Roger Glover Interview UK Tour 1980 Roger Glover welcome home. It's not actually home really cause you're born in Wales. That's correct but I've lived here. I mean I'm sort of London born and breed. I lived in Wales till I was nine but I've got basically a London accent mixed with a bit of American and a bit of Welsh thrown in. My father's from Liverpool, consequently everyone thinks I'm Australian. Rumor has it that punches were thrown recently in Germany and that Rainbow rose to the bait of Whitesnake. I don't believe those rumors. I didn't see what happened, I know there was a bit of kerfuffle but I was in the dressing room at the time and very diplomatically stayed out of the way. Not my problem. Did you got any regrets that you rejoined a successful major band at all? I never have regrets, I was given a piece of advice when I was young. Never regret anything! And I've lived by that. I wouldn't have made the move unless I knew I was going to enjoy it and if I wasn't going to enjoy it I'd have left. When I started with Ritchie it was purely as a producer and in fact there was never intention on Ritchie's part or my part for me to become part of the band. That happened purely by accident cause he didn't have anyone else available to play bass by the time we got to the studio. So I started playing and in fact I really enjoyed it. I didn't really played seriously in about 6 years and after about 2 weeks I thought that I was playing better than ever, probably because I'm such a loud bass player in the first place. You didn't go from Purple into another group which I'm sure you could have done because people must have offered you. No, I didn't want to do that because I've been all through that routine and it's a heartbreaking routine, the first album, the new publicist, the third on the bill in America, the clubs in England, and I've done it so many times and I like to work but I wanted to work at something fresh and something new. I needed something fresh and since the production thing happened more or less by accident I sort of produced a couple of albums and then I produced Nazareth. Purely as a sort of something fun to do on a day off kind of thing. I didn't really take it seriously but when Nazareth became successful, it became obvious that there was a career waiting for me and so I decided more or less to give up playing and go full-time into production and there were a couple of times in that six years where I thought about getting a band together but I think it's a question of meeting the right people and I never met the right people I wanted to work with. One of the things about being in a big band like Purple or in a band with a big name is that you you kind of get a little bit of that glory rubs off and you become an ex-Deep Purple member and that's actually something hard to live with. If you're trying to form a band it's going to get called Roger Glover's whatever it is and that's not what I want because I'm not a leader. I'm not a singer, I'm a team member, I'm a bassplayer and I only sort of function as part of a band. I could never lead my own band. Status Quo you produced, Rory Gallagher, Judas Priest, Barbie Benton it says in a press hand-out here. Off all the things that you have produced which is the one thing that you see as your monument? Oh boy, that's a difficult one because they go on different levels. There are some albums that I produced that I had a really good time producing that we're very happy to make. The successes are counted on a different level like the first Nazareth album gave me a lot of satisfaction because it was so much fun to do and there weren't that many pressures. How long do you think Rainbow's going to stay together in this configuration? Basically it's Ritchie's band. I mean there's no two ways about that, it's not called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow but he is the undisputed leader and he makes all the policy decisions about who stays and goes, what he's going to do and where he's going to go and where he's going to do it. I think it's a fairly strong Rainbow line-up. I think it's the best one he's had but to how long it'll last I have no idea, I mean I could, I was joking earlier, I could be out of a job next week. He's an unpredictable sort of man. Therefore surely he must be very hard to work with but he's got a reputation of being a hard taskmaster, hasn't he? Yeah, he's hard, there's no doubt about that. I've known him 10 years now and in fact he's been consistent in that 10 years. He's always been a little difficult but there's always two sides to a coin. He's also a great guitar player so I don't think to have a great guitar player plus a sort of superb wonderful diplomatic human being would be too much to ask. I'm prepared to stay in the band as long as they want me and as long as the people want the band. I don't see anything to be gained by being with Ritchie like two old-timers. If the public didn't want to see us and if the albums didn't sell and people didn't come to concerts then I jack it in. On the other hand having joined the band I think it's only fair to give them 100% commitment and I'm prepared to do that. I'll stay with the band as long as it goes. Nice thing about Rainbow is that it satisfies me because I'm doing all three things that I like to do. I'm playing which is I've been starved up for 6 years, I'm also producing and I'm also writing which are the three things I like to do. So Rainbow at the moment is a very sort of a happy occasion for me. How have people been responding to you on the UK tour so far? Fantastic and I got to hand it to the British public. We played now America, all over Europe and the British public are really warm. I've had a lot of personal sort of welcomes. © BBC Radio, U.K - March 1980