Songfacts®:

• "The Rider" has nothing to do with horses, cars or anyone galloping dramatically into the sunset, unlike "(Ghost) Riders In the Sky," or "Midnight Rider." Instead, Ian Gillan sings about a far less romantic rider: the backstage demand list that touring musicians submit to venue promoters detailing everything they need in their dressing rooms to make it through the show.
• The song pokes fun at the increasingly absurd demands that accumulate as rock bands tour the world. Gillan got the idea from a story told by a musician in a world-famous band, whose identity he kept under wraps.
  
  "Someone got a fear of flying, so we hired a psychologist," he told The Sun. "The next week, there were four psychologists on the plane, one for each member of the band. Then someone got a bad back, so we got a physiotherapist. The next week, there were four of them."
• Gillan admits to a few tour excesses of his own. When asked by Uncut about his biggest backstage demand, he confessed: "I've got a little booth behind the drum kit. I said, 'Let's build a tiki bar back here,' and we did."
  
  By rock-star standards, a single backstage tiki bar is almost modest. At least he didn't ask for four of them.
• The track appears on Splat!, Deep Purple's loose concept album about the end of humanity; not a crude apocalyptic end, but a "metamorphosis beyond physical existence." "The Rider" serves as one of the album's lighter moments, positioned between the heavy-grooving "Diablo" and "The Lunatic."
• Gillan wrote the track alongside his Deep Purple bandmates Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Don Airey, and Simon McBride. It was produced by Bob Ezrin, continuing a partnership with the band that began with Now What?! in 2013.