Deep Purple’s 1972 album, Machine Head, is one of rock’s totemic monsters, especially its best-known track, “Smoke on the Water,” and its guitar riff. The new Machine Head: Super Deluxe Edition box set includes the remastered original album, new mixes by Dweezil Zappa, and archival and previously unreleased live material.
Bassist Roger Glover reminisced with Vintage Guitar about making Machine Head (on which he played a Rickenbacker 4001) with the esteemed lineup that included vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, keyboardist Jon Lord, and drummer Ian Paice.
After the fire, the band worked briefly at the Pavilion, a theater in Montreux, correct?
Yeah. (Montreux Jazz Festival founder) Claude Nobs, despite the fact that his whole life was burning up in smoke, concentrated on helping us. He got us into the Pavilion, which is a small venue. We set up on the stage and we got all the wires and microphones set up, had a break for a meal in the evening, and started jamming around. Somewhere around midnight, we had this rough riff. If a jam sounds promising, we’d work a bit on the arrangement. We managed to do one take only before the police stopped us because we were keeping the town awake. So that was that. It took another five days to find another place – a difficult thing to do in a small, sleepy town on the edge of Lake Geneva.
Which is why you were forced to do the rest of the album at the Grand Hotel, a vacation spot that was closed for the season.
Right, and we went there short one song. We said, “Let’s listen to that thing we did at the Pavilion.” It was very bare-bones. There was nothing added to it. It was just four of us – basically all the instruments playing – and we thought, “Well, it’s close enough. Let’s just use that.” Then Ian and I figured we’d write about our adventures in Montreux, the whole fire thing. We wrote “Smoke on the Water” in about 10 minutes, because it’s pretty conversational. It’s accurate, even if a little poetic license was used. We never thought much about it, to be honest; it was just another album track. Obviously, the song that went on to define us. We didn’t know that at the time.
The band produced Machine Head and you went on to produce other artists and had production credits on some later Purple records. What do you recall about that facet, and recording engineer Martin Birch, who later became a well-known producer?
We knew what we wanted, but I didn’t know what production was; I learned a lot from Martin. I just loved making music. To me, production is just part of performing, as is being the engineer and writing lyrics. It’s all one great big wodge of stuff. If you feel like you want to hear something, you make it happen.
The recording circumstances are part of the Machine Head legend, so would it have lost some of its magic if it was recorded traditionally in a sterile studio environment?
Absolutely. But that’s what studios did. They took sound away. They controlled it too much. Our concerts were pretty wild. Crazy-sounding, loud and vicious, and aggressive and exciting. We wanted to bring that into the studio somehow. The idea was to record an album in a venue, not in a studio.
If we didn’t quite achieve it, it’s because, to me, the album sounded a bit muddy considering we were after this huge, echoey sound. But whatever it was, it worked. It certainly would’ve been different if we’d done it in a proper studio.
The fire changed everything. It took our time away, but brought the band together in a way we wouldn’t have if we were all living at home, traveling to the studio at night.
You basically did Machine Head in two weeks.
In a way, that was great because it was all instinct. People don’t listen to their instincts enough, especially musicians, because they’re always trying to be better than they are… or at least I do (laughs)! The instinct of the first shot, your first aim, that’s you on-target.
I remember saying to Jon on a train going to a gig after we finished Deep Purple in Rock, “The album could have been better.” He turned to me and said, “No, it couldn’t. If it could have been better, it would’ve been better. It is what it is. Leave it alone, get used to it, and move on.” And that was good advice. There’s no such thing as perfection, thankfully.
This article originally appeared in VG’s May 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
