Raised On Radio caught up with Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, who discusses the band's ne album Whoosh!, the global pandemic, Deep Purple#s longevity, the In Rock album, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore leaving and being replaced by Steve Morse, and more.

On the departure of Ritchie Blackmore in 1993

Glover: "It was a surprise to me when Ritchie handed in his notice and said he didn't wanna play any more gigs after Helsinki. And we were on tour at the time. It was so difficult to take in. Somehow we were determined to carry on. Joe Satriani was a temporary replacement, which did show us the way that we could exist without Ritchie, but I felt very strongly that you can't replace Ritchie. He is who he is, and there's no way you can replace him.

If you get someone to play like him or similar or something like that, it would have been a horrible comparison. We needed something different. And to me, the character of Purple always was Ritchie and Jon (Lord / keyboards) as instrumentalists, and they're both virtuosos. So you've gotta have a virtuoso. There's thousands of guitarists who can play, but there's very few who stand out as being very individual and different to everyone else. I felt Steve (Morse) presented that. He asked me when we first met, 'What do you want from me?' I said, 'I want you to be yourself. You can't be in the band unless you're yourself, 100%.'"

The triumphant return of Deep Purple Mark 2 to global concert stages in December 1984 was a huge success. In the newly uploaded clip below, the band storms through "Lazy" in Sydney, Australia featuring the immense talents of guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and keyboardist Jon Lord.

"Lazy" is taken from the band's classic 1972 album, Machine Head.