He found a plan B: the “Pavillon des Sports”, now known as the Petit Palais.
Casino concert hall in flames ©Alain Bettex 1971Īfter the fire at the Casino, Claude did everything he could so that Deep Purple could still record their album in Montreux. Twenty years later, she would become the programmer of the Montreux Jazz Festival and invite Deep Purple to perform many times. As a sidenote, a girl named Michaela Maiterth, then aged 13 years old, was there that night and discovered her passion for live music. The location was perfect: the musicians did not want a standard recording studio and they were already familiar with the Montreux Casino, having performed there in 1969. The hard rock band was in Montreux to record their next album at the Casino with a mobile studio borrowed from the Rolling Stones. Claude Nobs and Jean-Paul Marquis ©1971 Alain Bettex He didn’t know it yet, but the British band will single-handedly turn the tragedy into gold, the fire into a worldwide hit and, of course, Monsieur Nobs into “Funky Claude”. No casualties were reported, but for Claude Nobs, it was a disaster: the venue that hosted his jazz festival every summer (he had just celebrated its 5th edition there), as well as the pop concerts organised throughout the year with bands such as Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, collapsed before his eyes.īarely recovered from the shock, Claude was faced with an urgent challenge: finding a new recording venue for Deep Purple. The flames invaded the building, the smoke was visible far and wide. “Fire!” On that famous 4th of December 1971, around 4.15pm, Frank Zappa’s concert at the Montreux Casino was interrupted. On December 4, 1971, a fire in a small Swiss town gave birth to a worldwide hit… We look back at this incredible story that put Montreux and its Festival on the map. Home “Smoke On The Water” 50th Anniversa…