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Really not a band man
BraveWords have published the second part of their interview with Glenn Hughes. For whatever reason, there’s considerable overlap of content with the first part, so if you get a sense of déjà vu reading it, you’re not alone.
BraveWords: Okay. So picture you applying for a new job, just fictitiously, and you have a resume. What would you put as like your top three moments on your resumé?”
Hughes: “Well, you want the music where just the band Trapeze, before you were born, in 1972.”
BraveWords: ’67. I was five.
Hughes: “Well, what you’re asking me, what are my top five? That album for me was the moment Glenn Hughes found his voice, the voice we all know now. As the moment before Burn, it was the album before Burn when you could hear there’s some difference here with Ian Gillan. So for me, you want the music where just the band was the big ‘Here comes Glenn! Here comes Glenn Hughes’, you know. And I think, I think Burn, of course, the first big album with Purple. Hughes/Thrall in 1982, a big musical album for me. Soul Mover, 2005.”
Read more in BraveWords.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Why does Glenn insist on referring to himself in the third person?
June 6th, 2025 at 06:48That man, GH, is so much into himself it makes me sick. Purple Mk III would have been a so much better band if they kept RG and let DC do all the singing, it wouldnt have been perfect like in the IG days.. but it would have been quite good, the bluesy voice of DC and RG would have been the last line of defence against any soulsteps trying to intrude.
June 6th, 2025 at 09:03Cheers!
We all know Glenn… But this is getting worse and worse, you have to laugh hard reading this interview… Looks like a parody, and we’ve all read hundreds of Glenn’s interviews sur but that one is just incredible.
The answer at the question dealing with Prince sounds like Monty Pythons having fun at His Glenn Hughes King of Arts, Prince of Himself, God of Music. 🤣
June 6th, 2025 at 10:03Well Wiktor, that would have been Mark II with a different singer, wouldn’t it? And Glenn Hughes was a big part of the change RB wanted back then. To my ears it worked very well and I treasure those albums – including Made In Europe – to this day. Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band brought a whole new side of Deep Purple to broad daylight. A more than interesting chapter in that big bad book of the band’s history.
June 6th, 2025 at 13:45Wiktor, never let sentiments get in the way of facts: Burn would have sounded nothing like it does if Roger and not Glenn had played the bass. And not just by differently played and sounding bass lines, but also by the way Glenn’s playing “Americanized” Little Ian’s drumming.
Roger, btw, likes Funk and Soul too, his style of bass playing just doesn’t lend itself as much to it as does Glenn’s, but his underrated The Mask solo album is filled with funky bass playing and soulish arrangements in a Duran Duran’esque way:
https://youtu.be/EbW0WWQDPUk
https://youtu.be/UNxdg-ZuqAU
I understand that Glenn’s grandstanding can rub people the wrong way though it is essentially harmless, but don’t negate his musical abilities and contributions to Mk III-IV and beyond.
Blackmore has always relied on Roger’s reliability and common sense in intra-band affairs, his co-songwriting contributions as well as his production ear, but at the same time never hid the fact that at the end of the day he considers Glenn the more naturally gifted and interesting bass player.
June 6th, 2025 at 13:57Chas, Wiktor – Glenn once told me that, as part of his addiction recovery, it was important for him to separate his true personal self from the guy on the record and up on the stage; to focus his healing process on his core self as opposed to rehabilitating the rock star character alone, and that is really where that “3rd person partition” comes from.
Having known Glenn for over three decades, I can tell you that he is indeed a truly kind and humble human being, and I’d say that if your judgment of the man stems primarily from his time in Purple, (which was over 50 years ago when his fall into drugs and rock star excess first steered him wrong), you’ve got a lot of catching up to do, because that just isn’t who he is today…
June 6th, 2025 at 17:28Glenn’s eternal Five Commandments (courtesy of Music Radar):
QUOTE:
Glenn Hughes’s top 5 tips for bassists
1. Less is more
“The first thing is less is more and the part B to this is that the notes that you don’t play are very important. There’s a lot of great bass players out there who play like guitarists. They’re really good and they’re my friends, you know, but they play like guitar players. I’m coming from the James Jamerson school and things like Macca’s work on Sgt. Pepper’s. Very melodic basslines are super important, especially for lead singers. McCartney was a big influence on me and James Jamerson simply because he’s been on more number one songs as a bass player than anyone else and his style of bass playing is very much who I am. Andy Fraser of Free, a dear friend who passed away, was another big influence. With those guys, the less is more thing is very important, as it is for me.”
2. Work on your tone
“The tone of your bass is supremely important. I’ve always gone for a wiry Glenn Hughes tone, which is the sound I had in Trapeze and Deep Purple, and the sound I’ve still got now. I always change the strings for every show. A lot of people think nowadays, ‘Oooh, don’t change the strings!’ but that’s bullshit. For me, it’s all about tonal quality and I like to have a very wiry bass sound.”
3. Think about performance
“If you’re a singing bass player, like I am, you’ve got to be able to think about what you can do onstage when you’re writing. A great bass player like [John] Entwistle had the ability to do what he wanted to do because he was free to do that. He wasn’t the lead singer. There were certain songs in the ’90s where I’d write a song and then I’d go, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I can’t play this and sing it!’ so now, with every song I write, I make sure I can sing it as well.”
4. Great gear is key
“I’ve always used really good gear. I had that classic Hiwatt sound in the early-’70s (and I still own those amps) and now I’ve developed the Orange Glenn Hughes bass sound with the Glenn Hughes signature Yamaha bass, which people will see me play on this tour. I’m so supremely grateful that Yamaha have developed this for me. We’ve been working on this bass for 10 years. My bass is like a Yamaha BB signature but it’s a smaller, lighter version and there’s two knobs instead of three. It will be available soon. I’d say my amp settings are 60% gain, then 60%/70% treble and 40% bass. I also have specifics on my pedal board. I have a Black Cat drive, which is the best drive pedal for bass. As you can hear on Resonate, there’s a lot of gain on my bass, more so than any other album I’ve done. I’m going for a very wiry sound and a very bass-driven sound. Whether I’m playing with [Tony] Iommi or Black Country or Glenn Hughes solo, it’s always very bass-driven. I can’t help
5. Play with no fear
“Whatever drummer I’m playing with, I never have any fear. I practise all the time and I’m never frightened to go out of the box. I’m not frightened to go for it. My bass playing is primarily coming from a Tamla Motown fanatic’s place but I’m also liable to just fly out of the box whenever I feel like it. Jack Bruce was a dear friend of mine and he always told me just to have no fear and so that’s what I do. I just go for it. Like I said, I’m an R&B fanatic but I’m a rock bass player and a very aggressive bass player, just like my friend Geezer [Butler] is. Everybody knows that I have this voice. The vocals of Glenn Hughes are very, very important but people need to know how much I love playing bass. It’s just part of who I am.”
UNQUOTE
“Have no fear” – right, that kinda just about sums Glenn up on stage, I never got the feeling that fear and reticent self-consciousness were high on his agenda! 😂🤣😌
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8540_ALLYSPwmYkSRNQ-ONhCESmjmneRnfw&s
June 6th, 2025 at 17:54@ 5
June 6th, 2025 at 20:39We don’t deny his talent Uwe, but he kind of turn me off when he mentioned in one of the interviews that he made a mistake to leave Trapeze for Deep Purple. Really? He has been cashing on that Deep Purple catalogue for quite some time now and he has tried to belittl;e MK2 and current line up BUT so hey like French would say “chucun sa merde” I love his work in BCC, and he has good solo stuff, but I don’t care about his funk/Soul stuff. Maybe a live interview is better with him than when you read him!
It is called “You Are the Music… We’re Just the Band” – interview transcriber should check what the interviewed is actually talking about
June 6th, 2025 at 22:19Poor Roger, his solo albums after Butterfly Ball always got overshadowed by some Purple-related, more noteworthy incident. The beautiful and introspective Elements of 1978 was all but ignored due to him joining Rainbow – that was all the news and Elements had of course nothing to do with the Dio-Rainbow sound of old nor the new Bonnet-Rainbow Sonics, nothing a Rainbow aficionado could latch onto.
In 1984 unfortunate history repeated itself: Mask, an album embracing sophisticated 80s pop in a Duran Duran/Peter Gabriel vein (and in my book a really creative effort by Rog), is lovelessly spewn onto a market holding its breath for the outcome of the DP reunion sessions. Again, it’s not an album, your standard Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gary Moore or GILLAN fan, waiting for his heroes to reconvene and recreate past glories, could relate to.
Talk about bad timing!
Glenn likely never heard Mask (the album) from Roger, but I have a hunch that the Welshman’s neo-funky bass playing on that record, his charming vocal (not comparable to Glenn’s pipes, but pleasant) and the songwriting so totally removed from both Rainbow and Purple Mk II would have made the Yammie*** listen up in surprise.
***People like Glenn from Cannock, Staffordshire, are called “Yammies” or “Yam Yams” (as are the Judas Priest guys from Walsall 10 miles farther north) due to their unique dialect and the phrase “yam orite, yam” (meaning “you’re alright, you are”). This comes from the local slang term “yam” for “you”.
June 6th, 2025 at 22:48Wiktor, listen to this here:
https://youtu.be/ZJEa3C5WScU
Unfathomable that Roger and Ian – excellent rhythm section they are – would have ever played together like this, just listen to the stops and starts in the chorus. That came from months and months of Glenn and Ian jamming together in 1973 while they were kicking their feet for a lead vocalist to arrive. Glenn introduced Little Ian into the magic world of Trapezoid groove.
https://youtu.be/01F9KfbTUY4
Glenn even plays a non-funky flat-out speedy rocker like this here
https://youtu.be/WRbT5j9OYjw
totally different. Roger Glover is smooth, metronomic and foundational, Glenn is buoyant, bouncing on the beat and yanking it back and forth (some inaccuracies included!), but it is lively and skips thorough the music.
Did you guys always turn the bass down 😱 on your home stereos when listening to Mk III or why do you deem Glenn‘s bass playing irrelevant for the sound of Mk III? 🤯😵💫
June 7th, 2025 at 00:31# 4 That would have been MK II with a different singer..
well that would have been ok with me anyday.. GH didnt bring in anything that was better than what RG delivered..
I would say worse.. and in the end so did Mr Blackmore also think so he left…
All the best boys!
June 7th, 2025 at 10:27So joining Deep Purple was like a lottery win and his response was, ” I’ll tell you why it wasn’t. Trapeze were breaking it in America. When I left the band in 73 we were doing 5,000 seats a night. Really? What part of America was this? In 1973 I was 15, heavily into Deep Purple and followed a lot of other bands as well. I had never heard of him and quite frankly no one in my high school had ever heard of Trapeze. Why can’t this guy ever just say look if it wasn’t for Ritchie, Jon and Ian, I probably never would have never made it in the business the way I did. This guys ego is ridiculous. Burn was great. Stormbringer weak and Come Taste the Band, crap. Ritchie knew he had made a big mistake, that’s why he got out of there. Just my opinion, trash me if you must.
June 7th, 2025 at 12:16“You Are The Music, We’re Just The Band” is indeed Trapeze’s best work with or without Glenn (even though the Trapeze albums after he left were by no means bad). It’s stronger than the charming, but still a little formative sounding ‘Medusa’ album and Trapeze’s eponymously named debut was of course something different altogether, the then-quintet preferring whimsical pop. But YATMWJTB [#1 among the most ungainly and clumsy album titles ever – WTFWTT (= what the fuck were they thinking?)] saw a Glenn only in his early 20s really rise to the occasion, no other Brit musician sang and played bass like him at the time, certainly no one his age.
I understand that the album holds a special place for him, some beautiful songs on it too …
https://youtu.be/qpdX05t9JYo
Gorgeous sax! And compositionally astute too, they take almost two minutes before they arrive at the chorus. You name me one other guitar-bass-drums power trio that recorded music like that in 1972.
June 7th, 2025 at 15:19To me Glenn is a great player, no problem with that, but I’m surprized to read someone saying he is humble and nice.
I’ve been with him about 20 times in various situations and every time he was unpleasant and sometimes rude with all who where working, even his musicians (so not with me), even with JJ, Doug or Maldonado, 3 very charming guys. Well, same with DC, I understand why they’re still friends 😂
The difference is amazing with the mk7/8 guys.
But hey, Glenn is still a good musician, great singer and I’m a huge fan of Burn and Stormbringer, so I’m happy he’s been part of the family.
But for Godsake he should stop talking like that, everyone laugh at him, it makes him sound stupid… A proper manager could have done that for at least a decade (or some good PR).
June 8th, 2025 at 11:16George, like many bands, Trapeze had geographical patches of success in the US, especially in the Southwest where they toured with a then fledgling ZZ Top who even in the early 70s drew large crowds there while they were still virtually unknown in the Northern States. Steven Tyler said in the mid 70s in an NME interview about Aerosmith’s success in the US: “A band like ZZ Top still outsells us in the South – as do the Doobies on the West Coast.” Trapeze were with the same management and promotion group as ZZ Top so some of the other power trio’s success rubbed off on them – and there was also musical inspiration:
https://youtu.be/KQzxTiq2wPE
I guess you’ll recognize the, uhum, sharp-dressed riff Billy Gibbons loaned from Mel Galley.
Glenn has lamented his departure from Trapeze since the mid 70s – first thing he did when Mk IV split up was rejoin Trapeze in 1976 tour the States with them:
https://youtu.be/BBgPKa9YmNk
Half the songs on Play Me Out were intended for a Trapeze reunion album that never came out due to Glenn’s irresponsible cocaine craze. Glenn, the single child, adored Mel Galley like an elder brother and rated Dave Holland as one of the best English funky drummers. His love for Trapeze was real.
Yet he still left them. Why? For the same reason the girl in the Eagle’s Lyin’ Eyes didn’t marry her high school sweetheart or the boy from across town, but a “rich old man”.
https://youtu.be/PqccEpqvwPY
“City girls just seem to find out early
How to open doors with just a smile
A rich old man, and she won’t have to worry
She’ll dress up all in lace, go in style
Late at night, a big old house gets lonely
I guess every form of refuge has its price
And it breaks her heart to think her love is only
Given to a man with hands as cold as ice
So she tells him she must go out for the evening
To comfort an old friend who’s feelin’ down
But he knows where she’s goin’ as she’s leavin’
She is headed for the cheatin’ side of town
You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
On the other side of town, a boy is waiting
With fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
She drives on through the night, anticipating
‘Cause he makes her feel the way she used to feel
She rushes to his arms, they fall together
She whispers, “It’s only for a while”
She swears that soon she’ll be comin’ back forever
She goes away and leaves him with a smile
You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
She gets up and pours herself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it’s gonna be a long one
She draws the shade and hangs her head to cry
She wonders how it ever got this crazy
She thinks about a boy she knew in school
Did she get tired, or did she just get lazy?
She’s so far gone, she feels just like a fool
My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things?
You’re still the same old girl you used to be
You can’t hide your lyin’ eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you’d realize
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes
Honey, you can’t hide your lyin’ eyes”
Glenn joined Purple for – quoting Johnny Lydon here – “the filthy lucre” and fame. Not great, but pretty much what any man in his early 20s with a pair of balls and high aspirations for himself would have done – Purple poached him and he succumbed willingly. He’s been grappling with that decision ever since because Purple were never his first musical love and Ritchie was no comforting Mel Galley to him.
Glenn is a bit like Rachel in the First Season of The White Lotus when she realizes that forfeiting her own dreams and ambitions for the secure world of a wealthy man’s wife came at a huge cost:
https://youtu.be/xLJPe-eViDw
Would Trapeze have scaled DP-like heights? I doubt it – the heavy funk content made their music less palatable to some (they were critics’ darlings though), especially in Europe and Asia, two important markets for Dee Purple. But YATMWJTB was only Trapeze’s second album with the grittier trio line up embracing funk influences, they still had some mileage to become more popular in the US. Another one or two albums with Glenn further, who knows what might have been?
June 8th, 2025 at 17:02Some memorabilia on Trapeze’s US tours here:
https://www.glennhughes.com/tourography/trapeze.html
I think they were likely more popular in some parts of the US than in the UK, Europe or Japan, they certainly spent most of their time touring the US.
From WIKIPEDIA:
QUOTE
Trapeze toured extensively in promotion of Medusa, primarily in the US, including a stint in December 1970 supporting The Moody Blues and numerous headline tours throughout 1971,[13] before releasing their third album You Are the Music… We’re Just the Band on 1 December 1972.[19] The album was primarily written by Hughes (three tracks were written by the Galley brothers), produced by Neil Slaven, and featured a number of guest contributors including Rod Argent on piano and B. J. Cole on steel guitar.[19] The album marked an increase in softer, more melodic songs since Medusa, which were praised as highlights of the collection by multiple reviewers.[20][21] Billboard dubbed the album a “fine set”,[20] while Tracy described it as “a masterpiece”.[19] You Are the Music… We’re Just the Band was the first Trapeze album to chart, peaking at number 9 on the US Billboard Bubbling Under chart, which acts as an extension to the Billboard 200.[22] The band toured throughout late 1972 and early 1973 in promotion of the album, including dates in the US and the UK.[13] Prior to a show at the Village East in December 1972, the band’s equipment was stolen and they were forced to play using “hastily rented equipment”.[23][24]
In April 1973, Deep Purple members Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paice attended a Trapeze show at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, California, with a view to asking Hughes to replace bassist Roger Glover in the band. When approached at another show the following month, Hughes declined the invitation in favour of remaining with Trapeze, claiming that he was “in a very, very different frame of mind as a musician” at the time and dubbing Deep Purple “too basic rock for me”.[25] However, due to the high-profile status of the group at the time, combined with the prospect of working with former Free frontman Paul Rodgers, who had been approached to replace vocalist Ian Gillan, Hughes reconsidered and agreed to join the band as bassist and second vocalist.[26] The lineup change was officially announced in the music magazine Melody Maker on 14 July 1973.[27] Rodgers ultimately passed on the opportunity to join, focusing instead on the formation of Bad Company.[25] David Coverdale was brought in as Gillan’s replacement later, after contacting the group in response to the Melody Maker article, which mentioned that they were still looking for a new singer.[28] Hughes has since described the choice to leave Trapeze as a “horrible” one to make, dubbing the band his “family” and claiming in multiple interviews that to some extent he regrets leaving.[29][30]
UNQUOTE
In any case, a B or even C league band commercially whose three main members went on to Deep Purple (Glenn), Judas Priest (Dave) and Whitesnake (Mel)*** cannot have been total crap in my book. I find the prevalent ignorance of Trapeze’s history (and music) among DP fans slightly baffling. In 1973 DP could have pretty much poached any bassist in the world for themselves yet they chose Glenn, ever wonder why?
***Plus later members Pete Goalby and Marc Spence to Uriah Heep (and almost Rainbow!) and Wishbone Ash, respectively.
https://youtu.be/amCaA8BTBmk
https://youtu.be/1Zepfig8UEk
June 8th, 2025 at 23:59@ 6
Hi Marc
Thanks for the insight. That’s much appreciated.
June 9th, 2025 at 10:02@17
June 9th, 2025 at 12:17First of all on the memorabilia from there shows they were always the back up and not the headliner. Back in that time there were a lot of opening acts for bands about to make it like Kansas, Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Kiss etc. Nobody really remembers the back up bands and at the time no one really cared. I’ve seen a million of them come and go. In those days all you had was music. There were no cell phones, computers, cable tv, internet etc. So music was the one thing everyone was heavily into. I admit I bought a few albums by bands that never went anywhere just because music was everything. I have no doubt that they were all extremely talented musicians and maybe someday they might make a name for themselves but I still believe that Glenn overstates the popularity of Trapeze. Maybe they had a following in some markets but if no one ever heard of you in the New York area you were not on the verge of something big. They were probably a club band with a couple of albums and every now and then a opening act for others. No disrespect intended to the members of Trapeze but if Purple didn’t come calling, I believe it would never happen for them.
@ 17 – When you look at Deep Purple’s post MKI history, they had a tendency to hire lower profile musicians Uwe. Gillan and Glover, Coverdale and Hughes, even Tommy Bolin. Joe Lynn Turner was a Rainbow castaway musician. If it wasn’t for Ritchie, would he have ever been of a higher profile. Steve Morse and Simon McBride also are low profile. Don Airey is probably the most ‘known’ musician to ever join Purple. So getting back to your Glenn Hughes joining DP comments, I do think that Purple wouldn’t have necessarily found any other higher profile bass guitarists ready and willing to join a group known for it’s instability, even at that time of 1973. I may be clutching at straws a little, but when we stop and think about it. Certain musicians could have a desire to join a high profile successful ensemble and no doubt that is very tempting, but to others maybe not so, depending on their current or recent experiences. Cue John Wetton joining Uriah Heep (on a contract we hear). It didn’t last very long but he did financially well out of it and had a ‘good’ time. The hope that Blackmore could entice Paul Rodgers to DP was fanciful at best. That was never going to happen by the sound of it. Glenn Hughes was easy to get hold of as were others. Ritchie and his ‘they come and go’ mentality. The same with Rainbow. Of course Ritchie wasn’t there for the hiring of Bolin, Morse or McBride. He may have gone with Don Airey again though, who knows. People with a lower profile are hopefully not carrying ‘extra’ baggage, although in regards to Bolin, that certainly wasn’t the case. Cheers.
June 9th, 2025 at 12:19@17
June 9th, 2025 at 18:21Diddn’t notice all of the flyers at first. It seems to me when they headlined they were mainly in Texas. Which is really strange because Texas in the deep south is very much country music. Rock at that time really did not exist there that much. Maybe since they had some success there they thought it would eventually grow.
@ 17 -That ‘Rockarama’ song by that lineup of Uriah Heep looks like the same band that I witnessed live in 1985. Gee that is a poor song there, cliched chorus and all. I suppose they had to change like many other bands and in losing Ken Hensley as a prime writer years before, left more than a huge abyss in their songwriting. Anyway, it was a local gig in ’85 and pretty good in many aspects. The older Heep songs were more to my liking and Trevor Bolder and Lee Kerslake were there with Mick Box. Peter Goalby was a good singer in his own right too. He certainly did a very good job singing the David Byron Heep songs. I think from my memory the keyboard players name was John Sinclair. Good on the Hammond Heep classics too. As Mick Box still says, ‘appy days. A good 2022 interview with Pete Goalby and his long overdue re released solo album. There are also a few good reviews of the early Trapeze albums at this link below. Cheers.
https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2022/03/peter-goalby-interview.html
June 10th, 2025 at 06:21George, of course Trapeze meant nothing in the New York era in the early 70s – they weren’t Renaissance who were especially popular there! -, but then neither did ZZ Top. Texas, Colorado and California were Trapeze’s home bases in the US and that never really changed. Phil Mogg of UFO once said that one of the peculiarities of the US concert market was that “you could be huge in one State, yet cross the state line and then nothing!”
No contest that the later careers of Trapeze members in DP, JP and WS shone a benevolent light on the Brummie power trio – I sure would have never searched for Trapeze albums in Germany. (darn hard to get in the 70s) had I not heard Glenn on Burn, Stormbringer & CTTB.
Herr MacGregor, you’re right that Purple generally preferred to hire people not as famous as them. But the hiring of Glenn and DC still followed a master plan and that was Ritchie’s “let’s put some Free in DP”(rhymes!) – that Australian tour DP did with Free sure left a mark.
– Ritchie wanted a bluesier singer with more conventional melodies than IG, hence the offer to Paul Rodgers and the eventual hiring of DC.
– Ritchie wanted a rhythmically looser bassist, someone more Jack Bruce and Andy Fraser than Roger, hence Glenn.
– Ritchie felt Purple needed stronger backing vocals especially live – hence the Sam & Dave’ish dual lead vocal attack of Glenn & Dave.
– Ritchie wanted a less dominant role of Jon instrumentally (so more focus was on him), hence Jon’s diminishing role in the Purple sound from In Rock to Stormbringer – and the further reduction of the keyboard element in Rainbow.
All that came to fruition with Mk III, but Ritchie lost control of his devised set up after the Burn tour and other voices made themselves heard in the band so off to Rainbow for even tighter control he went.
June 10th, 2025 at 16:37Yes indeed Uwe, Ritchie wanting this and that. I am not sure if he knew what he wanted when we think about the Phil Lynott three piece band along with Ian Paice. Maybe the thought of that (only one vocalist) along with the fantasy of the Paul Rodgers scenario, made Ritchie realise that he was better off going the way they did with Coverdale and Hughes. Of course Hughes was a much more superior bass guitarist than poor ole Phil and there was still Jon Lord as a keyboard player to ’embellish’ things at times. It only lasts so long with a head strong musician trying to stay within the confines of the band that they started in. Ritchie was better off doing what he eventually did when leaving DP. Paul Rodgers joining DP, why would he do that when he was already branching out as a singer songwriter with his own vision at hand. That would have been a disaster for him and DP. Cheers.
June 10th, 2025 at 23:36In principle the DP offer was a very lucrative one for Rodgers because following the repeated demise of Free his own Project ‘Peace’ with Mick Underwood hadn’t set the world on fire. Bad Company was still a project then and Mick Ralphs with his Mott the Hoople background – always a struggling band too – wasn’t as sure a bet as teaming up with Ritchie and Jon. I believe that the DP organization were genuinely baffled at being turned down by Rodgers.
Rodgers, who had been at loggerheads with Andy Fraser all the time (who also wanted to sing more in Free), didn’t want another headstrong character going forward. And who knows, maybe he was as enamored with singing alongside of Glenn as Glenn was apparently singing alongside of him. Rodgers must have been wary of bassists who also wanted to sing lead. 😆
Never mind, Bad Company had a good run in the US right from the starting block – that wasn’t a sure thing given that Free hadn’t amounted to all that much there.
June 11th, 2025 at 13:56Peter Grant and his savvy ‘business’ skills eh. He obviously heard a hit there with Bad Company and quickly moved in and why not. The other point with the DP and Paul Rodgers thing would be, as we are all aware in hindsight, the personality (ego) clash situation. Blackmore and Rodgers, both very strong personalities and very determined to paint their own picture etc. Plus the fact that Rodger would have had to sing previous Purple songs, I would imagine that wouldn’t have endeared him to the situation. With Bad Company or anything that he wanted to set up for himself, he could include a Free song or two in the setlist, the same for Mick Ralphs with a Mott the Hoople song or two no doubt, at least at the beginning of BC live concerts. DP would have been far too restrictive for Rodgers, on many fronts. Cheers.
June 11th, 2025 at 23:42But how many MK II songs did Glenn and DC have to sing in MK III at the end of the day? Exactly three: SOTW (logical and compelling choice), Space Truckin’ (relegated to being the last song) and Highway Star (relegated to an occasional encore).
No one would have required Rodgers to attempt Child In Time or the voice/guitar duel in SKOW.
But he wanted things his own way and that wouldn’t have been the case with DP.
June 12th, 2025 at 14:56