Frank Zappa and The Montreux Fire
As
the story goes, Deep
Purple were in the Montreux, Switzerland area at the time to record
another album at the ‘Casino de Montreux’ once it was to be shut
down for winter renovations. The Mothers were going to be the last
show before the venue closed. On December 4th
of ‘71, Zappa and The Mothers’ equipment was destroyed by a fire
that burned down the casino.
The mothers had just
started playing the
song ‘King Kong’ (as can be heard in multiple variations on the
album ‘Uncle Meat’) , and
member Don Preston was starting to play his synthesizer solo, when
an audience member fired a flare gun at the ceiling.
Zappa had described it at one time as a ‘sky rocket’. Frank stopped the band from playing so Don could do his solo, not noticing the flare that hit the roof. As Frank described it, a man came on stage and shot a fire extinguisher up to the roof causing the fire to come out of the ceiling, and part of the roof fell down. Howard Kaylan said, “Fire everyone, by Arthur Brown”. Frank stated that when they heard this, they thought it was a joke. Quickly, they realized that it wasn’t a joke, since the venue was burning fast.
As smoke filled the area, Frank told the audience to remain calm and go out the side exit. Everyone was calm, but when they went to the exit, the doors were locked. The people had take Orange amplifiers to bang the doors open. Other people jumped out a window that had a 10-15 foot drop. Overall, everyone was safe, and there were minor injuries.
The fire destroyed the entire venue and all of the band’s equipment. Except a cowbell.
A pretty good interview describing Frank’s side of the events can be seen here. Though there is a voice over:
A bootlegged recording of some of the even can be heard here:
The fire resulted in Deep Purple creating the famous song ‘Smoke on The Water’ which was aptly named because of how large the fire over the nearby lake was. The title of the song was thought up by Roger Glover of Deep Purple, where it came to him in a dream three days later.
There never seemed to be any sort of convictions with the case, and even in the song itself the most mention of anyone was “some stupid with a flare gun”. There was one suspect named by the Swiss Police, a man by the name of Zdeněk Špička (Pronounced Zuh-den-yek Speechka). Zdeněk Špička was a Czech refugee that is speculated to have fled from (what was then) communist Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion.
An article I found stated that Špička was on the run, more than likely out of fear from being lynched by the crowd. It is likely that his intention wasn’t to start a fire. Punishment would have been 3-20 years of imprisonment for intentional fire, while a fire from negligence was a maximum of 5 years. As far as I know, he ran away and was never found. Trying to find any trace of him doesn’t seem to show up anywhere, at least with his birthday (November 4th, 1949). I have seen the name pop up for various dead people, but I cannot confirm whether they are really him or not.
If you want to see a video of the fire look at this video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VqHBgXNxaw
If you want to read more about it on the Deep Purple side, I recommend this blog post here: https://darkerthanblue.wordpress.com/another-service-from-darker-than-blue-magazine/machine-head-1972-2012-pt-1/
Now, what happened to the casino after the fire? Thankfully it was rebuilt and opened anew in 1975. The casino is still in use and has almost 3,000 google reviews with a 4 star rating. A monument to Deep Purple was built outside the building in front of Lake Geneva. There is a monument to Freddy Mercury also outlooking the lake.
[SOURCES]
https://news.expats.cz/weekly-czech-news/the-czech-man-behind-smoke-on-the-water/
wikipedia
No comments:
Post a Comment