The Hills Are Alive

Arriving in Switzerland to play the Montreux Jazz Festival for the first time in the summer of 1971, I expect an exotic country — Swiss chocolate, numbered bank accounts, buried Nazi gold ... amazing the things we have in our heads. Montreux partly lives up to the image. What a marvelous atmosphere and what a beautiful place: snow-capped mountains across the lake, palm trees, the famous Palace Hotel. It's somehow very Mediterranean and Swiss at the same time.

Then I meet Claude Nobs. Already I know about him: in 1967 he'd founded Montreux Jazz, which by the time...