Stage Buzz: Q&A with Glenn Hughes of The Dead Daisies

 

Sometimes — especially over the last couple of soul-trying years — it just feels great to be alive. Or, as Dead Daisies/Deep Purple bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes recently put it in an online posting on his 71st birthday, August 21, he was just “Thankful for another trip around the sun, grateful to see the sun each morning” and content to be “Living in the present moment.” A philosophical credo made all the more poignant by his having just survived a particularly vicious case of Covid-19, which hit him so hard he had to bow out of the current Daisies tour, supporting its powerchord-punchy new Radiance manifesto. “But I had a damn good birthday, actually — it was a nice day,” the slim, healthy-looking rocker enthuses on a Zoom chat on August 22. “I spent it with my lovely wife and some friends — we had a lovely lunch at the beach, and it was a beautiful day. But my wife always tells me that the day before my birthday every year, I have a meltdown, and I had a major meltdown when I turned 50 — I had a bit of a panic attack, actually. But look — 71 is a good age to be, especially for anyone that travels the world like I do, so I’m in good shape, and long may that continue.”

And the Dead Daisies — anchored by former Whitesnake members Doug Aldrich and David Lowy — is only the latest outlet for Black Country Communion mainstay Hughes, who — as part of Deep Purple — was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016. It was a forum he was quite happy to accept in 2019; Radiance is his second full-length album fronting the outfit, following “Holy Ground” in January of 2021. “Actually, they were looking at me for quite some time,” he says of the nearly decade-old Daisies collective. “I took a meeting with David Lowy, and they asked me if I would like to come in on bass and vocals, and I am, as you know, a lead singer and a bass player, so I agreed, and it was fun. And I’d met Doug for the first time at Ronnie Dio’s house in 1999, I think, millennium times, and then I asked Doug to tour with me on my solo tour in August of 2015.” Many musicians have spun through the group’s revolving doors since 2013, but the sound, as exemplified on “Radiance,” remains the same: huge, bone-crunching riffs with a bluesy lineage dating straight back to vintage AC/DC, topped with serpentine guitar filigrees and Hughes’ time-tested gravelly snarl. Songs are all stadium-pleasing singalongs and — thanks to the singer’s thoughtful, more existential lyrics — are a cut above many of their peers. Hughes was more than willing to break it all down.

IE: Given that the road is your life — which you sing about in your new song “Roll On” — what was it like for you when the pandemic hit? Did you go stir-crazy? Suffer through an identity crisis? 

GLENN HUGHES: The pandemic? Look, it’s affected every person on this planet. But as musicians, entertainers, and actors in the entertainment industry, it’s affected everything for us because people didn’t get to interact, didn’t get to film, and didn’t get to play. It was a difficult moment. But for me, as a songwriter, it kind of helped me express my concern and love for the human condition. As a writer, I got to express myself even more. I mean, since I got sober all those years ago, three decades ago, I decided that I would only sing about the human condition and not so much fairy tales or anything to do with that. It’s about us, as people, and that’s what I write about. And “Roll On” is a great (album) closing song that’s different to the rest of the album because its lyrical content is about someone — not so much me — being out there on the Great Highway, carrying on with their life. And me, at my age? I’m just grateful to still be doing that.

IE: In light of this, then, what is the song “Not Human” about? With the line “I feel so lost in the atmosphere,”?

GH: You know, for me, the entire record is about…dreams, really. So it should put oneself in this crazy, difficult time period — we’re going through this…whatever you want to call it — and I’m just trying to express myself as a songwriter in the only way that I know how to, and that’s in talking about letting go, overcoming fear, and stepping into the light.

IE: Who are you addressing in “Hypnotize Yourself”? You seem very angry.

GH: It is about coming to the realization that nothing is real, really. Everything is an illusion. In the last 20 years of my life, more so than ever, I’ve realized that what you believe is not real. It’s that voice in the head — the voice that we all have, this dark strange voice — it’s not me. So “Hypnotize Yourself” is about that. And in “Face Your Fear,” fear is also an illusion — all that we think about is really not real, so for me, overcoming fear is not listening to what that narrative in the head is talking about. Which was a big thing for me to realize — that that voice in the head is not my voice. So that’s where I’m at these days.

IE: Is there a daily ritual that you perform to keep you grounded, then?

GH: You know, you’re the first person to talk about this. And yes, I do have affirmations. And again, for me, it’s simply about gratitude, realizing before I hit the floor every day, getting out of bed, that I’m very grateful and thankful to have been given one more sunrise. I sing about the sun a lot in these songs, and it’s a huge thing for me. I mean, with what I’ve been through in my life — illnesses, overcoming drug addiction so many years ago, heart operations, a couple of new knees — they were typical times, personally, but you know something? I’ve always had faith that music will set me free. And I sing about that on the albums that I make. And I’ve made, what? 20 albums in the last 30 years? And I’m always singing about these things, these feelings, and I always talk about letting go, always continually letting go. Of everything. So being thankful is a big component for me that. I live in this time of great difficulty when people have lost their jobs or are having difficulty surviving. My aim is to still be here, helping others.

IE: And you just caught Covid.

Dead Daisies appear at the Arcada Theatre Thursday, September 15. Tickets are still available at OShows.com

Tags: Brian Tichy, David Lowy, Doug Aldrich, featured, Glenn Hughes, The Dead Daisies at Arcada Theatre

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