Exclusive: Deep Purple’s Roger Glover Opens Up On Fifty Years Of Machine Head & Love For Sitar

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New Delhi: Phenomenal, timeless, and dynamic are adjectives associated with Deep Purple’s 1972 album Machine Head. The album’s chart-topping single Smoke On The Water continues to be considered the band’s signature song, along with other compositions including Highway Star and Never Before. Celebrating 50 years of Machine Head is marked by the release of a bespoke Deluxe box featuring a 2024 remix of the full album by guitarist Dweezil Zappa alongside a 2024 remaster on vinyl and CD. 

Based on true-life events chronicling the fire at Montreux Casino in Montreux, Switzerland, as the band was recording their album at the Grand Hotel, Smoke On Water is also best remembered for its iconic guitar riff.

In an exclusive interview with Zee India's Puja Talwar, Deep Purple’s legendary bassist, Roger Glover takes a walk down memory lane, chronicling moments of creating the masterpiece as well as his love for Indian instruments.

Q: What comes to mind when you think of Machine Head as it celebrates its fabulous golden years?

Roger Glover: The first thing that comes to mind is Fire! The fire is really what gave birth to the album, it gave us circumstances that were pretty difficult at the time. It seemed like everything was intent on stopping us from recording it. We hit a roadblock after roadblock and we ran out of time and had less than two weeks, and most of it was written instantly. We didn't go in with a whole set of songs to record, We had one vague idea for a song which was Highway Star. But apart from that, it was all instantaneous.  By the time we'd find a place to record which is in a closed-down hotel in the winter, we just started working on finishing it. So in a way that gives us sort of a fresh quality as we didn't have time to go back and second guess anything. It was as if we had no idea what we'd done by the way, we knew we were a very good band we'd had a couple of hit records in Deep Purple In Rock and Fireball. But we had no idea that the accident and the fire and all the calamity that was surrounding it would make it what it was and propel it to a greater height than any other album that we've played.

Q: Deep Purple have been the legends of rock and roll, it is the timelessness of your music and the appeal, that has been passed on to generations. What do you think is the timeless appeal of your music?

Roger Glover: It could well be dangerous to analyze too much. I don't know. First of all, we learned a long time ago that you don't get anywhere by copying anyone else. You have to be a leader. You have to be out front and take chances and risks. There's a degree of musicianship in the band that I don't think many bands have. When  I joined the band, I'd never heard musicians like Ritchie Blackmore and Jon Lord, Ian Pace they just blew me away. Wow, they're so good and am I good enough? There was a kind of naivety. Looking back on it, maybe there's something to it, this naive side yet an honest and very musical side. If everyone was a brilliant musician, they would go over people's heads, because only other musicians would appreciate them. But because we had thus this mix of naive and finesse, maybe that gave it a quality that appealed to people and that simplicity! It is hard to be simple, especially if you're a good musician, it's really hard to be simple. A riff like Smoke on the Water is so simple, and yet it's like nothing else.

Q: You were the pioneers when it came to rock and roll. You we at a time when there was nothing called social media or crazy promotions. Have you made your debut now? What do you think would it have been like?

Roger Glover: Jon Lord described Deep Purple as an atomic toy. It's like a little toy, but it keeps going, it runs on nuclear energy. There was a time when music was really important to the public. In the 50s 60s, and 70s, music and sport, were the only two things that people cared about. They were the great escape from poverty, both of them, there was a romanticism. It is almost like a religion, but now there are so many different genres and avenues and things. Instead of one world, it's become 1000s of worlds, mini separate worlds all over the place. So getting one song to rule the world is almost impossible. But we are who we are and we didn’t change and maybe that's a good thing or a bad thing. We did change musically, but as a touring band, that's what we do. We live on stage. Making records is just one of those things you have to do once in a while.

Q: You have performed in India did say that you were familiar with Indian instruments?

Roger Glover: I fell in love with the sound of the sitar at an early age. I bought a sitar and  Tabla. I was really into producing music so I was just interested in different instruments and different sounds. That one could be used. I had a sitar guitar once, which is a kind of halfway between both. I've always been interested in sound, that's maybe why I was a producer. You experiment and it is really about me experimenting and finding things out the hard way.