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Swiss fondue and fingerboard improv
A lifestyle/travel publication TimeOut (somewhat belatedly) reviews the 2024 Montreux Jazz Festival:
There are few riffs more recognisable than the four-note sequence of ‘Smoke On The Water’. It’s been 53 years since a fire destroyed Montreux Casino during a Frank Zappa concert; a scene which members of Deep Purple watched from afar and would later immortalise in what is now one of the most iconic rock tracks going.
Fast forward to 2024 and the 58th Montreux Jazz Festival, where the band played the same riff to close their headline slot on the brand new lakeside stage. Locals peered from their balconies and merch-wearing fans stamped their feet in unison. It rounded up an evening which saw Don Airey scuttle up and down the keyboard in psychedelic-tinged improv and Alice Cooper bring out a red tail boa during a terrifying theatrical shock-rock set. In other words: just another night at Montreux, a festival which, these days, is just as well known for its varied, enviable programming as much as its rich musical history.
You can find the rest of the piece on TimeOut, albeit there’s little more Purple related. Shall we forgive the author for attributing The Riff to Roger? Perhaps.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Roger has been forgotten or not mentioned so often, I’m fine with him being the honorary writer of the SOTW riff. Affirmative action for bassists and other minorities!
Besides, he came up with the E, F, F# G chromatic intro bass riff on the E string and that is just as iconic.
August 19th, 2024 at 20:41Yo,
People forget that it was actually Ian Paice that forged the way into “SotW” becoming a tune, when RB asked him qt.”What drum pattern haven’t we used yet” ???…Ian then played the drum-pattern, & RB added a riff that was evidently borrowed / stolen from a Latin American artist, as published here.
RG is on video explaining how he was always excited about the unusual way the riff did its thing…qt” Just when you think it’s going one-more-time through the chorus, it doesn’t, RB goes back into the riff”…
Here ya’ll go, before we have a thread of fairy-tales & day-dreams confusing people with “improvised” evidence…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8S47WbglTc
Peace !
August 20th, 2024 at 00:04I’ve read several times that the SOTW riff was created by RG but also that he attributed it to RB.. Mystery?
August 20th, 2024 at 06:36Hey people, we all know that the riff that bacame SOTW came from the riffmaster himself.. Ritchie Blackmore!
August 20th, 2024 at 13:26Thanks for posting that MH clip again, Gregster darling, always worth (re)watching, very well-made and -edited, I hadn’t seen it in a while.
The SOTW riff isn’t something Roger would write, AndreA. It is at the same time both too “in your face” and too “refined in it’s minimalism” for him. Roger’s riffs, the one in Speed King and of course Maybe I’m A Leo among them, are less immediate than when Ritchie unpacks his SOTW, WFT, Burn & MOTSM magic riff kit and starts assembling.
But it doesn’t really matter whether a Brazilian jazz musician, Ritchie or Roger came up with the riff or whether Paicey’s brilliant hi-hat work triggered inspiration or Roger’s chromatic root note entry made the song so mighty. It’s what happened in the studio among all five of them, that playing off each other and – perhaps inadvertently – creating something great while doing it. No one in Purple was ever a classic songwriter like Lennon/McCartney or Brian Wilson or Elton John, but the way they functioned as a band/collective/unit, creating masterpieces from scratch via endless jamming, made + makes them special and is their inherent strength. Purple create their music from little basic ideas (far removed from already constituting a song), well-oiled jamming, their instrumental prowess and their ability to listen to each other. It’s an organic process and they are masters at it.
August 20th, 2024 at 15:06@ 5 – excellent & now can we just drag those comments over to the post about poor ole Alerik’s son. Cheers.
August 20th, 2024 at 23:16Ooops
August 21st, 2024 at 15:05Two days ago
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. BIG IAN!!💜