MONTREUX VILLE CRÉATIVE: Deep Purple: in Montreux... Again!

MONTREUX VILLE CRÉATIVE: Deep Purple: in Montreux… Again!

Few bands are as closely tied to the history of Montreux as Deep Purple. From the legendary fire to iconic recordings and regular appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the relationship between the British band and the city on Lake Geneva is now part of rock history.

This workshop revisits one of the most famous episodes in popular culture: on December 4, 1971, during a Frank Zappa concert at the Casino de Montreux, a fire completely destroyed the building. On site to record their new album Machine Head in the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio, the members of Deep Purple witnessed the scene from the docks. A few hours later, the idea for “Smoke on the Water” was born—a song that became one of the most famous riffs in rock history and a true founding myth of Montreux.

But the story between Deep Purple and Montreux isn’t limited to this event. The band would also record the album Burn there in 1973 and maintain close ties with Claude Nobs and the Festival for decades. Montreux would thus become a place of creation, experimentation, and artistic residency for the band, while contributing to the international reputation of the studios and the city.

Claude Nobs’ Legacy

In Montreux, taking the stage means becoming part of history. From 1967 onwards, Claude Nobs personally invited the artists — and he didn’t stop there: he recorded, archived and carefully preserved their performances with unwavering passion and attention to detail. This visionary approach gave rise to the Montreux Jazz Festival’s Claude Nobs Collection (1967–2012), produced by Montreux Sounds. In 2013, the archive was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register overseen by the Claude Nobs Foundation, and has been preserved and further developed with EPFL since 2007.