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Still best friends with everybody
Chaoszine.net publishes an extensive and insightful printed word interview with Glenn Hughes. He explained a change of setlist for the recent Scandinavian shows (those were the dates rescheduled from his Purple tour), spoke about his latest solo album Chosen, his plans with the ever so fickle project called BCC, the best drummer he played with (spoiler: Paicey is not even in the top 3), and his stint with Rainbow circa 2015 that never was.
There’s that story that’s been everywhere — that you were asked to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band in the late ’70s and all that. But you declined, so there’s no need to go into that anymore. A couple of years ago, I interviewed former Rainbow keyboard player David Rosenthal. Do you remember him?
Glenn Hughes: Yes.
And he told me in my interview that when Ritchie was putting together Rainbow in 2015, he was asked to join the group to play keyboards — but you were also asked to join the band then. Is that correct?
Glenn Hughes: I said no, and I’ll tell you why. I got a call from his mother — Ritchie’s wife’s mum, you know — asking, ‘How would you like to sing lead vocals and play bass with Rainbow?’ And I went, ‘Let me think about it.’ I spoke to some people, and then thought to myself, well, it would be nice to see him again, have a dinner, maybe share some jokes, and I could do it for a little while.
Then I was supposed to fly to New York, and the day before I go, his mother-in-law called me and said, ‘Glenn, Ritchie has found a new singer and would like to know if you would like to play bass and sing second vocals like you did with David Coverdale.’ I started laughing and said, ‘What? You want me to do that same thing again?’ And I said, very nicely, I said, ‘Absolutely not. There’s no way I’m doing that.’
Read more in Chaoszine.net.
Thanks to Daniel for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Hmmm…Bonham Snr and Jnr, plus Chad Smith? Great drummers, but Paicey certainly belongs amongst them, and for Glenn to say that little Ian is not about the groove seems somewhat disingenuous as his playing certainly contradicts that statement. Very odd, but then Glenn has flip-flopped on other things: one minute Purple was the greatest band he’s been in, then it’s Trapeze, then it’s BCC, so I tend to take the majority of what he says with a pinch of salt.
October 20th, 2025 at 12:04A very interesting interview of revelatory nature in places.
Glenn and BCC – an endless drama unfolding … 🙄 He‘s either ecstatic about the prospects of that, uhum, intermittent collective or in a state of depression feeling scorned … How many more times? Glenn reminds me of a mistress in a love triangle with a married man forever waiting for the guy to separate from his wife and marry her – as we all know, that doesn’t always happen and the time is never quite right.
The interviewer – Marko Syrjälä (what a great name for a tinned reindeer meat brand or a fashion label for heavy woolen, albeit slightly scratchy Nordic jumpers! 😂 – is extremely knowledgeable:
However, if you plan to release music in other genres in the future, wouldn’t it make sense to distribute it through different channels than your recent rock albums? I was wondering, have you ever thought about releasing your music independently?
Glenn Hughes: Yeah, I mean, there have been talks about that. I could do it on my own because I’ve got a great team with me. Right now, I don’t have any plans to make another album — but I will, I believe I will. The stuff I’m writing at the moment isn’t rock, but it’s also not really pure black music. I love doing that kind of stuff, but I’m not black — I’m white, and most of my fans are white too.
Much as I appreciate Glenn, that sums up his life’s predicament: To put it with Robert Palmer in Johnny & Mary, he changes his mind more than a woman …
https://youtu.be/7_SAMrDnXOE
Glenn never really “grew a pair” and stuck to his funk guns nor did he ever really dare to enter the Black Music world in a sink or swim-committed way, always only dabbling and dicking around rather than forming his own Mother‘s Finest with ace black cat players. He should have been with a black record company long ago.
As for this potentially incendiary 😂 little tidbit
…
“No, (edit: Paicey is) not my favorite. It wasn’t … it was okay, but it really wasn’t my kind of drumming. He’s obviously a great drummer — technically impressive and powerful — but he’s not a groove player, and I’m a groove player.”
… why am I not surprised? Or offended?
It’s been clear to me for a long time that Glenn has a taste for Bonham-influenced, say American style behind-the-beat drummers with a more primal approach that leave him enough space for his stops and starts bass playing. He’s been choosing drummers like that forever in his various bands and projects. (The last drummer I really dug he played with in a band was Mark Nauseef in G-Force, that is a while back!)
Little Ian’s undeniable strengths (swing groove, lightning-fast fills, bass drum technique and snare control, the intellectual esprit and general cleverness in his drumming) aren’t all that relevant in Glenn’s musical universe. Unlike Roger, he is NOT a flowing and swinging bass player, he likes to yank the beat around with his contra-punctuated accents. Glenn likes foundational drumming with lots of space (and occasional dramatic and heavy drum breaks) that allows him to shine. Ironically, he is a bit like Paicey in that way, who praises Roger’s bass playing as a swinging and flowing carpet for him to build his drumming on.
Little Ian once said that if the rhythm section has 100% space to share between them, then he likes to take up 60% and leave 40% to Roger (who is fine with that allocation) whereas with Glenn it was 50/50, more of a battle for supremacy. I think Glenn – like a lot of more attention-grabbing bass players – likes that ratio to be 60/40 in HIS favor, the Paice/Glover model turned around so to say.
I still have the post-Purple split 1976 Paicey interview in NME where he said:
“Part of the reason why Mk IV failed was also Glenn’s unwillingness to accept that Deep Purple were a white rock’n’roll band and not a black funk one, he wanted us to be Earth, Wind & Fire, but we just weren’t.”
All that said: The three years Glenn and Little Ian played together were highly inspirational if you have an ear for rhythm sections and Glenn’s less “carpet-like” bass playing opened Paicey new avenues of development (fueled no doubt also by the amount of time Mk III + IV were then spending in America). As regards the rhythm section work, Made in Europe (for all the flaws it might have in other departments, Max …) is a master class in edgy liveliness.
October 20th, 2025 at 13:56I don‘t remember Glenn ever saying that his time with DP was musically the greatest, even while with DP he would speak fondly and longingly of Trapeze. When DP folded, what was the first thing he did? Tour with Trapeze again in 1976. And while he has lauded Little Ian‘s chops – and he isn’t denying his ability even today – in the past, he has never claimed he enjoyed playing with him the most. Compared to Ian, Trapeze skinsman Dave Holland is a very sparse drummer, that is where Glenn‘s musical sympathies lie. He prefers primal over clever.
When Glenn says that Ian is “not a groove drummer”, then what he means is that Ian is – and thank God for that! – not of the Bonham drum school. And of course he isn‘t, Ian is a thinking man‘s hard rock drummer, not a primal beast like John Bonham or a percussive madman like Keith Moon.
October 20th, 2025 at 21:56Interesting comments regarding Paice’s drumming. Do we think that Hughes has just forgotten perhaps, it has been a long time since those outings. All the drugs and booze etc and not to mention simply growing older. And as Uwe comments rightly so, the 60/40% ‘battle perhaps the opposite energy than Roger Glover, who is more than content in following Paice. Well, he didn’t really have a choice initially did he, he he he. Maybe that is what this is all about, Paice telling Hughes in 1973: Glenn, I lead, you follow. Cheers.
October 20th, 2025 at 22:16Glenn Hughes is a lost soul, he.opens his shows with Burn ,but he didn’t write it. He’s delusional. Ritchie never asked him.to join Rainbow. Glenn was his least favorite. The man is on his self righteous ego trip. He is a decent singer but He’s a mess personality. Gary Moore and Tony Iommi couldn’t take too much of Glenn. He’s a mess.
October 21st, 2025 at 02:44Deep Purple is much better without Glenn Hughes. Period!
I am not sure surrounding himself with “black cats” would have sent him on a different career trajectory commercially speaking. The market for singing bass players is limited, unless you are Sting or Paul McCartney. Would he have had a bigger profile if he went Earth, Wind & Fire all the way? I doubt it. There are successful white soul artists like Boz Scaggs but they had their big years in the 70s, not the 90s.
Play Me Out (1977) – Funk all the way
October 21st, 2025 at 03:47L.A. Blues Authority Volume II: Glenn Hughes – Blues (1993) – Blues
From Now On… (1994) – AOR
Feel (1995) – Funk and soul
Addiction (1996) – Melodic hard rock
The Way It Is (1999) – Groove hard rock
Return of Crystal Karma (2000) – Funky hard rock
A Soulful Christmas (2000) – Christmas music
Building the Machine (2001) – Funky hard rock
Songs in the Key of Rock (2003) – Melodic hard rock
Soul Mover (2005) – Contemporary hard rock
Music for the Divine (2006) – Hard rock with occasional acoustic elements
First Underground Nuclear Kitchen (2008) – Funky hard rock
Resonate (2016) – Grungier hard rock
Chosen (2025) – Grungier hard rock
Ken, Ritchie has said numerous times that Glenn was the best bass player DP ever had. For whatever reason and perhaps unfairly, he has never rated Roger very highly as a bassist (I have a hunch he deems him too tame), Roger was in Rainbow as a co-songwriter and producer, not because of his instrumental skills which Blackmore to Roger‘s eternal chagrin has never deemed more than passable. (And it is true that Roger‘s bass playing took very much a backseat in Rainbow compared to Mk II, his producer role, the AOR style and the general tendency in the 80s to dumb hard rock bass playing down might have all been to blame for that.)
Your assertion that “Ritchie never asked him to join Rainbow” conflicts with the fact that Glenn had been invited to join Reunionbow, was up for it, but under the impression he would be playing bass AND singing lead. Ritchie then posed the question to his people: “Has anybody told Glenn that he will only be playing bass?” to which they reacted dumbfounded. In other words: Glenn’s bass playing was never the issue. Ritchie, in all his infinite wisdom, just deemed someone with barely a grasp of English to be better qualified to project the lyrical depth of Rainbow’s – that hallowed fantasy poetry of the late RJD! – and Purple’s oeuvre than a native speaker, go figure. That is how important Ritchie thinks lyrics are to his fans. 🤗
October 21st, 2025 at 09:04GH has always shown, perhaps even unconsciously, an oversized ego, and I’ve never liked it. I only appreciated him with DP, even if he did some nice things afterwards. A terrible personality as far as I’m concerned, even now.
October 21st, 2025 at 11:14He’s without a compass.
It’s bitter that First Underground Nuclear Kitchen is his worst-selling more modern solo album as he himself states. The album was a good one and the guys he played with on that tour were really on fire for that type of music.
I don’t think that his bass playing inhibits Glenn’s singing at all when he plays live, I actually prefer him singing while playing bass just as I prefer Ringo Starr or Don Henley drumming when they sing. They then phrase tighter with the music.
October 21st, 2025 at 13:47#8: I trust you have met him to conclude that he has a terrible personality 🙂
October 21st, 2025 at 16:11#9: FUNK may have charted lower than Chosen but this could be due to a number of reasons. Given that albums no longer sell generally speaking, I wouldn’t take this too seriously. I doubt it had anything to do with the funk element on the former album.
I was at a F.U.N.K. gig and did notice that the set list, live performance and the one lead guitarist (not the Swedish guy) were perhaps a tad bit too funky for some in the audience, at times it sounded like an early 70s Stevie Wonder gig!
https://youtu.be/yTb9AySZDbU
Needless to say, I really liked it.
October 21st, 2025 at 19:40I’ve spoken to Glenn on the phone when hé had just signed the deal for Hughes Thrall and hé was very friendly.
October 21st, 2025 at 21:19Later I met him backstage in Verviers a couple of times and in Tilburg. During all these meetings he was a nice guy to talk to. No ego.
You know what? At gunpoint, in a dark alleyway I might be prone to admit that the best rhythm section Paicey ever played in was not the one with Glover, not the one with Hughes and not the one with Simper, but those three studio albums and one live one in WS with Neil Murray. There I said it. They played complex, yet utterly groovy with a huge amount of rhythmic nuances and Little Ian had a real ear for the details in tall Neil’s playing, he is that sympathetic a drummer, never mind if he takes up 60% (if Ian takes up 60%, then someone like Cozy takes up 90%!).
Neil has said that no drummer other than Paicey let him flourish on bass as much.
But by the same token: Neil playing in Mk II and that classic sound would have been missing a vital ingredient. Roger’s “driving-the-bus” continuous and metronomic, yet never stiff throb will forever be the most underrated sound ingredient of Mk II (and V to IX of course).
October 22nd, 2025 at 05:03@10
October 22nd, 2025 at 05:15you’re right but maybe the photo above is enough for me
@10
October 22nd, 2025 at 06:31What I say before… I don’t mean to be bad to him, but I mean that GH has released so much stuff over the last 10-15 years, with so many lineups, but without leaving a mark. It’s tiring to follow him. It’s like being on a ship without radar or compass. Sometimes I feel like he focuses more on the look, on the image, than on the rest that matters, namely the music: little quality but so much quantity. His approach is bulemic, and all of this disorients me. I haven’t committed any of his songs from the last 10 years to memory. Too many. Bye
I agree with AndreA : Glenn should try to write better songs, especially because he still sings great. I know some of you like that he’s always recycling the same formula (with a different sound…or sometimes not) but I fail to remember at least 5 great tracks since…15 years ? 20 ?
I can understand that after such a long way (even though he didn’t write much for 15 years) he may run out of juice, no problem. In that case you need a good co-writer (well if you’re not Dylan or Neil Young), something Glenn would have probably be in need for his whole career.
I mean just like Gillan/Glover (or Blackmore/Glover), Bernie/Micky/Sykes with DC, etc. It could have been Thrall, Iommi or Moore as somebody said, they have tried, but he’s just impossible (and I’m not saying it’s all GH fault of course).
You just have to read this interview (just like any other by the man) to understand why he couldn’t get a better career. I mean, he’s no McCartney or even Sting for sure but with that great voice and his superb bass playing, he should have been much bigger.
I guess Chad, Jason or Bonamassa have found the good formula : just a bit of GH here and there but no more than that.
We all know GH he’s full of himself (or full of Glenn Hughes, as he would modestly says), that he’s not the sharpest mind or the most clever man of the DP tree, that he can talk bull$$$$ sometimes (that Rainbow story, what a joke) but he’s a nice man when you meet him (and I had that opportunity many times) and I’m still sad to feel so much frustration in every interview.
October 22nd, 2025 at 11:26and by the way : he has never been asked to join Ozzy. I’ve interviewed everyone involved with Oz at the time (Don Arden, Moore, Ozzy, Nauseef, even Sharon – yes that’s how brave I was :D), everyone denied that. I guess he was too high so his memory is a bit (to say the least) confused.
October 22nd, 2025 at 11:35#15. There is a feeling of repetition involved here and there, agreed, but I would be curious to know which artists from the 70s shed skin with every new album?
October 22nd, 2025 at 12:03@16
October 22nd, 2025 at 15:40I think if you change your skin often, it probably means they weren’t good enough..😅
Ciaoo
Why is the Rainbow story a joke? Blackmore has confirmed it. He was fine with having Glenn as a bassist, but didn’t want him as the lead singer (he never did with Purple either, he liked Glenn’s bass playing and his ability to harmonize with another lead vocalist). Candice’s mom, who established the contact, just jumbled the instructions and when Blackmore noticed that he put his foot on the brake.
I can’t say anything about the Ozzy story, it seems unlikely given Glenn’s musical preferences and Ozzy’s inability to sing rhythmically which is a mark of Glenn’s songwriting, the only aspect that speaks for it are the joint Brummie heritage of Ozzy and Glenn plus the fact that Ozzy was desperate and Glenn out of work. Once you want Pete Way to form a band with you, you ARE desperate. 🤣
October 22nd, 2025 at 16:04#16. Are you disputing Glenn’s and DC’s initial involvment with Ritchie before he decided to do a BN/Rainbow crossover thing instead?
October 22nd, 2025 at 16:05Glenn in 2026..I want a new album and word tour with BCC, that’s the best solution, (if Joe has time and interest?)Deep Purple also a new (last?)album.Ritchie to tell more stories from his rich rock history..maybe even write his biography, that would sell well.King David?world tour with a symphony orchestra “David Coverdale sings ballads” (of course a live album in 2027)..
October 22nd, 2025 at 16:16and yes, ..Glenn is David’s guest on one of them, they perform together “You Keep On Moving”, “Hold On” and “Burn” together
This is where I wake up in a sweat
#16. It’s all relative. Other than DC, whose 1987 outsold even DP, everyone in the DP family plays clubs as solo artists. Glenn tours most consistently along with DP. I am not counting Ritchie’s Rainbow reunion which was an anomaly in every sense of the word.
#19. I am not saying Glenn sheds skin with every new album, although there is a fair bit of variation in his 90s output especially. My point was that most bands/artists from the 70s that are still around today tend to do some recycling. DC, DP, Ritchie and Glenn are all guilty of this.
October 22nd, 2025 at 16:39ops!!
October 22nd, 2025 at 17:22My last is for @18
Not 16!!!
Sorry 🍷
@16 Word. GH is a fab singer almost second to none (oh Karin, of course IG is something else!) and a monster bass player…but a great writer he’s only every other decade. I mean… so many people that write good songs on their own (say Aerosmith) brought wtiters in. He didn’t. And he could’ve been big, I think. I’m not only talking big biz success only. If you don’t desire that – fine. But it wasn’t that great on an artistic side of things too for my liking. Though I still find a couple of songs very enjoyable that would have deserved to fare much better!
October 22nd, 2025 at 17:43Glenn Hughes with Ozzy Osbourne musically speaking, fairy land fantasy stuff that one. How in the name of Lucifers portion would that one work?????????? It is good comedy though. Cheers.
October 22nd, 2025 at 21:21@25
“oh Karin, of course IG is something else!”
– Max, the protector of the downtrodden and ridiculed!
October 22nd, 2025 at 21:37I thank you 😃🤗
oh Karin, as a Gillan fan I promise I will be your protector until (my) death 😅
October 22nd, 2025 at 22:03Glenn has never been an overtly commercial writer, the way he uses chords in a jazzy way is too little middle of the road. He has sometimes forced himself to write in an AOR vein, but it’s not really where he’s at. Even in the musically more tolerant 70s he would write songs that had absolutely no chance of ever becoming a single or garnering radio airplay though they had real musical value:
https://youtu.be/8zM2SVLreaw
That composition is great and I pull my hat, but what are you gonna do with it commercially? It’s music as blatantly uncommercial as Jack Bruce’s solo albums which unlike Eric Clapton’s more mainstream offerings never interested anybody except the absolutely devoted.
October 23rd, 2025 at 01:19@28
AndreA be very careful Uwe doesn’t read your very comforting post, or your dead might be untimely 😁😄
But thank you!
October 23rd, 2025 at 06:46Frau Verndal, the day you finally realize the dazzling beauty of IGB’s music and overcome your small-minded prejudices, THEN we can finally sit down and discuss who the real Ian Gillan fan here is! 🤣
Ian Gillan is sometimes careless and ramshackle/slipshod in his output – sort of like Neil Young who can easily oscillate between brilliance and utter mediocrity and even garbage. Let’s face it, his last “serious” solo album was Toolbox 34 years ago, all solo excursions that have followed since his return to the Purple fold are of whimsical nature.
David Coverdale otoh is too controlled and premeditated in what he puts out, it is often hard to catch a glimpse of the real man behind all of the posturing and staying in character.
Glenn Hughes is interestingly enough pretty balanced between those two extremes, but he to his detriment favors a music with less commercial appeal than his two DP colleagues and of course can also be very erratic in what he aims for. Yet Daniel is right, there is more variation in style in his output than in anybody else’s in the Purple Family.
October 23rd, 2025 at 12:07@31
“overcome your small-minded prejudices!”
– Well, I’ve never claimed to be anything than small-minded!
If it works, why then rock the boat? 😉
“THEN we can finally sit down and discuss who the real Ian Gillan fan here is!”
– you never really get me, do you! 😆
I adore Ian’s singing, I’m thrilled of the gift he put into Purple! I swim in the songs where he is singing (well, except for IGB, not – NOT – because of his voice, but because of the constellation of music) (I get, and respect, a lot of people apparently like IGB!)
And I really appreciate when people, including yourself, dig everything Ian does 😃
To me it has never been a contest of who is the real fan of Ian 😄😄
October 23rd, 2025 at 20:57Hm. Ich weiß nicht…
October 24th, 2025 at 05:45Can there be albums more different than The Butterfly Ball, Elements, Mask and Snapshot?
Compared to that GH records sound samey. The last ones do anyway.
I’ve never been too keen on IGB’s music. I bought “Live at Budokan” because I was fascinated by the cover art. At the end, I probably never listened to it, unless I tried it and then immediately turned it off. I liked something of Clear Air Turbolence, but I quickly abandoned it..
October 24th, 2025 at 10:44You have a point there, I forgot Roger, how careless of me 😳, his albums sound even more radically different from each other than Glenn‘s. No matter what Glenn does, there is always a recognizable core of him.
Don‘t underestimate how Glenn‘s more recent output has been codetermined by Frontiers Music. They want him to do AOR/Melodic Rock (he says he‘s over that), he wants to do Funk (they say that is not their market), the compromise ends up being Grunge/Nu Metal influenced.
October 24th, 2025 at 12:30# 20 : sorry, I meant that the Rainbow story is a joke because one has to be very naive (and GH can be) to be able to believe that Ritchie is going to have Glenn in his band, even as a bass player.
Ritchie knows that he’s a very good one for sure, but he didn’t want to bother that much : he just picked 2 of his neighbours (including a BN guy), without concerns about how good they were (or weren’t) and a tribute band guy who sang a bit like Dio (and he does that well, too bad he gave him more Gillan songs to sing), + Jens and off they went.
We all know he didn’t bother to work hard enough (or just to work?) to make that band sound decent so it’s obvious he wouldn’t have bother to go through GH annoying attitude again.
I guess had he wanted the new Rainbow to sound good, he would have worked a bit himself and asked Daisley or Greg Smith back, with Rondinelli or even Burgi, every musician in the world (i.e. RB included) can tell the difference.
October 25th, 2025 at 09:05# 23 : I agree (and I’ve wrote it here myself) that most artists from the 70’s can’t do without recycling, and we all can understand that, no problem.
Still when a band is hot, like DP is those days, the music can still be a bit different from an album to the other : =1 is very different from Whoosh, being itself quite different from Infinite for example. But again, it would be easier for Glenn with another (and better) songwriter.
So I agree DC and RB (more than anyone else) are/were going even further than Glenn on the recycling path but people like Roger (Max just wrote that), Ian G or even Don A. are at least trying to do different things. It doesn’t have to be totally different from a record to another but One Eye to Marocco had nothing to do with Dreamcatcher, again very different, to say the least, than Toolbox, itself different than the fantastic Naked Thunder…
Even Don had a rock/proggy album, then a 100% piano one and then a hard rock one.
I don’t blame Glenn, his position is different (Roger, Don and IG are already in a band, so they solo albums aren’t as “important”), still I’m tired (and a bit sad 😉 ) of all those albums recycling the same average songs, I can’t help it, I still thinks that he’s wasting his talent as a vocalist/bass player.
I really like the “blues” album, From now on, Feel, Soul Mover, or even FUNK : in those cases most songs were written with someone else (Erickson, Gowdy, Thrall, Rojas, JJ Marsh, Maldonado).
Glenn isn’t McCartney or S. Wonder : he can write a great song alone (well, he could…Soul Mover for instance) but certainly not 10 or 12, it shows on the last 2 offerings, that’s my point.
(and I’d say the same for Gillan, RG, DC or RB of course, they all need co-writers)
October 25th, 2025 at 09:32But it is weird to compare the solo output of RG and GH just because they are both bass players who have been in DP. GH has a solo career he has to make a living on. I have a feeling that makes one a little bit more conservative when it comes to releasing stuff that needs to sell. RG doesn’t need his solo albums to sell well to make a living.
October 25th, 2025 at 09:55Gentlemen!
As usual Svante is right!
RG is phenomenal and he can afford to take a step aside should he want to!
GH, well, I really don’t wanna step on anyone’s toes now, so I just say this: I liked the way he played in this:
October 25th, 2025 at 11:57https://youtu.be/-RYmt3I4gGQ?si=ZpymYUf4O3kez23O
Svante, true. That may be the reason. But that doesn’t take away from the fact, does it. It was just a discussion about who does release the most versatile output – no matter the policy behind it.
October 25th, 2025 at 12:10I don’t think the joint bass playing characteristic was Max’ point when he brought up Roger, Svante, just a coincidence. But you’re of course right, Glenn wanted and had to establish a solo career with his many albums (and never really broke through – outside of musician and DP fan circles, he is hardly known even to this day), while Roger self-expresses himself and records solo outings with songs he can’t fit under the DP musical umbrella and (with the exception of maybe the novelty Butterfly Ball with its singalong Love Is All hit in some European countries) which were never meant to have nor had relevant commercial impact.
Peter J, I’m with you how Ritchie basically didn’t care about whether the Reunionbow musicians fit the bill. Romero was chosen by Candice, the others kind of fell into place by lackadaisical convenience. That doesn’t conflict with Glenn’s story though because I’m sure that Candice’s mom did not contact him out of midair but only after his name had been brought up somewhere, quite possibly with a throwaway comment of Ritchie along the lines of “If you can get Glenn to just to play bass …”, fully expecting him to say no to Carole Steven’s’ approach. But then something was lost in translation, Glenn thought he could sing AND play bass (he has covered Dio songs with Black Sabbath so did not deem that outside of his abilities) and with good instincts a surprised Ritchie picked up on that and incredulously asked: “Has anybody told Glenn that he will not be singing?!”
What the by now historic incident mainly shows is that (i) there is no personal animosity between Ritchie and Glenn (Ritchie once said that JLT reminded him of Glenn Hughes in character, so burgeoning egos are not really something that bother him as long as he knows he’s firmly in charge) and (ii) he appreciates his bass playing (Blackmore has good ears for picking up whether someone is good at his/her instrument or not).
All that said, it wouldn’t have worked, even ignoring the singing issue for a moment. Glenn’s bass playing is by now so confident, brash and gung-ho, he would have pinned the rest of the Reunionbow line-up (including Ritchie!) against the wall, the difference in approach would have been crass. Even a vocally muted Glenn would have turned those gigs into Glenn bass clinic solo shows. Glenn would have been so good and so in it, he would have made the others look even worse. Different leagues really, because Glenn has lost none of his bite playing bass (it has actually become more pronounced) while Ritchie hasn’t been properly exercised in playing rock for decades.
For the record: Bob Nouveau aka Bob Curiano aka Sir Robert of Normandie is a fine bass player (you don’t play with Willy DeVille for years if you’re not) and actually played an inventive and melodic bass with Reunionbow – alas!, that style of lyrical bass playing grated with the Rainbow material where through all line-up changes the bass was played in a very rudimentary, the drums serving fashion. Craig Gruber on the debut was the one exception and look how long he lasted with Ritchie. Bob Nouveau’s bass style is in fact similar to Craig Gruber’s and also quite a bit to John Gustafson’s, it is very musicianly. But nowhere as assertive and even abrasive, “Make room, here I come!”, as Glenn’s.
It sure would have been interesting to hear though! Glenn doing his trademark funk stops and starts during Catch The Rainbow? No other bassist has ever played the bass to Ritchie’s Mistreated as well as Glenn after all, all others (Neil Murray in WS excepted) sounded leaden doing it.
October 25th, 2025 at 13:57#37. I agree Glenn is at his best with other co-writers. Probably true for most artists. I would say the repetition started to creep in around the time BCC entered his life. Bonamassa is a virtuoso but not a great songwriter. With Hughes having to carry much of this responsibility on his own, the albums started to sound a bit samey after a while. Same with the Dead Daisies.
There is also an overlap between Resonate and Chosen, both solely written by Glenn. I prefer Chosen.
Another reflection. Where does he go next? He has unleashed his black alter ego on three different occasions. Play Me Out, Feel and FUNK. The two first ones classics while the third one is also quite good in places. But they are hardly commercial and an acquired taste in many ways when he lets his falsetto fly.
Judging by his latest comments he is in no rush to make another album, although I have a feeling that will change. Time is running out and I hope he will devote it to his own career going forward, rather than being on standby for Bonamassa.
October 25th, 2025 at 14:22@ 37 -interesting points regarding the co-songwriting situation. It depends on the other writer, does that individual have a decent input, do they have the ‘knack’ for good songs etc. Maybe Glenn Hughes doesn’t mix with writers who have the knack, does he have that ability to come up with very good song arrangements and melody hooks.? It doesn’t appear so to my ears, some do have it, many don’t. Looking at other bass guitarists who sing and write or co-write. John Wetton, from what I have heard over the years he is better with a co-writer. In King Crimson, UK, Asia and with Geoff Downes as a duo (possibly). Jack Bruce, better with another writer it appears, the guy who wrote the lyrics with him at times with Cream, working with Robin Trower and even Gary Moore. Bruce’s solo output as Uwe correctly stated recently, is only for the serious aficionado it seems. It lacks something, even if Bruce isn’t trying to be ‘commercial’ in his approach at times. McCartney and Sting have the knack as we are well aware. It is a fine line though, what is good songwriting to one set of ears could be very ordinary and boring to the next set of ears. Many of the stand alone singers need to co-write with an instrument playing musician. Guitarists who don’t sing often have to, we know who they are. Some rather gifted musicians who can sing a little can do it all. Cheers.
October 25th, 2025 at 21:15I forgot about Karin’s favourite vocalist, Geddy Lee. In regard to Geddy’s solo album My Favourite Headache, he co-wrote the songs with Ben Mink, a multi talented musician and arranger. Even Geddy felt the need to work with someone else, to bounce ideas off and be open to extra input and changes with the arrangements etc. It sort of surprised me at first, however I could also relate to why he did that. Trying to get the best of the best on his first solo album. We know Geddy is the melody man in Rush, big Al obviously is the other co-writer and arranger of the music in the songs. Cheers.
October 25th, 2025 at 21:40@44
“I forgot about Karin’s favourite vocalist, Geddy Lee.”
– excuse me?! 🤓
Either you have misunderstood something or I’m not the one I thought I was 😄
October 25th, 2025 at 22:40Glenn just isn’t commercial in his songwriting on his own, he’s not really interested in pop, has said so himself, unless he is lending his voice as a guest on a one-off session where he tend to pretty much sing what people want from him.
This is probably one of his most commercial songs ever co-written by him, a romantic poppy RnB soul ballad not quite unlike George Michael Bolton 😎 …
https://youtu.be/Z-N7H7wFHwI
But to push a song like that into the (black RnB?) chart he would have needed a non-rock label and maybe a haircut too.
Tellingly, Carmine Rojas, a man well-versed in commercial music,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Rojas
was a co-writer of the song.
I really liked that number, glitzy and ultra-polished as it was, but of course a track like this is anathema to what most people here listen to and want from Glenn or am I mistaken? 😇
October 26th, 2025 at 01:02#40: Of course, four different RG albums from three different decades will have a difference in presentation. That’s a given. Play Me Out, Hughes / Thrall, Addiction and Music for the Divine are not the same either. Glenn is the Steve Lukather of the DP family given the amount of session work he has done. Repetition is bound to set in with an increasing output.
October 26th, 2025 at 05:05#37: Ultimately, the sign of a hot band/artist is whether they can bring it live and this is where Glenn shines the brightest right now with his 2 hour shows and deep dives into his rich solo back catalogue. No extended gimmicky keyboard or guitar solos or spending considerable time offstage, just a very live situation with him ably reproducing songs that were written several decades ago in many cases. This is where the attraction lies for me.
October 26th, 2025 at 06:56I think one of the best bass playing of Mistreated is by Jimmy Bain with Rainbow 🌈
October 26th, 2025 at 08:53I always admired Play me out and FUNK, just as the Trapeze stuff. I wished he’d stuck to the funky side of things.
October 26th, 2025 at 12:27Coffee & Vanilla anyone? I really love that song.
Well said AndreA, Jimmy Bain was great on that track.
# 48 :to me a hot artist isn’t just about “reproducing songs that were written several decades ago”. Glenn is very good at that but to me that makes him a great performer, not a great artist…I guess we’ll have to disagree about this, that’s why we exchange points of view I guess 😉
I don’t mean he isn’t a great artist, it wasn’t even the question here, but he has his forte (bass and vocals for sure) and probably lacks some somewriting talent (sir MacGregor would interestingly says “the knack”) that can explain why so many of his songs for at least 20 years are soon forgotten (pun more or less intended) or just ignored by most rock fans (other than GH/DP fans).
With such a fantastic voice and being so good on bass, with a few better songs (and of course less ego), I’m sure he’d have get the attention he deserves…I understand his frustration about it (he once told me about it).
What you’ve said about GH/Lukather made me think about it : GH would have been great in a Toto situation (or even Foreigner, which he loves) with a great songwriter such as Mick Jones or David Paich.
October 26th, 2025 at 14:52Mistreated had seen quite a few bassists of the Purple family play it, let‘s concentrate on what the bass does during Ritchie‘s solo:
– Glenn Hughes with DP, studio version, @o3:15, inventive, varied and funky:
https://youtu.be/6dPU0_87URY
– Glenn Hughes with DP, live MiE version, @03:43, less free than the studio version, very locked in with Little Ian, lots of nuances between the two, you can hear they are playing off each other:
https://youtu.be/WO3o2e1hvS8
– Jimmy Bain with Rainbow, @O4:45, still a little funky, but more subdued in the background, not much variation:
https://youtu.be/ysGbtXt82lg
– Bob Daisley with Rainbow, @o2:53, bit straighter and rockier marching than what Jimmy did:
https://youtu.be/-BcQwKFzns0
– Neil Murray with WS, @04:15, funky too, but more subdued than Glenn, less variation:
https://youtu.be/svKDegbAo1M
– Colin Hodkinson with WS, @03:48, more straight and rocky, very synchronized with Cozy‘s bass drum:
https://youtu.be/2BZprpxhyMk
– Greg Smith with Doogiebow, @03:18, meat & potatoes rocky, but steady:
https://youtu.be/RPEyDN6-Iyg
– Bob Nouveau/Sir Robert of Omaha Beach with Reunionbow, @03:23, Bob is varied and tries different things, but there is no authority or anchoring in his playing, the man has obviously never played in a heavy band:
https://youtu.be/Z_U3ea7WWwg
Allowances have to be made for the fact that Glenn and Neil played with Little Ian, a drummer with a sympathetic ear for bassists who adjusts his style to accommodate, while Jimmy, Bob D and Colin were all leashed to Cozy who really doesn‘t listen much to bass while playing and follows the guitar(s) instead. Much more than Ian, Cozy expects any bassist to follow and keep up withhim or at least not get in his way.
So who do you prefer? Glenn certainly does the most and is more free in his playing, but of course unlike all the others he was not an employee of Ritchie or DC, but a member of DP who enjoyed more independence to express himself. He‘s not obsessed with total accuracy either but likes to yank things around, yet his playing meshes organically with Paicey‘s drumming. Mistreated is not really a bassist‘s song (but a guitarist‘s one), but Glenn keeps things from becoming too repetitive. And knowing him, what he played was not diligently worked out beforehand, but likely a first or second take.
October 26th, 2025 at 20:14@ 46 – That is a serious career in music there from Carmine Rojas on bass guitar Uwe. Another prolific and versatile musician who we have heard, well most of us and probably never really known who it was. Bowie’s Let’s Dance song for starters. A impressive musician indeed. We can add him to that list with Mo Foster and Tony Levin. Gee they get around these bass guitarists don’t they. Good to see. Cheers.
October 26th, 2025 at 20:19Who mentioned Glenn and Toto? 😎 Voilà …
https://youtu.be/ryiOqkxyIpk
October 26th, 2025 at 20:24#51: I think basically Glenn needs to be on his own. While he obviously can do a good job with Rosanna, Toto already has the perfect singer for the band right now in Joseph Williams.
Name any rock artist from the 70s whose new material has made a splash among rock fans in general? They cater to their old fanbases. I was checking out a setlist from Sting in London the other night and 17 out of 21 songs performed are old Police / Sting solo classics from the 80s. If his new songs would have been so memorable, surely they would have made their way into the show as well?
This raises the point of commercial songwriting and “success”. Hughes/Thrall and From Now On were written with others and they both had arguably strong songs. Glenn is attached to the former but pretty much rejects the latter. It’s the type of AOR music that doesn’t seem to be close to his heart, even though his voice is made for it.
The songs on both albums are considered strong because they are commercial with memorable melodies. Glenn on his own tends to favour less obvious melodies and less commercial songwriting, as Uwe points out. Whether this is because he cannot come up with commercial melodies on his own, or if it’s because he doesn’t want to, I am not sure. His most refined output has been in collaboration with others. IP on CTTB. PT on Hughes/Thrall. Etc.
I would be the first to welcome a return to a more melodic approach but then again, he’s already made From Now On. It’s no longer the 90s. He’s already explored the funk side as well (Play Me Out, Feel, Funk). Which begs the question, where does he go next? More of the same (Resonate -> Dead Daisies -> Chosen) or a less downtuned, distorted approach? I hope for the latter.
October 27th, 2025 at 05:51It is obvious without listening to any other versions of Mistreated as to who is going to be more suited to the song. Glenn Hughes was there at the creation of it and also laying it down for a few more years following on with live performances with Deep Purple. I wouldn’t even bother listening to any of those other versions. Very hard to beat the original composition and subsequent live performances from the creating musicians. Way back in the late 1970’s I did listen to the live Rainbow version, but not liking Ronnie’s take on it (not his fault at all, that is the way he sings). I never listened to it again after one or two attempts. A cover song is a cover song. Sometimes a cover song can have a better take on certain things, but that is rare in my book. I can also understand Uwe looking at different versions of Mistreated though and why not. As we often say at times here, horses for courses or each to their own. Cheers.
October 27th, 2025 at 06:04#52 Very well analyzed and described.
October 27th, 2025 at 09:21Glenn was even there at Mistreated’s inception: While the riff had been “on Ritchie’s Revox tape recorder” already during late Mk II days, Richie played the demo to Glenn at his home in the pre Coverdale days of Mk III and they both jammed a raw version of it.
Mistreated was – and once again Ritchie was frank about this – a not so subtle rewrite of Free’s Heartbreaker penned solely by Paul Rodgers who even plays the lead guitar here in the absence of an dug-related ailing Paul Kossoff:
https://youtu.be/2lAXfjWIOBM
October 27th, 2025 at 16:14@58
October 27th, 2025 at 18:46Uwe
Heartbreaker of Free remember me Tearin’Out My Heart of Rainbow more than Mistreated.
Is not true?! 🍷 😊👍
Tearing Out My Heart was like Love‘s No Friend another shot at Mistreated in any case! 🤗
October 27th, 2025 at 23:34