Purpendicular holds a special place in our hearts, as its release and events leading to it coincided with the formation of the online community that had founded this website and still runs it to this day. It is also one of the seminal albums in the history of the band — alongside with In Rock, Burn, and Perfect Strangers.

Our editor emeritus Doug MacBeath celebrates the 30th anniversary of the album.

It occurred to me the other day when I was listening to Purpendicular that it was hurtling towards its 30th Anniversary, and that got me thinking on whether it is arguably the most important album the band have done. It certainly is from a personal level.

The personal side is easy to justify – for me, music is not just about the songs themselves, but also about the memories of the events and people I associate with them. Musically, this is my favourite album since the band came back together in 1984. I play it regularly and I sing along. Listening to it in the car, I can honestly say I know every lick, every word, every nuance and by the end of the tour, I was indeed on first name terms with several of the crew. But that’s another song (and so’s that 😉 ). Along the way I made friends with a bunch of people who I’m still in touch with today, and who still mean a lot to me. Hearing the songs reminds me of all the good times we’ve had over the years.

But what about the band itself? Blackmore had left, but news was hard to come by. We had one or two issues of Darker Than Blue (the DPAS magazine) a year. They reported rumours and more in-depth news, but were often reporting events that could be several months old. For anything else we relied on Kerrang! and the likes, and the mainstream music press, especially in the UK, had taken to bashing the band. Fans I knew were already wary about what would follow, especially after the divisive S&M album and tour. But I think it helped that this time, the band did things differently. The Satriani gigs were heavily bootlegged, so it gave many of us a chance to hear what a post-Ritchie Purple would sound like. And it was good (the revamped set certainly helping).

And then we got the announcement of the permanent replacement in Steve Morse. A guitarist’s guitarist, but a name unknown to many, or at best as the guy who played The Friday Rock Show theme. The band went into the studio but then hit the road, playing new material before it was released, something not done since 1971. Again these gigs were bootlegged giving us an early taste of Ted the Mechanic, Soon Forgotten and The Purpendicular Waltz. If you got the right bootleg, there was also an acoustic version of what was to become The Aviator Jon, Rog and Steve played on South African radio. Those lucky enough to attend the first DPAS Convention in 1995 also got to hear an exclusive studio jam – the Turtle Island Shuffle. All this certainly whetted the appetite of those of us open to life after Blackmore.

Then came the album release and the start of a two-year-long tour, kicking off with 19 UK dates — more than the previous four UK tours put together, and mostly in the smaller venues. Out went the fancy lasers, and in came… a mirror ball (used in Highway Star) and the band set about rebuilding their slightly battered reputation by letting the music do the talking.

We got up to seven tracks a night from Purpendicular in those early shows, and eight were featured in total over the 150ish shows. I originally planned to attend four shows on the tour – the first two nights in Plymouth and Reading, plus the two Scottish shows. I ended up adding Newcastle (the only time I’ve ever bought a ticket from a tout outside) and the final UK gig in Brixton. The first shows featured Mary Long and Rat Bat Blue, but these had been changed for Bloodsucker by Newcastle. I think I added Brixton in the hope that they’d make a further change for the last few dates.

But, back to the personal, and what I didn’t know at the time was that this little thing called the “World Wide Web” was bubbling along in the background. Sure, I’d seen a few demonstrations of it at Uni in 94/95, but it was very much being touted as something for academics (I remember the lecturer being very excited by something called Super JANET). It was therefore a surprise to see details for the band’s official website on postcards being handed out at the first night of the tour in Plymouth (the old FSL.com address). After the show, Roger was going on about something called a “newsgroup” and how he’d originally posted the studio reports in the Tour Book there. So, a few days later (ok — looking at the gig list it must have been around two weeks!) a friend and I ventured into an Internet Cafe in Edinburgh… possibly called Hot Frog. I do remember that by coincidence I vaguely knew one of the staff, and the search engine was called Webcrawler. They showed us how to access the website, but also the newsgroup, Alt.Music.Deep-Purple (or AMDP)

I ventured back several times over the next few weeks, and even stood outside the Brixton gig with a number of fellow AMDPers and website editors (not that I knew anyone back then). I eventually splurged on a modem (top speed? 33.3k!) and became a regular on both AMDP and the associated IRC channel (an early chat page). The vibe I got from the six UK shows seemed to be resonating with others all over the World, and I was desperate to see the band again. I therefore hooked up with some fellow fans and did my first solo trip abroad to see the band in Zwolle, Netherlands. I think it was that trip I also met Dave H, one of the founding fathers of Purple’s internet fandom, and The Highway Star. The following summer, I did the Daytona Festival in Lahr, where I met several more AMDP regulars. By this time, I had also gotten to know Stephen (we would both go on to become Editors of THS for a bit) after we’d realised we drank in the same bar in Edinburgh. I finished off the year with the three Chicago shows, including Steve’s Wedding, and a bunch of North American fans. Those three shows brought my total for the tour to 11.

So… thirty years on, the band are still going strong. I suspect if _|_ (as we abbreviated it to on AMDP) and the tour had not been so well-received, the band may have fizzled out, at least for a while. Who knows? But as we know, the band came out fighting, and proving all the nay-sayers wrong. So yes – I do believe that it is the most important album the band have done, and it allowed them to continue.

As it is, we are now in 2026, anticipating another album of new music and another World Tour. Along the way, that little website I discovered became known as Rosa’s Cantina (complete with neon cactuses) before settling down as The Highway Star we know today.

But more importantly, I’m still in touch with so many friends that I first me on that, and subsequent, tours. We’ve grown up together. We’ve grown older together. We’ve had highs and lows. We’ve had families. We’ve lost friends, including sadly, Dave H himself. A group of us met up at the Berlin gig in 2024, and picked up from wherever it was we left off years earlier. Some us even had our own kids with us.

30 years…? It’s been the best 30 years of my life (yeah, ok – marriage, family and career helped too!) and it’s been an absolute pleasure. I look forward to seeing many of you down the road somewhere this year.

Doug MacBeath

Thanks to another editor emeritus Trond J. Strøm for the UK tour flyer.

You can take a peek at Rosa’s Cantina, sans the neon cactuses unfortunately, courtesy of our very dusty archives. The Wayback Machine has another copy of the Cantina from late 1996, which shortly afterwards became known as The Highway Star.