As the globally renowned riff for the song played to the 5,000-strong crowd, a curtain at the back of the stage dropped to reveal the Swiss lake glistening and cloaked in smoke as frontman Ian Gillan instructed the crowd to take over singing duties on the hook. The hit rock song was inspired by the Montreux Casino fire in December 1971 during a Frank Zappa concert, where the band were forced out of their rooms by the smoke which inspired the track on their 1972 album Machine Head. The opening lyrics read: “We all came out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline.
” Alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, Deep Purple is often referred to as part of the “unholy trinity” of British hard rock. The band returned to the 58th edition of Montreux Jazz Festival to headline the brand new Lake Stage – opening the gig with the track Highway Star before other classics, including Space Truckin, Anya and Into The Fire. It marked their 10th show at the festival.
Earlier in the day, the band hosted a question and answer panel where they discussed their memories of the 1971 fire and shared anecdotes behind the famous track. “It burned all afternoon, all evening, all through the night,” said bassist Roger Glover. “We went and looked at it the next morning and there it was, gone.
It was a frightening thing. “The following morning, I was in my room alone and I woke up with those words on my lips, and I said them out to an empty room. And then I kind of really woke up and I sai.
