I'd never seen Black........er........that fellow play a Telecaster before. A nice Gibson Bass too! Did you read the Bass Player interview with Glover, Uwe? He talks about how he came to replace Nick Simper.
No, I didn't. The Purps were not exactly transparent on firing Simper. Paice has said "Nick was too old school rock'n'roll, anything he played, you knew where he came from". Blackmore was cryptic: "There were personal issues, that will all one day come out in the papers no doubt". Jon Lord said something about "mood swings, hard to get along on an everyday basis" (from a man who spent much of his life with Ritchie "sunshine" Blackmore!
). Simper himself said something along the lines of "even Roger probably agrees with me that I'm the better bass player, but he is the stronger songwriter, that is what they thought they needed back then".
I always thought that basically Gillan and Glover joined from Episode Six as a twosome and that Blackmore, Lord and Paice thought they would have Gillan more securely if Glover received a job offer as well. Glover, who to this day believes that he is the weakest instrumentalist within Purple, has said "because I knew I couldn't compete with any one of them on that level, I made myself indispensable doing other things: arranging, producing, songwriting, but I always felt that my contribution wasn't quite theirs and Ritchie could be extremely disheartening about my bass playing, if I couldn't follow one of his faster riffs immediately, he'd put the Strat down and just walk out with distaste on his face, Steve (Morse) otoh sits down with me and practices for hours if need be showing me everything note for note".
I liked Simper's bass playing on those early albums, but there is indeed something old-schoolish to it: It's the combination of largely pentatonic notes, using flats with a pick and a middish sound, he's also slightly ahead of the beat which makes his bass playing always seem a bit busier than it actually is (I share that trait btw). Glover is in fact a no less busy bass player than Nick, but his busy-ness is dead on the beat, laid back and unobstrusive plus he is all treble and low bass leaving the mids for Ritchie's and Jon's guitar/organ battles. That uncluttered DP's sound and explains part of the sonic jump they took from Mk 1 to Mk 2, they began to sound "seventies" as opposed to "sixties". And while Nick played nicely and very unrepetetively, he didn't lock in as much with Paice as Roger did who took the advice from Paice after their first rehearsal "Btw, I don't follow in the rhythm section, I lead!". Paice has said that Roger gives him 70% freedom to do his thing while Roger has 30% whereas "with Glenn Hughes it was more a 50:50 split between bass and drums, Roger leaves me more room".
This is archtypical Nick Simper to me,
that buoyant boppin' groove and the "lead bass" he does around 1:17, lovely (and drawing a smile on my face to this day), but a little old-fashioned already for the late sixties. Compare how Roger plays here a year or so later:
Prior to Purple, Simper played with Lord in one-hit-wonders The Flowerpot Men and though he is not on this recording of their famous Beach Boys pastiche, he very much patterned his bass playing after that style.
