BraveWords caught up with Glenn Hughes, the legendary Voice Of Rock, at the recent Bangers Open Air festival in São Paulo, Brazil and the conversation takes many twists and turns as we listened in awe to tales from his storied career, which commenced in the early ‘70s with Trapeze before his big break (and David Coverdale’s) replacing Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in Deep Purple. Hughes is currently celebrating 50 years of Deep Purple’s 1974 studio album, Burn, and fans are witnessing, most for the first time, material that hasn’t been done in decades.
“I stopped doing this particular show last year because the album Burn came out 50 years ago,” Hughes begins. “So I decided that last year would be the last birthday. They came to me and said, ‘We really want to do the show again’, so I went, ‘Okay’.”
BraveWords: So how does it feel when you create a piece of art and then you get to the moment in time when it turns 50? How does that feel in your head?
Hughes: “Well, number one, if I wasn’t happy with the art, if I wasn’t happy with it, I wouldn’t do it. So, for me it was very early on in my career, as you know. And I think those albums in the 70’s were very strong albums and here I am, I can still play them if I want to, you know? And as you know, Tim, I may be the last one doing it in Deep Purple.”
BraveWords: But you know what? When you listen, when you talk to Deep Purple purists, they just love, like, the new era of the band.
Hughes: “You know I think a Deep Purple purist is. Before I joined the band, we’re very big with Mark II, Machine Head was a very popular album. So when David (Coverdale) and and I came, with the three guys, and it was like, okay, there was not really any pressure, there was not really any distress. We just went into Clearwell Castle (in Gloucestershire; two hours and 20 minutes west of London) and wrote those songs. Not knowing if it was going to be popular or people would be – we really didn’t think about that. We just made some music.”
BraveWords: Yeah, but there must have been a lot of turmoil because you were replacing people.
Hughes: “Replacing is not easy. It’s not that – I’m not talking about singing or bass playing – it’s kind of like we were replacing the guys that broke the band, you know? David and I never thought about it. We weren’t pressured to do anything. We were just bringing ourselves.”
BraveWords: But still, it’s timeless music, right? You must, like, when you listen to the radio, Sirius XM or whatever, and you hear these songs, it’s like, “Wow, we’re going to be hearing these like Mozart, or Beethoven.”
Hughes: “And it’s weird in a way, in 50 years it’s like, it’s weird because I wrote and recorded a song and it’s like, Wow, I’ve done a lot of work like that over the last decades, you know? So everything I’ve ever done work on, I never stay still. I’m always working on something new and different. I like to do something a little bit off centre.”
BraveWords: Now, the voice has continued to be “The Voice”.
Hughes: “That voice is mine, of course, as you know, but that voice doesn’t really belong to me. It belongs to the ether of – I don’t think about it. I know what I’m going to sing, but I don’t know how I’m going to project it. I like to think as myself as an actor. I never change the melody or the lyric, but I may change a few things in there to keep me fresh. You know, you see some bands, I won’t name names, but they seem to – everything’s the same, and it’s like, that ain’t me.”
BraveWords: Yeah. But you were like two kids in a candy store when you joined the band. Like, literally kids, right? So this was like a lottery win for you at the time. Did you view it like that?
Hughes: “I’ll tell you why it wasn’t, because Trapeze were breaking in America. When I left the band in ’73, we were doing 5,000 seats a night. Yeah. And that’s a lot of seats. So for me to walk away from that guarantee of making that transition from being in a very small band to a band that was about to break, to join a band that was mega was difficult. So I was leaving my two best friends to do this. So it was a very heavy transition for me.”
BraveWords: Tell me about working with two icons of the guitar, Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi.
Hughes: “Different. Personality-wise, the two were different. Ritchie’s darker, a little isolated. I’m not saying anything bad about him. He’s a great – I’m talking about the guy I was with in the ‘70s – a great songwriter. Mysterious as fucking all hell, you know? You know what I’m saying?”
BraveWords: Yes I do.
Hughes: “And I’ll always tell it, and you probably heard it too. But, we never had a falling out. With Iommi, one of my closest friends, I met him in 1970 when Sabbath had the big hit. I was playing in Trapeze, and I know all those guys. So for me, to know and work with Tony is like being with my closest friend. We are very good with each other, and that’s great.”
BraveWords: Sabbath after Dio, just became a mess. I did a Zoom with Tony Martin, and I jokingly said, like, “Was there anybody in charge?” And he laughed at me. He said, “No, there was no one in charge.”
Hughes: “You know, Sharon and Don Arden when I was, you know, when Gillan was in the band, after Ray Gillen came in. And then Gillan went back to Purple, I guess. And then Tony calls me in the middle of the night, ‘Hey, um, I’m gonna do a solo album, and I’m inviting you and Ronnie and Rob Halford to do two or three songs each. Are you interested?’ I said, ‘Of course I’m interested. Your solo album. Of course I’ll sing on your solo album.’ So I went to the studio, Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and the first song we wrote together was ‘No Stranger To Love’, you know? And then he said, ‘Can you come down tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down.’ Then we wrote ‘Heart Like A Wheel’. And it went on for about four days and I’m going, ‘Well, am I singing the whole album?’ He said, ‘We would like you to sing on my solo album.’ So I did. And then the last song, Don Arden, Sharon’s father came in, ‘Well, we think we should call it Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath.’ Yeah. See, I wasn’t really singing about dark shit, you know. So I sang on Tony’s solo album, and it later became Sabbath.”
BraveWords: But you look at the heritage of Sabbath, just like Deep Purple, bands that created an entire genre of music. After the Ozzy and Dio-eras, Sabbath delivered some great albums like Born Again and Seventh Star. Funny, there is a Deep Purple connection with both. And of course the Tony Martin run. So we had multiple singers, but the music was still powerful and touched many people deeply.
Hughes: “I know what you’re saying. Look, Tim, if I’d have gone into that and Tony said, ‘We want you to be the new singer in Black Sabbath’, I would have said, very kindly, I have to decline, because it really wasn’t me to be in a metal, a really dark, metal band. As you know, I’m not into that. You know that. So, to do his album, we’ve listened to ‘No Stranger To Love’, that’s not really metal at all, you know. So I was singing more melodic songs, as Tony Martin did later. So it was a strange situation.”
BraveWords: Were you paying attention to the whole Sabbath career, even Deep Purple after you left?
Hughes: “Well, Ronnie, number one Ronnie was one of my closest friends. Forever. So I was around when they got him in the band, and I was around a lot of that family stuff. The reason I also worked with Tony, because I was such a good friends with Tony and Ronnie together. Ronnie actually asked me if I’d do that album. So, sure. I say only good things about Tony, because I love him as a friend.”
BraveWords: But you were establishing your own solo career at the same time.
Hughes: “Yeah, but I also was struggling with getting my life together in the ’80s. The dark. I’ve been quoted as saying ‘I don’t remember the 1980s’.”
BraveWords: What do you think when you hear about bands like Aerosmith or the Beatles that made their best material when they were fucked up?
Hughes: “Look. I’m not glamorizing drugs or booze, but you know, you have a point. Personally, for me, I can’t – if there’s something I’ve done that I was loaded on – I never really got stoned when I was working, believe it or not. So, if it’s something somehow I would say, ‘Oh God, I can’t listen to that.’ Yeah, but I know what you’re saying. I couldn’t live with that. Yeah, I did drugs and alcohol, we all know that, but I didn’t do it when I was actually working. Or I never really, for a lot of live shows, I was never really high.”
BraveWords: So there was never like a moment in time when you look back and you’re like, “Oh, my God, this sounds great, but I can’t remember doing it?”
Hughes: “There’s not even a couple of moments where I don’t remember. Um, again, every album I’ve ever made, Tim, whether it’s a band like Purple, all three albums I made, Burn sounds like Burn, Stormbringer sounds way different to Burn, and Come Taste The Band sounds way different. And all through my career, even with Black Country Communion, each album sounds different. And Trapeze as well. But I’m really not a band man. I like, I’m an artist who likes to write my own music and control what I’m doing with my own band. The band situation for me doesn’t work.”
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.”
BraveWords: So you, like, just watching your career, you seem to be so invigorated and just like on fire, like you’re so focused. And I think your fan base is like looking at you going, “Wow, this is amazing. This legend is creating some of the greatest music in his lifetime”.
Hughes: “I love writing music. I write all the time. I write better alone. And people know that that works for me, they leave me alone to do the work, and they come in at the end and finish it with me. I like to work alone. And it’s because I prefer to do that.”
BraveWords: What is your favourite creative zone? Where’s, like, the place, the moment, like the room, like, where you like totally focused. The room, the place, where you’re totally focused in terms of writing.
Hughes: “The room? I have a studio home. All my music in the last 25 years has been written in that. For instance Joe Bonamassa, we’ve done five albums, he comes to my home every time and sits in my studio, and we write all the music there. It’s a great place, you know.”
BraveWords: So you, as an elder, you have the honour to cherry pick people like Joe Bonamassa or whoever. Satriani, you name the person.”
Hughes: “Yeah”.
BraveWords: Is there a person that you would like to cherry pick to work with? Has anyone turned you down?
Hughes: “No, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t go after it. Um. You know what? I don’t want to be rejected.”
BraveWords: I love that.
Hughes: “I don’t want to be rejected. Nobody wants to be rejected. So. You know, I would have liked to work with Prince. I didn’t get a chance to. I met him. I was supposed to do Young Americans with David Bowie. He was my closest friend in ’75. But Deep Purple didn’t like that idea. Bowie came into my life and I cut off all my hair and threw away my clothes. I, Tim, I’ve always been like, this look is a hold through. I’m always the one that’s going to look and sound different next time. I don’t want to be the character, only playing one role. Tonight I’m playing the Deep Purple Legacy chapter with my short hair. I’m playing the character. I’m a character. That’s what keeps it fresh.”
BraveWords: So what do you think about that, I don’t know if it’s a fictitious quote, when Clapton was asked about “How do you feel about being the greatest guitar player of all time?” And Clapton said, “Well, you should ask Prince.” Prince has a lot of, not just in that genre, in the rock genre.
Hughes: “Yeah, I mean, I come from a long line, lineage of – remember, in the ‘70s, it was Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Yes, Genesis, and all Brits no disrespect to Canadians, but it’s all Britain. AC/DC was the out band that came from Australia. So I was around those characters. So it formed my identity, which sometimes sucks, because I was around a lot of crazy fucking people, you know. But I’m here talking to you as a sober man. I haven’t had a drink in 30 years, and I have a great wife, a great life, a great love of music, and I’m still doing it. You know something? If I didn’t enjoy it, I could stop today. I could go, ‘Okay’, but I don’t think it’s healthy to stop. You’ve heard it before with some older friends they stopped, then they fucking either die or something weird happened. I don’t want that happening in my life.”
BraveWords: You’ve got that energy.
Hyghes: “Yeah, and my schedule runs normally from March until Christmas, every year I’m on the road. So between Christmas and like March the 1st, I’m at home going, ‘I’m bored’, but I need that time to rejuvenate, you know?”
(Top slider photo by Bemilson Santos at Brazil’s Bangers Open Air / John Rahim )
The post GLENN HUGHES Says He Will Never Retire – “You’ve Heard It Before With Some Older Friends Who Stopped, Then They F*cking Either Die Or Something Weird Happened” appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
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“I stopped doing this particular show last year because the album Burn came out 50 years ago,” Hughes begins. “So I decided that last year would be the last birthday. They came to me and said, ‘We really want to do the show again’, so I went, ‘Okay’.”
BraveWords: So how does it feel when you create a piece of art and then you get to the moment in time when it turns 50? How does that feel in your head?
Hughes: “Well, number one, if I wasn’t happy with the art, if I wasn’t happy with it, I wouldn’t do it. So, for me it was very early on in my career, as you know. And I think those albums in the 70’s were very strong albums and here I am, I can still play them if I want to, you know? And as you know, Tim, I may be the last one doing it in Deep Purple.”
BraveWords: But you know what? When you listen, when you talk to Deep Purple purists, they just love, like, the new era of the band.
Hughes: “You know I think a Deep Purple purist is. Before I joined the band, we’re very big with Mark II, Machine Head was a very popular album. So when David (Coverdale) and and I came, with the three guys, and it was like, okay, there was not really any pressure, there was not really any distress. We just went into Clearwell Castle (in Gloucestershire; two hours and 20 minutes west of London) and wrote those songs. Not knowing if it was going to be popular or people would be – we really didn’t think about that. We just made some music.”
BraveWords: Yeah, but there must have been a lot of turmoil because you were replacing people.
Hughes: “Replacing is not easy. It’s not that – I’m not talking about singing or bass playing – it’s kind of like we were replacing the guys that broke the band, you know? David and I never thought about it. We weren’t pressured to do anything. We were just bringing ourselves.”
BraveWords: But still, it’s timeless music, right? You must, like, when you listen to the radio, Sirius XM or whatever, and you hear these songs, it’s like, “Wow, we’re going to be hearing these like Mozart, or Beethoven.”
Hughes: “And it’s weird in a way, in 50 years it’s like, it’s weird because I wrote and recorded a song and it’s like, Wow, I’ve done a lot of work like that over the last decades, you know? So everything I’ve ever done work on, I never stay still. I’m always working on something new and different. I like to do something a little bit off centre.”
BraveWords: Now, the voice has continued to be “The Voice”.
Hughes: “That voice is mine, of course, as you know, but that voice doesn’t really belong to me. It belongs to the ether of – I don’t think about it. I know what I’m going to sing, but I don’t know how I’m going to project it. I like to think as myself as an actor. I never change the melody or the lyric, but I may change a few things in there to keep me fresh. You know, you see some bands, I won’t name names, but they seem to – everything’s the same, and it’s like, that ain’t me.”
BraveWords: Yeah. But you were like two kids in a candy store when you joined the band. Like, literally kids, right? So this was like a lottery win for you at the time. Did you view it like that?
Hughes: “I’ll tell you why it wasn’t, because Trapeze were breaking in America. When I left the band in ’73, we were doing 5,000 seats a night. Yeah. And that’s a lot of seats. So for me to walk away from that guarantee of making that transition from being in a very small band to a band that was about to break, to join a band that was mega was difficult. So I was leaving my two best friends to do this. So it was a very heavy transition for me.”
BraveWords: Tell me about working with two icons of the guitar, Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi.
Hughes: “Different. Personality-wise, the two were different. Ritchie’s darker, a little isolated. I’m not saying anything bad about him. He’s a great – I’m talking about the guy I was with in the ‘70s – a great songwriter. Mysterious as fucking all hell, you know? You know what I’m saying?”
BraveWords: Yes I do.
Hughes: “And I’ll always tell it, and you probably heard it too. But, we never had a falling out. With Iommi, one of my closest friends, I met him in 1970 when Sabbath had the big hit. I was playing in Trapeze, and I know all those guys. So for me, to know and work with Tony is like being with my closest friend. We are very good with each other, and that’s great.”
BraveWords: Sabbath after Dio, just became a mess. I did a Zoom with Tony Martin, and I jokingly said, like, “Was there anybody in charge?” And he laughed at me. He said, “No, there was no one in charge.”
Hughes: “You know, Sharon and Don Arden when I was, you know, when Gillan was in the band, after Ray Gillen came in. And then Gillan went back to Purple, I guess. And then Tony calls me in the middle of the night, ‘Hey, um, I’m gonna do a solo album, and I’m inviting you and Ronnie and Rob Halford to do two or three songs each. Are you interested?’ I said, ‘Of course I’m interested. Your solo album. Of course I’ll sing on your solo album.’ So I went to the studio, Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and the first song we wrote together was ‘No Stranger To Love’, you know? And then he said, ‘Can you come down tomorrow?’ I said, ‘Sure, I’ll come down.’ Then we wrote ‘Heart Like A Wheel’. And it went on for about four days and I’m going, ‘Well, am I singing the whole album?’ He said, ‘We would like you to sing on my solo album.’ So I did. And then the last song, Don Arden, Sharon’s father came in, ‘Well, we think we should call it Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath.’ Yeah. See, I wasn’t really singing about dark shit, you know. So I sang on Tony’s solo album, and it later became Sabbath.”
BraveWords: But you look at the heritage of Sabbath, just like Deep Purple, bands that created an entire genre of music. After the Ozzy and Dio-eras, Sabbath delivered some great albums like Born Again and Seventh Star. Funny, there is a Deep Purple connection with both. And of course the Tony Martin run. So we had multiple singers, but the music was still powerful and touched many people deeply.
Hughes: “I know what you’re saying. Look, Tim, if I’d have gone into that and Tony said, ‘We want you to be the new singer in Black Sabbath’, I would have said, very kindly, I have to decline, because it really wasn’t me to be in a metal, a really dark, metal band. As you know, I’m not into that. You know that. So, to do his album, we’ve listened to ‘No Stranger To Love’, that’s not really metal at all, you know. So I was singing more melodic songs, as Tony Martin did later. So it was a strange situation.”
BraveWords: Were you paying attention to the whole Sabbath career, even Deep Purple after you left?
Hughes: “Well, Ronnie, number one Ronnie was one of my closest friends. Forever. So I was around when they got him in the band, and I was around a lot of that family stuff. The reason I also worked with Tony, because I was such a good friends with Tony and Ronnie together. Ronnie actually asked me if I’d do that album. So, sure. I say only good things about Tony, because I love him as a friend.”
BraveWords: But you were establishing your own solo career at the same time.
Hughes: “Yeah, but I also was struggling with getting my life together in the ’80s. The dark. I’ve been quoted as saying ‘I don’t remember the 1980s’.”
BraveWords: What do you think when you hear about bands like Aerosmith or the Beatles that made their best material when they were fucked up?
Hughes: “Look. I’m not glamorizing drugs or booze, but you know, you have a point. Personally, for me, I can’t – if there’s something I’ve done that I was loaded on – I never really got stoned when I was working, believe it or not. So, if it’s something somehow I would say, ‘Oh God, I can’t listen to that.’ Yeah, but I know what you’re saying. I couldn’t live with that. Yeah, I did drugs and alcohol, we all know that, but I didn’t do it when I was actually working. Or I never really, for a lot of live shows, I was never really high.”
BraveWords: So there was never like a moment in time when you look back and you’re like, “Oh, my God, this sounds great, but I can’t remember doing it?”
Hughes: “There’s not even a couple of moments where I don’t remember. Um, again, every album I’ve ever made, Tim, whether it’s a band like Purple, all three albums I made, Burn sounds like Burn, Stormbringer sounds way different to Burn, and Come Taste The Band sounds way different. And all through my career, even with Black Country Communion, each album sounds different. And Trapeze as well. But I’m really not a band man. I like, I’m an artist who likes to write my own music and control what I’m doing with my own band. The band situation for me doesn’t work.”
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.”
BraveWords: So you, like, just watching your career, you seem to be so invigorated and just like on fire, like you’re so focused. And I think your fan base is like looking at you going, “Wow, this is amazing. This legend is creating some of the greatest music in his lifetime”.
Hughes: “I love writing music. I write all the time. I write better alone. And people know that that works for me, they leave me alone to do the work, and they come in at the end and finish it with me. I like to work alone. And it’s because I prefer to do that.”
BraveWords: What is your favourite creative zone? Where’s, like, the place, the moment, like the room, like, where you like totally focused. The room, the place, where you’re totally focused in terms of writing.
Hughes: “The room? I have a studio home. All my music in the last 25 years has been written in that. For instance Joe Bonamassa, we’ve done five albums, he comes to my home every time and sits in my studio, and we write all the music there. It’s a great place, you know.”
BraveWords: So you, as an elder, you have the honour to cherry pick people like Joe Bonamassa or whoever. Satriani, you name the person.”
Hughes: “Yeah”.
BraveWords: Is there a person that you would like to cherry pick to work with? Has anyone turned you down?
Hughes: “No, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t go after it. Um. You know what? I don’t want to be rejected.”
BraveWords: I love that.
Hughes: “I don’t want to be rejected. Nobody wants to be rejected. So. You know, I would have liked to work with Prince. I didn’t get a chance to. I met him. I was supposed to do Young Americans with David Bowie. He was my closest friend in ’75. But Deep Purple didn’t like that idea. Bowie came into my life and I cut off all my hair and threw away my clothes. I, Tim, I’ve always been like, this look is a hold through. I’m always the one that’s going to look and sound different next time. I don’t want to be the character, only playing one role. Tonight I’m playing the Deep Purple Legacy chapter with my short hair. I’m playing the character. I’m a character. That’s what keeps it fresh.”
BraveWords: So what do you think about that, I don’t know if it’s a fictitious quote, when Clapton was asked about “How do you feel about being the greatest guitar player of all time?” And Clapton said, “Well, you should ask Prince.” Prince has a lot of, not just in that genre, in the rock genre.
Hughes: “Yeah, I mean, I come from a long line, lineage of – remember, in the ‘70s, it was Zeppelin, Purple, Sabbath, Pink Floyd, the Stones, Yes, Genesis, and all Brits no disrespect to Canadians, but it’s all Britain. AC/DC was the out band that came from Australia. So I was around those characters. So it formed my identity, which sometimes sucks, because I was around a lot of crazy fucking people, you know. But I’m here talking to you as a sober man. I haven’t had a drink in 30 years, and I have a great wife, a great life, a great love of music, and I’m still doing it. You know something? If I didn’t enjoy it, I could stop today. I could go, ‘Okay’, but I don’t think it’s healthy to stop. You’ve heard it before with some older friends they stopped, then they fucking either die or something weird happened. I don’t want that happening in my life.”
BraveWords: You’ve got that energy.
Hyghes: “Yeah, and my schedule runs normally from March until Christmas, every year I’m on the road. So between Christmas and like March the 1st, I’m at home going, ‘I’m bored’, but I need that time to rejuvenate, you know?”
(Top slider photo by Bemilson Santos at Brazil’s Bangers Open Air / John Rahim )
The post GLENN HUGHES Says He Will Never Retire – “You’ve Heard It Before With Some Older Friends Who Stopped, Then They F*cking Either Die Or Something Weird Happened” appeared first on BraveWords - Where Music Lives.
Continue reading...