Deep Purple

London, 1968, and the eight line-ups since

Deep Purple formed in London in 1968 around Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on keyboards and Ian Paice on drums, with Rod Evans singing and Nick Simper on bass. That first configuration lasted barely a year. The version that fixed the band's reputation arrived in 1969, when Ian Gillan took over vocals and Roger Glover the bass — the Mark II group that produced Machine Head in 1972 and the live album Made in Japan the same year, and that earned the band a 1975 Guinness Book of World Records listing as the loudest in the world.

What followed was a sequence of personnel changes that few bands survive and fewer document so openly. David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes came in for Burn and Stormbringer in 1974; Tommy Bolin replaced Blackmore for Come Taste the Band in 1975; the band stopped, then reconvened in 1984 with the Mark II five for Perfect Strangers. Joe Lynn Turner sang on the Mark V records between 1989 and 1992. Steve Morse took the guitar chair in 1994 and held it for 28 years. Don Airey replaced Lord on keyboards in 2002. Total sales sit above 100 million records, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

The current group, Mark IX, dates from September 2022, when the Northern Irish guitarist Simon McBride was confirmed as Morse's successor. Gillan, Glover and Paice have been in the room together, on and off, since 1969; Paice has never left at all.

The catalogue they still have to answer for

Machine Head remains the record most of the live set is drawn from — Highway Star, Lazy, Space Truckin' and Smoke on the Water all come from it, and all four were still being played in September 2026. Made in Japan did the other half of the job, establishing that the band's studio material was a sketch for what happened onstage. Perfect Strangers, from 1984, is the only post-reunion title that has held a permanent place in the set.

The band's late catalogue is unusually productive for a group of this vintage, and it exists largely because of one working relationship: Bob Ezrin has produced every Deep Purple album since Now What?! in 2013, through Infinite in 2017, Whoosh! in 2020, =1 in 2024 and now Splat! in 2026 — six records together. Ian Paice confirmed in May 2025 that work on the next one had begun, with 2026 the target.

Splat!, 3 July 2026

Splat! is the 24th Deep Purple studio album, released through earMusic on 3 July 2026. The band's own description of it — their heaviest in many years — turns out to rest on a mixing decision rather than a stylistic one. Speaking to Meltdown on Detroit's WRIF on 8 June 2026, Gillan said the drums and bass sit higher in the mix than on any previous Deep Purple record. He also credited McBride, four years in by then, calling him immaculate, and described the guitar-and-keyboard exchanges as the two instruments talking to each other all night. McBride himself swapped valve amplifiers for modelling units on the sessions, which he likened to a freight train.

Lyrically it works as a loose concept record about humanity shedding physical existence. Gillan has framed it as a metamorphosis rather than an apocalypse, and described the words as optimistic. Guilt Trippin' stages a conversation between God and Charles Darwin about the fate of the planet, and brings back a screaming delivery Gillan had not used on record for years. Keith Urban plays guitar on Diablo.

Reception was better than the band's recent average. Metacritic scored it 79 out of 100; it went to number one on the UK Rock & Metal Albums chart and number two in Austria. Echoes and Dust, reviewing it on 30 July 2026, called it one of the band's finest modern achievements, singling out Arrogant Boy for its riffs and drumming, Airey's organ on The Rider, and the prog-pop turn of The Only Horse in Town.

Jones Beach, 12 August 2026

The defining moment of the current campaign was not planned by the band. On 11 August 2026, during a live-streamed conversation, Blackmore revealed that he had asked to join Deep Purple for a single encore. He told Guitar Player he had woken the previous morning thinking it would be good for the fans if he got up for one song; his wife, Candice Night, made the approach to Gillan, who agreed.

The following night, 12 August 2026, at the Theater at Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York, the 81-year-old guitarist played Smoke on the Water with the current five-piece. It was his first performance with Deep Purple since 15 November 1993 in Helsinki, a gap of 33 years. Blackmore said he was there to heal any wounds but found there were none, compared the meeting to soldiers from the Western Front getting back together, and added that the members realised it could be the last time they saw each other. Nothing further has been announced, and he has not appeared at another date on the tour.

Where they stand, October 2026

The Splat! World Tour opened in Finland on 11 June 2026 and is scheduled to finish in Mexico City on 19 December 2026 — 86 shows across 28 countries on three continents, part of the European run billed as Mad in Europe. The North American leg ran from 4 August in Raleigh, North Carolina to 12 September in Sparks, Nevada, with Kansas supporting throughout and Jefferson Starship on selected Canadian and western US dates. More than 40 further shows were added after the initial announcement, taking the tour to roughly the same size as the band's 2024 schedule. A headline show at the Royal Albert Hall in London is booked for 25 November.

That scale is notable because of what preceded it. In November 2025 Gillan talked publicly about losing his sight and about whether to stop; he has since said he has 30 per cent vision left, that it will not improve, and that a way is found by adapting. Asked about the retirement talk on 7 July 2026, McBride said the band has no intention of stopping and that there is talk of another record and more shows in 2027. Glover was blunter: no final tour, no final gig. Gillan, 80, has described this line-up as the version of Deep Purple that feels closest to how the band worked in the seventies, and said the group feels hard, mean and hungry since McBride arrived.

The set as it stands

The current show is built on an unusually high proportion of new material for a band with this catalogue. The North American opener in Raleigh on 4 August 2026 ran 15 songs in about 90 minutes, four of them from Splat! and two from =1 — close to half the set written in the last two years. The European leg, which opened in Sofia on 29 September 2026, has stretched to 19 items and about 95 minutes, adding Perfect Strangers, Black Night, Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming for the first time since 2020, and the live debut of Sacred Land.