Whenever the conversation of the greatest guitar riffs of all time crops up, Smoke on the Water is usually the first uttered. It was voted the best ever, according from a 2008 survey of students from music schools in London.
Despite the riff's popularity, its origin is still something of an enigma. Back in 2007, Blackmore said he conceived Smoke on the Water after listening to the foreboding chimes of Beethoven’s track: “I thought [I’d] play [Beethoven’s fifth symphony] backwards, put something to it… that’s how I came up with it.”
When asked to clarify if Smoke on the Water really was just Beethoven’s fifth backwards, Blackmore explained, “It’s an interpretation of inversion. You turn it back, and play it back and forth, it’s actually Beethoven’s fifth.”
However, Blackmore's tongue-in-cheek humor is well documented, meaning the riff may have just been a classic example of “talented guitarist plays guitar and stumbles on something that sounds good”. Judging by the comments used in the latest Classic Rock, though, this looks far more likely.
In the winter of 1971, when Purple began work on the Machine Head album in Montreux, Switzerland, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore played the riff in their first jam session, and as Gillan recalled: “We didn’t make a big deal out of it. It was just another riff. We didn’t work on the arrangement – it was a jam.”
But by the end of the recording sessions they came up short of material, and so, in Gillan’s words, “We dug out that jam and put vocals to it.” Blackmore played his Strat and was plugged into – as far as Gillan could recall – “a Vox AC30 and/or a Marshall”. Over that mighty riff, the singer told the true story of how the Montreux casino – where Purple had been scheduled to record – burned down in a fire that started during a Frank Zappa concert. And with that, a deathless rock classic was created.
If you were a WestPac sailor anytime between 72 and 78 (my years) you heard this in every "sailor" bar you went into. And most of the hotels and restaurants. I still remember walking across the bridge over shit river (yea, that's what we called it) in Olongapo separating the town from the base and hearing Smoke on the Water.
Just one of my remembrances of WestPac 72 - 78.
Tommy James and the Shondells - Crimson & Clover
"If I can dream of a better land, where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true, oh why?"
[Verse 1]
here must be lights burning brighter somewhere
ot to be birds flying higher in a sky more blueIf I can dream of a better land, where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true, oh why
[Verse 2]
There must be peace and understanding sometime
Strong winds of promise that will blow away the doubt and fear
If I can dream of a warmer sun, where hope keeps shining on everyone
Tell me why, oh why, oh why won't that sun appear
[Bridge]
We're lost in a cloud with too much rain
We're trapped in a world that's troubled with pain
But as long as a man has the strength to dream
e can redeem his soul and fly (He can fly)
[Verse 4]
Deep in my heart, there's a trembling question
Still, I am sure that the answer's... answer's gonna come somehow
Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle, yeah
And while I can think, while I can talk, while I can stand, while I can walk
While I can dream, oh please let my dream come true, oh
Right now
Let it come true right now
Oh, yeah
The legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains the most mysterious and controversial of all shipwreck tales heard around the Great Lakes. Her story is surpassed in books, film and media only by that of the Titanic. Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot inspired popular interest in this vessel with his 1976 ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”