux Casino, hoping to conjure a live, ambient vibe. But those hopes were dashed on December 4, 1971, when “some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground” during a show by Frank Zappa & the Mothers. Miraculously, no concert goers were hurt in the inferno.
The band decamped to another venue, Le Pavilion, which imparted the huge tones of “Smoke on the Water.” But, neighbors complained about the volume and, after one quick session, Deep Purple was evicted. They ended up at the (closed for the season) Grand Hotel, where they set up mics, improvised baffles, then ran cables into hallways and guest rooms off the main lobby. Aside from the giant riff of “Smoke…” the sonic signature of Machine Head originated there.
“It was a ramshackle scene, as the musicians made do with what they had,” singer Ian Gillan told writer Kory Grow for the liner notes of a new four-CD reissue. “We put the amps in separate bedrooms, and we were in a first-floor corridor. We had blankets and mattresses for sound baffles, and I sang at a microphone in the corridor, but I could hear everyone coming out of the separate rooms.”
“It was very cold, and snowing every day,” Purple’s axe wizard, Ritchie Blackmore, told Grow. “To hear a playback in the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, we would have to travel through about five bedrooms out onto a reception area, across a courtyard then up in the truck to listen to a playback. Needless to say, we didn’t hear too many playbacks, as it was such an ordeal…”When trying to figure out Blackmore’s legendary Stratocaster tone on the album, a common error is to confuse his live rig with the studio setup. On tour, he usually plugged into a factory-modified 200-watt Marshall Major head and two cabinets. Yet we also know that Blackmore was fond of Vox AC30 amps for their warm, natural, dirty tone. In some interviews, he alludes to hiding Vox guts inside a Marshall housing then slaving it to the big Marshall head – in effect, using an AC30 preamp to fuel the Major’s power amp and cabinets. But again, this was his stage rig.
Listening to the album now, you hear the difference between the power chords of “Smoke on the Water” versus almost everything else.
“We remember those riffs from Machine Head as being huge, and convince ourselves that they were recorded via some massive Marshall stack,” said VG amp profiler Dave Hunter. “Largely, though, it’s just that they sounded so big compared to much of what else was being recorded at the time, and because of the attitude put into them. Listening back today, they really don’t sound stack-like at all.”
To further clear the mystery, for a 2017 feature marking the album’s 45th anniversary, Blackmore told VG, “I was using a 100-watt Marshall amp with four 12″ speakers in the cabinet. I probably would’ve also been using the Vox at that time.”
There was another piece of his sonic recipe that isn’t often discussed – a germanium-transistor treble booster. “Yes, I used the Hornby Skewes treble booster,” Blackmore slips in. “It was a [tabletop] box, not a floor pedal.”
The essential “Smoke on the Water” riff – suspiciously reminiscent of a bossa-nova piano vamp from 1966’s “Maria Quiet” (hear it on YouTube) – features him plucking double-stop fourths with his fingers, not a pick. His Marshall’s tone is quite ambient, suggesting the cabinet was distance-miked, not up close. That gave this riff its huge girth, but his guitar solo is from the Grand Hotel sessions and likely deployed the secretive Strat/treble booster/Vox amp combination.
Rising guitarists were also in awe of the opening track, “Highway Star,” for its tempo, Bach-inspired arpeggios, and Blackmore’s proto-shred runs. This was high-speed metal and sported the double knockout of Jon Lord’s virtuoso organ solo. For his break, Blackmore composed his parts in advance, overdubbing the Baroque arpeggios for brilliant technical effect.
“‘Highway Star’ is a crazy song for a guitar player,” said guitar hero and lifelong Purp fan Joe Satriani in the documentary, The Ritchie Blackmore Story. “It makes everyone who thinks he’s a guitar player need to pick up the guitar and say, ‘If I’m that good – can I really do that?’”
More than a half-century later, we can listen to Machine Head and still revel in those seismic riffs from the dawn of hard rock and metal.
“The thing about Purple is we’ve always had great musicians,” said Deep Purple bass master Roger Glover. “When I first met Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice, I was absolutely stunned by their ability. And that typifies what Purple is. We’re not looking to be glorified – we’re just looking to make good music.”
“Machine Head crystalized what to me back then was heavy rock and metal,” Satriani added. “There’s something cultured about it. It’s gutsy, it’s bluesy, it’s soulful, but it’s polished at the same time.”
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