Ian Gillan, at 75 years old, has sung Smoke on the Water since 1972. Whether with Deep Purple, the Ian Gillan Band, and Black Sabbath. He has sung the encore song in the range of 2,500 times for 50 years. I guess Ozzy Osbourne would be in the same dilemma by singing Paranoid.
How did Deep Purple come up with the famous Smoke on the Water riff? Ritchie Blackmore comes clean and confesses he stolen the riff from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. He claims he loosely played Beethoven’s 5th backward. The rest is history as Funky Claude was running in and out pulling kids out the ground, Deep Purple ran to the bank with their biggest hit ever. Poor Beethoven never saw a royalty check. Rock historians will point out that Smoke on the Water was based on Iggy Pop’s Stooges song “Loose” and borrows many melodic elements from the song released two years earlier. You have to have a keen sense of musical hearing for that one.
