The legend of the mini-sculpture of the band’s founder Deep Purple
An interesting legend related to the famous musician was written by Nadiya Popadiuk in her book Uzhgorod – the World Capital of Mini-Sculptures. According to this legend, the founder of the rock band Deep Purple, John Lord, wrote the famous hit song Smoke on the Water not in the Swiss city of Montreux, but in 1970 in Uzhgorod. As fate would have it, the young John Lord fell in love with a very beautiful stranger whom he accidentally saw on the embankment of the Uzh River. Looking into her charming blue eyes, he lost his sense of reality and followed her as if spellbound. He followed the girl along the riverbank until five o’clock in the morning and only then realised that he could not remember anything except the deep fog and smoke over the water. He couldn’t forget the girl’s face for a long time, and until his last breath, he couldn’t understand whether she was real or just a mirage.
In 2012, after the death of John Lord, a thick fog rose over Uzhgorod, and the river was covered with pitch black smoke, the city was grieving. It was only the next sunny morning that Uzhgorod residents saw a mini-sculpture of the musician, which settled on the railing of the embankment over the Uzh River in the hope of seeing those incredible blue eyes again.
They say that to find your true love, you should wipe the glasses of Uzhgorod’s John Lord.
