"Smoke on the Water" is a monumental song. It opens pure, strong and it grows like a Beethoven symphony. Jon Lord gives it a Baroque touch, Blackmore sings with his guitar, and baritone Gillan sings Rock 'n' Roll. And Glover and Paice join everything in a bluesy-jazzy jam mostly strong, but delicate when needed. What a fantastic band, what a fantastic song. Nowadays, it's hard to believe that these guys were pioneers of what would be classified as Hard-Rock and Heavy Metal.
Below, a videoclip joining several live footage from 1972 to 1973 and very well sound mixed:
Jon Lord says at the minute 8 of this documentary below, "we were not a singles band" and @ 8:30 "we send it (the album Machine Head) to Warner Brothers ... with the indication that "Never Before" would be the single ... we honestly didn't think that "Smoke on the Water" was a hit material ... how wrong can you be?"
As told in this documentary, this song tells a well known story about a disaster happened on December 1971. The song was included in the albums "Machine Head" and "Made in Japan" both released on 1972. "Smoke on The Water" was released as a single only on the year after with both versions, the studio and the live in Japan.
Finally, here's the band performing at Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan, on August 17th, 1972. It is a great performance but not the sublime version recorded (but not filmed) at Osaka on 15 August 1972 and included in the album "Made in Japan", one of the greatest live albums of all time, where live versions are better than the studio recordings. It was the first live and double album I bought :)
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