DEEP PURPLE To Be Saluted At MONTREUX

TheRockRadio.com is reporting that DEEP PURPLE will return to the scene of the crime, as it were, this summer. The group is being honored by the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Details are still being worked out, but DEEP PURPLE will be celebrated at a number of events, and there will be a purple theme throughout the festival, which runs from June 30 to July 15. The band last played the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2004.

DEEP PURPLE are very familiar with the town of Montreux, Switzerland — they set up shop at The Casino there in December 1971 to record their "Machine Head" album. The night before the sessions were to begin, FRANK ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION played at the Casino, and during the show, an audience member fired a flare gun into the roof, setting the building on fire and burning it to the ground. The details of the event are recounted in the song "Smoke on the Water".

As strange as it might seem, DEEP PURPLE really didn't see the potential in "Smoke on the Water". Bassist Roger Glover revealed that the band actually thought a different song would be a big hit. "Our focus on 'Machine Head' was another song entirely, a song called 'Never Before'," he said. "'Smoke on the Water' was really a sort of, just another track on the album — there was nothing special about it. And 'Never Before' came out and got all the promotional stuff — the industry, you know, went into overdrive to sell that — and nothing happened to it. And it took the public, or possibly the radio stations and the public, to pick 'Smoke on the Water' and say, 'That's the song you should be pushing.'"