Deep Purple

Legendary hard rock band Deep Purple will return to the scene of the crime, as it were, this summer. The group is being

honored by the Montreux Jazz Festival, which is curently celebrating it's 40th anniversary in 2006. Details are still being

worked out, but Deep Purple will be celebrated at a number of events, and there will be a purple theme throughout the

festival, which runs from June 30th to July 15th 2006. The band last played the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2004.

Deep Purple are very familiar with the town of Montreux, Switzerland - they set up shop at The Casino there in December

1971 to record their Machine Head album. The night before the sessions were to begin, Frank Zappa & the Mothers Of Invention

played at the Casino, and during the show, an audience member fired a flare gun into the roof, setting the building on fire

and burning it to the ground. This is how the anthem "Smoke On The Water was born."

As strange as it might seem, Deep Purple really didn't see the potential in "Smoke On The Water." Purple bassist Roger

Glover recalls: "Our focus on Machine Head was another song entirely, a song called 'Never Before.' 'Smoke On The Water' was

really a sort of, just another track on the album - there was nothing special about it. And 'Never Before' came out and got

all the promotional stuff - the industry, you know, went into overdrive to sell that - and nothing happened to it. And it

took the public, or possibly the radio stations and the public, to pick 'Smoke On The Water' and say, 'That's the song you

should be pushing.'"