Deep Purple's Roger Glover selects Gary Moore as his "Rock God"

Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover selected Gary Moore as his "Rock God", in a recent appearance on BBC Radio 2's The Rock Show with Johnnie Walker.

"I was aware of him, of course, in Thin Lizzy and stuff, but I never thought about him much until he moved to America where I was living at the time," Glover said of the Northern Irish guitarist. "Not only moved to America, but he moved one road away from me. I had a little studio there in my house, and I helped him do a demo, 'Cold Day In Hell'."

"After about a year, he decided to move back to England, but he had nowhere to stay for the last night – so he and his family stayed in my house," Glover continued. "He came down to the studio and he said, 'What are you up to?' So I was playing him a song — a very simple chord sequence, with just drums and bass — and he said, 'Oh, would you like some guitar on it?' I said, 'Well, yeah!' And the next day, about an hour before the limo came to take him to the airport, he reminded me, he said, 'Oh, did you want some guitar on that song?' I said, 'Oh, yeah!' He played three takes of the song without having heard it before — it was just a chord sequence to him — and somehow he plucked a beautiful melody. I sat there and listened to what he had done, and I was just blown away with the power of his fingers. I picked up a guitar and tried to bend the notes like he had, and there was no way I could do it. And he does it with such pitch control and such feeling. I had a whole new respect for Gary."

Glover went on to note that the recording is still saved on his computer.

"One day, I will release an album of studio bits and pieces and demos that I did, and it'll be included on that," he revealed. "We worked together since then a few times, and he was just an absolute force of nature when it came to playing the guitar. Very underrated. And I'd love to have worked more with him."

Listen to Glover discussing Gary Moore in full below: