Interview: Glenn Hughes

Bluesman Glenn Hughes tells Mark Crumpton why he's opened up to the facts of life.

SOUL PROVIDER

GLENN HUGHES is a name you're probably familiar with, although, if you're an avid collector, you'll have to search deep into the archives in order to grasp the pedigree of his back catalogue. You're talking the likes of TRAPEZE, DEEP PURPLE, HUGHES/ THRALL, BLACK SABBATH, GARY MOORE, PHENOMENA, JOHN NORUM, and WHITESNAKE et al.

Yet success still eludes the man with the golden larynx, who, to my ears, possesses possibly one of the most soulfully unique voices in rock. It's been said that Glenn Hughes can sing the phone book, yet years of self confessed substance addiction have left their mark and made him all the wrong 'headlines.'

"When you mention my name people think, 'Oh my god. what a fuckin' waste of talent,' and, let's face it, it has been a waste of a life," admits Hughes from his home in Redondo Beach California.

Glenn is currently working his recovery 'steps' and living a life of total sobriety in order to develop his solo potential and what he terms his 'gift from God, ' his voice.

Last year, Glenn hooked up with shrapnel boss Mike Varney, who needed a vocalist for one of the songs on his LA BLUES AUTHORITY album. "Messin' With the Kid" resulted in Hughes being asked by Varney to record Blues for BLUES BUREAU INTERNATIONAL.

"It's an album of recovery songs that I needed to express," he professes. "I was asked to do a blues album I thought what better way to cleanse my soul."

All that he wants now is to show people that he's back and his voice is 'happening.' Blues is a stepping stone to that next step.

"I'm very close to signing a major label deal over here, so I'll be concentrating on a very coherent radio-friendly pop, soul, rock album. It's just going to be a very big Glenn voice record. I've got 15 songs together right now, which I consider to be the best I've ever written."

After the energy and excitement of last year's Trapeze reformation gigs, Glenn is eager to get back on the road, specially to meet and thank his fans who he believes have been instrumental in his recovery.

"When I'm fronting my own band it's a sight to behold because I'm in control. I've got to get out there and show people that I am the best singer in the world."

Mark Crampton
Riff Raff
June 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!