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Stealing Deep Purple
A new book about the 1980 bogus Purple debacle is available from a print-on-demand house Lulu Press. It is also said to be going out to regular retailer channels at the end of September.
In 1980, greed was good and you could get away with stealing just about anything, even a band name.
At the end of the 1970s, Rod Evans, the little known original singer of Deep Purple decided to relaunch the classic rock band for a continental American tour.
The only problem was that Evans reformed the group with no other original members and he had a very dubious legal claim to the band name.
What ensued was a tour plagued with bad performances, crowd riots, on-stage fighting and court cases.
The tour has become something of a legend among the fans of the band.
Using over 200 newspaper, book and magazine sources plus dozens of filmed interviews and brand new testimonies from people who were actually there, Steve McLean attempts to find out what actually happened.
“They all had something down their spandex pants. We couldn’t tell if it was vegetable or plastic…. Every time I watch that scene in Spinal Tap, I think of Deep Purple in 1980.” – Llory McDonald, Support Act.
What: Stealing Deep Purple: The Unbelievably True Story of the Most Audacious Stunt in Rock & Roll
Author: Steve McLean
When: July 9, 2025
Where: Lulu Press
ISBN: 9781300131847
Format: A5 (5.83 × 8.27 in / 148 × 210 mm) paperback, 373 pages
Price: € 18.10 + shipping
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Has anyone read it?
July 17th, 2025 at 02:53And what a lovely looking band they were. So real too, I cannot imagine why that didn’t take off. Cheers.
July 17th, 2025 at 03:15Cut poor Rod some slack, I guess he just found it Hard To Be Without … Deep Purple!
https://youtu.be/MHYkzB5ZIzI
July 17th, 2025 at 04:45“Print-on-demand”!
So the publisher doesn’t dare to print a lot of copies beforehand 😄
July 17th, 2025 at 05:32I’ve read the book and really enjoyed. I didn’t know much about the events beforehand and it really grabbed my attention and reeled me in. It’s incredibly well researched as well with lots of first hand accounts.
July 17th, 2025 at 10:05I still wish Rod would come out of hiding; in 2025 it would be nice to hear what he’s been up to for the last 45 years. The Mk1 albums sound very dated compared to what Purple did after, but they still hold up well for me, not so much the last self-titled album, but I still listen to Shades and Book of Taliesyn a lot.
July 17th, 2025 at 10:29I witnessed this show in 1980 in Quebec City. I have the ticket stub stashed away somewhere and left a review here in these hallowed pages a few years ago. The only redeeming value I take away from this and to requote myself; I saw the 1st singer from Deep Purple. Other than that not sure what Mr Evans was thinking when he put this thing together.
July 17th, 2025 at 11:14I might be mistaken, but I think the author had/has an online site where he had indeed amassed an impressive amount of info on the whole operation. So he is now turning that into a book and why not.
I could have forgiven Rod attempting to steal the name if he had at least ensured a semblance of quality control – he didn‘t, those guys not only sounded bad, they sounded shambolic & terrible + plain lazy and unmusical.
July 17th, 2025 at 12:50I’ve always been fascinated by the 1980 fake Deep Purple scam. There must be an exhaustive amount of detailed information in it considering it’s almost 400 pages long. I hope it covers the disappearance of Rod (and his possible whereabouts) as well.
July 17th, 2025 at 13:47He didn’t steal the name deep purple. He was an original member and as in the early, 80’s deep purple didn’t exist, to my mind he didn’t anything wrong, it was people’s expectations that let deep purple fans down. They wanted to hear mk2 deep purple but they got mk1 . He didn’t do anything wrong in my book
July 17th, 2025 at 14:05