Smoke on The Water
During one of these lost and searching days, I awoke one morning in my room at the Europe [hotel] and, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, with eyes still closed, heard myself say the words “smoke on the water” to the empty room. Opening my eyes I wondered if I had actually said it out loud or had I been dreaming? No, I concluded, I’d actually spoken those words. Mentally filing it away I thought nothing more about it until later, when I told Ian Gillan. “Sounds like a drug song,” he observed, and since we were devoutly a drinking band, we dismissed it.
Roger Glover
Here’s some trivia on what is easily the most renowned hard rock song.
- The lyrics are telling about a fire that actually happened while they were trying to record the Machine Head album that includes the song.
- At the time Deep Purple thought of Smoke On The Water as of ‘just another song’ and didn’t even choose it for single.
- It was the last song from Machine Head to make it into live set.
- In an 1997 remix you can hear Gillan say ‘Break a leg Frank’, which sounds somewhat dark because by the time of recording Frank Zappa did break a leg in London, pushed off the stage by a jealous fan.
- They say in an instruments store in Moscow there was a notice that run ‘Thank you for not playing Smoke On The Water on guitars!’
Fear leads?
I am afraid. I’m 31, that’s ridiculous. All the good drummers I know started at 5 to 15. Most of them are pretty big men, too. I’m 31, featherweight, and rather lazy.
Am I lazy, brothers and sisters. Ever bubbling with new ideas, too. No wonder I’ve dropped most anything I ever tried, including the drums 9 years ago, having no money to pay for education. Not what you’d call unstoppable.
Sure, I’d like to be a supa-boopa-drumma, and it would be fun to find out that a guy can learn to become a professional musiciant starting in his thirties. But just finding it out takes a great deal of time and money. Ok, nevermind the money, they come and go, but haven’t I wasted enough time already without any achievement to talk about?
Then again, I learnt to drum, or rather, attended the lessons, longer than anything. Longer than my universities took, which was a year and a half among both of them. Damn, it seems I disliked the technical stuff all this time, where was my head? All this bumping around - db programming, videogames, translating books, back to games, then to internet ads… so much pain, so little gain.
Aww, what the heck? All this bumping around made me versatile and schoolable. It’s a second month I’m taking lessons again, and I’m seemingly doing ok. It’s ok right now, ok, whichever ways I took in the past brought me here. I like it here.
Not that I have much to lose, anyway. I tried boring stuff, I tried playing career games, but I think it’s time to look back and say I suck at it. Why not trying something fun, maybe that’s what I’m for?
I am afraid of course. But fear lead to darkside and, anyway, I’ve been following it for too long. Now the fear may follow, if it dares. After all, a drummer is a leader.
ps. Randy knew…
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