DEEP PURPLE: Keeping Things Raw

DEEP PURPLE bassist Roger Glover recently spoke to Canada's Chart Attack about the changes in the group's sound on their new album, "Bananas", compared to their past offerings.

"It's broad, fresh, quick, but that's kind of fresh. I think it's round — it's got a little more of a round personality," Glover said when asked to come up with a few adjectives to articulate the new DEEP PURPLE sound. "And it was done very quickly. [1998's] 'Abandon' took us five months to do. And why did it take five months? I can't answer that. You go in the studio and you write a song and you put it down on tape. You think it would be so simple, but somehow it ends up being far more complicated because the vocals aren't written or someone has to do a solo and they're not feeling well that day. It gets put off and put off and put off. And then you end up, 'Let's take Sunday off let's take the weekend off' and all of a sudden you look around and five months have gone by."

DEEP PURPLE intentionally recorded quickly in order to keep things fresh and avoid making things too "perfect."

"The album can become flattened out because you've perfected it to the point where you actually ironed the life out of it," said Glover. "And as a producer, I'm aware of this but I'm also in the band. So I don't have the authority that a producer would normally have, which is why I so welcome having a producer, something I've wanted, actually since 'Perfect Strangers'. Right then, we should have had a producer, I think. But Michael [Bradford] was very good — he was very decisive and he's very quick and he also realizes exactly the same thing — he was very good at cutting us off. Before we'd start improving things, he'd cut us off and go, 'No, that's good, that's good the way it is.' 'But, but, but…' 'Sorry, move on.' And he was very good at it because he didn't have to say it in a forceful way. Because we had his trust, or he had our trust, it would be more like, 'I don't agree with you, but OK, let's see how it works out.' And I think for that reason, there are a couple of things that I would change. We finished a little too quickly for my liking. I wanted to do another couple days of jamming and have maybe another couple of songs in the pipeline or whatever. Then all of a sudden, we'd finished. Three weeks and four days, boom, ticket home. 'But, but…' 'No buts. That's it.'"