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The Dead Daisies
ometimes — 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 , bonecrunching 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 .
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IE : In light of this , then , what is the song “ Not Human ” about ? With the line “ I feel so lost in the atmosphere ,”?
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