Machine Head

Machine Head may be Deep Purple’s most famous and defining album. It certainly reached the highest on the Billboard charts, and contained their most famous song, Smoke on the Water, which actually documents an incident involved in the recording of the album itself.

The album, you see, was recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, using the Rolling Stones' famous mobile recording studio at the Montreux Casino, the best venue around Lake Geneva. While the band was preparing to record, some fan shot off a flare during a final Frank Zappa concert, and burned the whole place to the ground.

The band tried to record instead at the Pavilion theatre nearby, recording the basic tracks for what would become Smoke on the Water, but the location didn’t work very well, so they ended up at the Grand Hotel, which was empty, cold, and bare because it was old and unused. The band blocked off one end, using old beds to line the walls for sound insulation. There, they sweated out the rest of their album.

The result is often listed among the greatest rock or metal albums of all time.