Roger Glover says Deep Purple’s songwriting process remains driven by instinct rather than formulas, with his long creative partnership with Ian Gillan continuing to shape the band’s music as the group releases new material in the same era as fellow rock veterans Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones.
by Paul Cashmere
More than five decades after helping redefine hard rock, Deep Purple are still approaching songwriting much the same way they always have. According to bassist Roger Glover, the band’s latest work is not the result of calculated planning or nostalgia. Instead, it grows from spontaneous collaboration, a creative partnership with singer Ian Gillan, and a collective belief that the music should always lead the process rather than expectations.
For a band whose catalogue stretches back to the late 1960s, the continued release of new music is significant in itself. While many of their contemporaries now concentrate almost exclusively on legacy tours, Deep Purple continue writing, recording and touring with new material at the centre of their work. Glover believes that commitment comes from remaining a functioning creative band rather than becoming a museum piece.
Speaking with Noise11, Glover explained that Deep Purple deliberately avoid entering the studio with a predetermined musical direction.
“We just get together and see what happens,” he said. “People are saying it’s a heavy album, heavier than we’ve done for a long time. Great. But it wasn’t planned. That’s just how it happened.”
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That philosophy extends to the band’s entire writing process. Rather than arriving with finished compositions, Deep Purple begin by improvising together, allowing ideas to emerge naturally before refining them into songs.
“We have two sessions of just getting together and jamming around anything,” Glover said. “We come out with 20 or 30 rough ideas. Then in the next writing session we find the ones we like and hammer them into shape.”
From there, the focus shifts to one of rock music’s longest-running songwriting partnerships.
While the band develops the musical framework collectively, Glover and Ian Gillan spend time together exploring what each composition is trying to become. Glover described Gillan as a uniquely imaginative lyricist whose approach continues to surprise him after decades of working together.
“Ian has an imagination that I don’t,” Glover said. “When he goes off on one, it’s magic. We don’t hold him back. He finds things to sing about that no one else can. He’s not like any other singer and we’re not like any other band.”
Their approach differs from that of many contemporary bands. Instead of completing songs before entering the studio, Deep Purple allow them to evolve throughout the recording process. Glover said he and Gillan often spend days listening back to developing tracks, working out not only the lyrics but the identity of each piece before producer Bob Ezrin helps shape the finished recordings.
The collaborative spirit extends across the entire band. Glover said every member contributes to the creative process, even when the contribution is simply challenging an idea.
“We all share everything because we’re all there. Even if you say, ‘I don’t like that’, that’s part of the process. We don’t like to have a leader. We’re all leaders.”
That democratic structure has helped sustain Deep Purple through numerous line-up changes and more than half a century of recording. It also explains why Glover sees no reason to stop creating new music simply because of the band’s history.
During the conversation, Cashmere reflected on the remarkable fact that in 2026 there are new albums not only from Deep Purple but also from Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and forthcoming music from Neil Young. For listeners who discovered those artists in the early 1970s, it represents an extraordinary period of creative longevity.
Glover believes the roots of that endurance lie in the musical culture that emerged during the late 1960s and 1970s.
“There was an explosion of creativity,” he said. “The record companies were run by music lovers, not businessmen. There was a freedom in the air and people just experimented.”
Whether that environment could exist again is uncertain, he acknowledged, but musicians from that era simply continued doing what they loved.
“If you’re a musician, what else do you do? You play. Some last, some don’t. We’re very lucky that we’re one of the ones that are still around.”
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