Roger Glover says he never tires of “Smoke On The Water” because he hears it through the audience’s ears.
Roger Glover has been answering the same question for half a century, and his answer has not changed. Asked on the “Creativity: Something From Nothing” podcast, hosted by producer Michael Bradford, whether any Deep Purple song still feels new to play, the bassist went straight to the one everybody asks about.
“That happens a lot, actually, especially with a song like [the band’s staple 1972 tune] ‘Smoke On The Water‘. It’s a very simple song. Everyone knows it. And I get asked quite a lot, ‘Aren’t you tired of playing that?’ And I would say, ‘No, I’m not.’ ‘Cause I don’t listen to it from my perspective. I listen to it from the audience’s perspective. There’s people out there that maybe it’s the first time they’ve ever heard it live. I put myself in their position. And although it’s a simple song, in fact, because it’s a simple song, you can move around a bit. I never play the same bass part — it’s very similar, but every now and again, you can have a bit of fun with it, and it doesn’t alter things. It just makes it more interesting for you. But it’s the audience’s feeling that I get most from that,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
On what playing live does to him: “The magic thing about playing live is that time gets diminished into microseconds. You’re so alive — you’re never as alive until you’re on stage, and you’re very much alive… You’re aware of the other musicians, the audience, the lights, the sound, your own playing. And it happens so quickly and instantly, you end up relying on instinct, hoping you get away with it.”
The position is consistent. Glover told Guitar World in 2018: “I never tire of it. I don’t listen to the song, but rather experience the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction to it. It’s a very simple and fun song to play. It’s a skeletal structure, which enables me to play different bass parts every night. I stand in awe and watch the audience’s joy, whether it’s youngsters who have never seen us in concert, or our older fans who have seen us many times.”
He put it more bluntly to The Guardian last year: “Someone once said it’s like having a button that you press to make the audience go nuts.”
There is one performance of it that will not have felt routine to anyone onstage.
On 12 August, at Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, Ritchie Blackmore walked out and played “Smoke On The Water” with Deep Purple for the first time in 33 years. The guitarist, who is 81, left the band acrimoniously in 1993 and did not attend their Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction in 2016.
He asked to do it himself. Ian Gillan told the crowd: “I’ve gotta say something. A couple of days ago, I got a message. I got a letter from this man saying, ‘I only live around the corner. Do you mind if I come and jam with you?’ And it was an absolute pleasure to have back onstage, the founder member, the great legend, the immortal, Ritchie Blackmore!”
Blackmore afterwards told Guitar Player: “I was there to heal any wounds — but there weren’t any wounds. Everyone was like we were in the army all along the Western front and we were all getting together again. Very emotional moment.”
Glover is credited as a co-writer on the song, along with Blackmore, Gillan, Ian Paice and the late Jon Lord. It came out on Machine Head in 1972 and describes the fire that destroyed the Montreux Casino during a Frank Zappa concert the previous December, which the band watched from across the lake.
Splat! arrived on 3 July through earMUSIC. It is Deep Purple‘s 24th studio album, their sixth with Bob Ezrin, who has produced everything since Now What?! in 2013, and the second with guitarist Simon McBride, following 2024’s =1.
It was tracked with the band playing together in a room, and is built on an idea of Gillan‘s: the end of humanity treated as a transformation rather than a catastrophe. Keith Urban guests on “Diablo“. “Arrogant Boy” was the first single, out in May.
