The Quietus' Dr. Rock reports:

Life's lessons can be learned from the DEEP PURPLE story. Talking to Roger Glover reveals how, after a massive fall, one can pick oneself up to become one of the most sought after rock producers of all time. This has included, for Glover, working with JUDAS PRIEST in their infancy and helping RONNIE JAMES DIO establish his place in rock history. He can further teach us how to write a rock hit on the spot in two minutes flat, lets us in on the secret that he thinks hard rock is boring and reveals the ultimate key to rock & roll glory to be simple riffs, street cred and beer.

All hail!!!

Q: How did you get to join Deep Purple?

RG: "Back in the midst of time, Ian Gillan and I were in a band together. I always wrote songs and he had a funny way with words so I convinced him to start writing with me. We became a song-writing partnership and we wrote some pretty awful tracks together. The connection to Deep Purple was our drummer. Nick Underwood was someone who’d worked with Ritchie [Blackmore] before. Unknown to us Deep Purple had formed a year before and decided they were looking for a singer and a bass player. So Ritchie called his old friend up and arranged to meet us. They came, they saw and they stole us away. That was in 1969."

Q: What kind of music inspired you when you first started out?

RG: "I’m old enough to know what music was like before rock & roll. So when rock & roll happened it changed everything. My first albums were by ELVIS PRESLEY and LITTLE RICHARD, roughly when I was 13-years-old. And I wanted to emulate that. I picked up a guitar and wondered how you do it. And someone said, 'This is a chord.' That was at school. Eventually we played a gig there and the idea of being on stage felt natural, so I just carried on."

Q: You played in what is now regarded as the classic Deep Purple line-up. In how far were the additions of you on bass and Ian Gillan on vocals responsible for the sound that was created in those years?

RG: "I didn’t really know of Deep Purple before I joined the group. If they were known for anything it was for the virtuosity within the band – Richie Blackmore, Jon Lord and Ian Paiste were masters of their instruments. Gillan and I however came from completely different background. We were basically naïve songwriters. So I think there was a great combination there, with their musical ability and our very much street value simplicity. And it was a combination that worked, right from the get-go, I mean the first song we wrote was ‘Speed King’. All that playing they could do and yet we just took rock & roll and turned it into a song."

Read the full interview at The Quietus.