fire-in-the-sky-cover

Simon Robinson, who has been closely following the history of Deep Purple, will publish via Easy On The Eye Books his new book “Fire In The Sky” in spring 2017 (Stephen Clare, co-author, is also heavily involved in the project). His first book “Wait For The Ricochet” was about the formation of Deep Purple. This upcoming book will be about the recording of ‘Machine Head’ and the rock anthem ‘Smoke On The Water’.

From the book description:

“These days Deep Purple‘s Smoke On The Water is such a ubiquitous rock ‘anthem’ that it almost seems as if it has been out there forever. Yet the story of how this most famous of metal tracks came into being is shot-through with chance incidents, any one of which could have seen the recording stifled at birth, leaving music writers to scrabble about for another ‘best riff of all time’ contender (and five hard-working musicians considerably less well-off.) Incredibly, although the backing to Smoke On The Water was the first track laid down for the Machine Head album (while the Swiss Police hammered at the door at 2.00am to try and get the noise stopped), in the ensuing chaos of being evicted from their temporary studio and washing up in the corridors of the Grand Hotel (where they built a studio in the corridors using old mattresses and egg cartons for sound-proofing!), the tape was almost forgotten – until an engineer pointed out that they were one track short of an album. The band only roughed it out as something to play to their Montreux host and hero of the fire, Claude Nobs, who told them it was far too good to leave in the can…”

“Fire In The Sky is a new book which looks in detail at this important period in Deep Purple’s history and the making of their break-through album Machine Head. While the fact that a fire destroyed their original recording venue is well known to most music fans, the book detours to look at the cause of the blaze, talking to people who were at the show, and gets to the bottom of just what were Frank Zappa’s last words when he dashed off the Casino stage as the roof burst into flames? And in these times of economic hardship, isn’t it inspiring to know that punitive tax rates back home were responsible for Deep Purple being in Montreux in the first place? This book looks back at the events which led to Deep Purple’s bizarre and Heath Robinson-esque Machine Head hotel recording sessions in the winter of 1971. And as for that ‘hit to be’, Smoke On The Water was not even tried out on stage, and might never have been played live at all were it not for a request from the BBC for a radio session. It went on to sell 12 million copies and is probably the only gold disc ever made to actually be presented to a city. And yes, there really is a music shop in London which threatens to fine budding guitarists should they dare to try out the riff in-store.”

Mary Kalaitzidou