On December 4, 1971, Frank Zappa, the free-form improviser and musician, along with his band, The Mothers of Invention, were performing at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland when the venue caught fire and burned to the ground. In a twist of fate, the members of Deep Purple were affected as well, though not physically, since they weren’t actually present. They were, however, in town the night of the fire, as they were set to record an album the following day at the entertainment complex that was a part of the Montreux Casino. The strange occurrence inspired Deep Purple's 1972 hit song, “Smoke On The Water” off their album, Machine Head.

Home to the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival, Frank Zappa and his band were eighty minutes into their set performing “King Kong” that evening, when a member of the crowd allegedly shot off a flare gun, jeopardizing all those in attendance. Known for songs like, “Montana,” “Bobby Brown,” and “City of Tiny Lites,” the group made their declaration to the crowd to clear the room, as they too, quickly cleared the stage, abandoning their instruments and other equipment in the name of saving themselves. A recording of the outbreak and fire announcement can be found on Frank Zappa’s 1992 bootleg album titled Swiss Cheese / Fire.

Funky Claude was running in and out/Pulling kids out the ground, lyrics in the song, “Smoke In The Water,” depicts Claude Nobs, Montreux Jazz Festival director, helping fans escape with little harm that fateful night. By some miracle, no one was killed in the blaze. According to Zappa, most injuries were minor cuts and burns, with only a few people going to the hospital. However, the casino itself was completely engulfed in flames, and all of the group’s precious sound equipment was wrecked, except, bizarrely enough, a cowbell.

However, an attendee at the show of the name Peter Schneider disputes one precise aspect of the famed story in his 2009 blog post. "The fire was started by a young man from Eastern Europe (who fled the very next day back home)," he continued. "I do not think that it was started by a flare gun as it says in the song, but by the boy throwing lighted matches in the air, and one of them got stuck on the very low ceiling ... So the fire started right above where the boy was sitting on the low-lying ceiling beams."

In an unusual coincidence to the incident, Frank Zappa died on December. 4, 1993, the twenty-second anniversary of the fire.