Glenn Hughes

A gifted and widely experienced English musician renowned equally for his prowess on guitar and bass, Glenn Hughes has earned the enduring nickname “The Voice of Rock” through acclaimed tenures with Trapeze, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple. He launched his recording career in 1969 as bassist and lead singer of the English funk-rock band Trapeze, itself an outgrowth of the British soul group the News. His profile rose further when he joined Deep Purple as bassist in 1974, remaining until that lineup disbanded in 1976. Thereafter Hughes cultivated an enduring solo trajectory that has yielded more than a dozen albums; in 2010 he became the frontman of the hard-rock supergroup Black Country Communion and subsequently formed the kindred California Breed. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame welcomed him in 2016 alongside his former Deep Purple colleagues, and in 2019 he signed on with the Aussie-American hard-rock collective the Dead Daisies.

Once Deep Purple dissolved, Hughes briefly reassembled Trapeze—though no recordings emerged—before unveiling his first solo statement, Play Me Out, in 1978. Two years later he paired with guitarist Pat Thrall for the 1983 album issued under the Hughes/Thrall banner, then lent his services to the supergroup Phenomena in 1985. The following year he assumed lead-vocal duties for Black Sabbath on The Seventh Star, exiting after its completion and later appearing, unexpectedly, on the 1991 techno/house single “America—What Time Is Love?” by the KLF. Mike Varney’s Shrapnel imprint released Hughes’s next solo effort, Blues, in 1993, showcasing the artist on both bass and vocals alongside an assortment of guest guitarists. Additional solo projects followed throughout the decade: Burning Japan Live in 1995, the candid Addiction in 1997—whose themes confronted the personal struggles that had sidelined him through much of the late ’80s—and The Way It Is in 1999. Return to Crystal Karma (2000) and Building the Machine (2001) presented two compact, funk-inflected pop-rock collections, while Songs in the Key of Rock (2003) paid homage to ’70s hard rock; during the same period Hughes teamed with Joe Lynn Turner for two albums credited to the Hughes-Turner Project. Soul Mover, his tenth solo album, surfaced in 2005, succeeded a year later by the commercially strongest entry in his catalog, Music for the Divine. Hughes shifted to Frontiers Records for 2008’s First Underground Nuclear Kitchen, then joined the English-American supergroup Black Country Communion in 2010, contributing to three studio albums. In 2014 he, Jason Bonham, and Andrew Watt issued an eponymous LP as California Breed, and two years afterward he delivered his fourteenth solo album, Resonate, concurrent with his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction as a member of Deep Purple.