November 30: Roger Glover was born in 1945

Happy birthday!

Roger David Glover (born 30 November 1945) bassist, songwriter, and record producer. He is best known as the bassist for hard rock band Deep Purple. Glover wrote the guitar riff on “Maybe I’m a Leo”. As a member of Deep Purple, Glover was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2016.

Glover spent four years (1969–1973) with Deep Purple, during which the band saw their most successful releases in the albums in Rock, Machine Head, Who Do We Think We Are and the live album Made in Japan. He is credited with developing the title for the band’s iconic “Smoke on the Water” song, thus inspiring the song’s lyrics which were written by Ian Gillan. Glover says the title came to him when he awoke from a dream two days after the famous fire over Lake Geneva. While he liked the title, he was reluctant to have the band use it because he initially thought it sounded like a drug song.[6] Glover also developed the guitar riff to “Maybe I’m a Leo”, stating, “I wrote the riff to ‘Maybe I’m a Leo’ after hearing John Lennon’s ‘How Do You Sleep?’.”

Glover departed the band, along with Gillan, after Deep Purple’s second tour of Japan in the summer of 1973.

From 1979 to 1984 he was the bassist, lyricist and producer for Ritchie Blackmore’s band, Rainbow, working on four of the group’s studio albums.

When Deep Purple reformed in April 1984, Glover returned to his old band where he has remained for the last three decades.

With Gov’t Mule at the classic concert The Deepest End: