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Ride off into the sunset
An online magazine called eonmusic has an interview with Steve Morse. It was done, like many others these days, on the occasion of Steve’s new solo album Triangulation, but unlike those, it does not shy away from his 28 years with Deep Purple.
I wanted to touch on a little bit of your Deep Purple history; is it hard to believe that you were there for almost three decades?
It’s true. I really thought I was going to be there for the last Purple gig. I didn’t realise that they were outlasting me. There’s something about the British Isles that breeds some very tough customers. These guys survived.
2026 marks 30 years since your debut album with the band, ‘Purpendicular’ was released. There’s some amazing songs on there, from ‘Ted the Mechanic’ to ‘Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming’.
Well, it’s great. I think ‘Purpendicular’ is my favourite album because there was no history between us. We had everything up for grabs. Like the song, ‘Sometimes I feel Like Screaming’ was me noodling around, and Jon [Lord] just returned from a break with tea, and you know in England, it’s always tea! I came to be drinking tea! Every few hours, it was another thing of tea and I’d say; “sure, yeah, I’ll have it!” Anyway, So Jon’s got his tea, and he hears me playing this ditty I was working on for my own album and my own thing, and he just starts noodling along with it. I said; “hey, that sounds good”.
Read more in eonmusic.co.uk.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Even Steve Morse is talking about ‘swing’. We will no doubt hear more about this from our esteemed ‘swinger’ here at THS. To swing or to not swing, that is the question. Cheers
November 5th, 2025 at 05:53Lieber Steve, I guess I am a Deep Purple fan of sorts and I never hated either “The Aviator” or “A Touch Away”, they are in fact among my favorite songs on Purpendicular, an album that was as epochal for a new era of DP as In Rock, Burn & Come Taste The Band were before. If there is anything about your era that I regret then it is that not more of the choice tracks from the albums with you were played more regularly live. The versatility and variation you brought into DP was never a drawback, but something to be cherished.
November 5th, 2025 at 06:27One Dixie Dregs tune from 1994 sounds a bit like I Feel Like Screaming:
November 5th, 2025 at 08:00https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbf55eHJKnk&list=RDpbf55eHJKnk&start_radio=1
Nice shirt, Steve 🙂
November 5th, 2025 at 14:49“That’s why we’ve got things on there that I love and Purple fans hate; things like ‘A Touch Away’, and ‘The Aviator’.”
Not true Steve. I’m a Purple fan (I Think!) and I love both tracks. I’m actually less convinced by the more traditional “hard rock” tracks on Purpendicular like Cascades, A Castle.. & Somebody Stole.
November 5th, 2025 at 15:30Good ears, Georgivs, I had forgotten about that.
Herr MacGregor, I can’t help it, the “swing thing” has always been key to me in DP, even long before I could put a name to it. I remember hearing Rising for the first time at a friend’s house and thinking “My God, what’s with these drums, they sound more like Mick Tucker than Ian Paice!”. At that point in time, all I knew from Cozy Powell was this here:
https://youtu.be/6SENIl8GIn8
which was good fun, but really had a Glam Rock sound. Unlike Max, I had no issues with Glam Rock and its telltale drum sound in general, I even liked Sweet’s The Healer (where Tucker basically pays tribute to Bonham)
https://youtu.be/U5oKFRsrAog
but it was nothing I would/could have ever envisioned with a player from DP like Ritchie.
That is where Rainbow and I basically parted ways, I never got used to that swing-less drum style, for me it was a step backward from prior musical elegance and sophistication. The music doesn’t “glide” with drums like that for me, hey, I’m with Keith, “it doesn’t take off”:
https://youtu.be/NQePSwNkvbA
Strangely enough, Ritchie’s perception of Gary Driscoll (who was apparently a bit of a klutz/Tollpatsch in everyday life) today isn’t that negative as his drumming skills go:
https://youtu.be/wtIfax1EfdI
Needless to say I preferred his drumming to Cozy’s, I found it more musical and nuanced.
November 5th, 2025 at 15:59@6 Liebe Uwe, while I fully agree with you that Gary’s playing was nuanced, he was not the hard rock drummer that Ritchie had needed at the moment. It happened so that I heard the live version of the Sixteenth Century Greensleeves first and I liked it a lot. And then I heard the studio original. I was like, hmm, is this the same song? The live version had that stomp and punch that the studio version sadly missed
November 5th, 2025 at 17:22To me being a DP fan means to embrace different styles and influences. That is what DP and their spin offs is all about.
The Aviator and others are a very enjoyable part of that great legacy.
Thinking about it all great bands had many fountains to take water from.
If you don’t like it you may stick to some sampler of The biggest hard rock anthems or something.
And yes, Duke Ellington had it right about that swing thing.
November 5th, 2025 at 18:40To Steve Morse, if he ever gets to read this. I think Purpendicular is the highest quality DP album ever. And the aviator and a touch away are among the songs I like most. So many thanks for making us so fortunate to listen to music like that.
On a different note, at least for me the first album with Simon failed to deliver the magic shift after a crew change that we are used to for half a century now (in rock, burn, cttb, purpendicular)
November 5th, 2025 at 19:31I agree Attila. Purpendicular is up there with the very best Purple Albums!! As for the first album with Simon, I think it pretty well stunk!
November 5th, 2025 at 23:05Ian Paice’s bass drum is to me one of the core elements of DP’s sound, it doesn’t just anchor, it bounces with the beat, the drums here – and the bass drum especially – are music in themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PBDf-VuTks
Gary played nicely musicianly and groovy, but didn’t have that cheeky Paicey bounce (nor of course Cozy’s anchoring “hammer feel” which on a song like 16th Century Greensleeves indeed made a difference, Georgivs is right):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLc4rllmFgk
And, last but not least, Cozy had intensity and power, but his bass drum doesn’t bounce with joy like Ian’s either nor is it – dare I say – employed as “intelligently”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_A-psFWkgQ
November 5th, 2025 at 23:17@2 Amen! Those are two of the best tracks on that album, without a doubt. Jon Lord at his best on “The Aviator” and “A Touch Away.”
November 5th, 2025 at 23:19Likewise. Purpendicular is amongst my favourite Purple albums and The Aviator and Just a touch away amongst my favourite songs on it. On all the subsequent albums there were always a couple of tracks (sometimes more) which were so much better than we were entitled to expect after all these years and most importantly were varied and original enough to avoid comparison with what had come before. How much a loss his creativity was to the band was rather painfully apparent on the somewhat disappointing = 1. In the unlikely event of them choosing to define when their final gig is it it would be no less than he deserved to fulfill his desire to appear as the final dp guitarist in recognition of his remarkable contribution over 26 years.
November 5th, 2025 at 23:58I have to agree with Attila, and I also hope Steve Morse will read this.
November 6th, 2025 at 00:01I think that the albums that Steve made while in Deep Purple were the best ones since the DPMkII era (which is still my favorite).
They were all so exciting and innovative, and fun!
What a wonderful time to be a Deep Purple fan.
I only wish that they would have played a lot more of those songs on stage from those albums that he played on. A full Steve Morse era-only concert would have been great.
For sure, I am not saying anything against the Rod/Nick or David/Glenn era. Those are also my favorite musics too.
Deep Purple has always been a great, though, misshapen group, but they sure always do deliver the best music of all.
Thanks to all of those guys, and today, especially Steve Morse.
I love the time Steve Morse spent in DP. I think he is the most deserving that DP has maintained a high level of authorship and concert performance. And it’s good that the band didn’t look for a similar RB (that’s impossible to find, mission impossible), although in my world, as a DP fan, Laurie Wisefield was the right choice at the time. I think he was no longer in Tina Turner team(1994)..he had that melodic solo of his like Ritchie, a good author, pleasant skills, and importantly..and British )
November 6th, 2025 at 06:03The choice fell on Steve Morse..whom I knew little about..over time I got to know him well
In his ‘aristocratic’ family (father minister, mother pianist and psychologist), the tradition was more tied to classical instruments, Steve chose the guitar and, he was not mistaken. He grew into one of the most universal and interesting guitarists of the last forty years.
Whether it’s funk, rock, country, jazz, fusion, blues, hard rock or anything else, his string picking really seems impressive, intelligent, schooled, with a lot of feeling, but also with a high level of improvisational abilities. Meticulous and rational, and much less exhibitionist guitarist. Excellent hard rock guitarist if necessary heavy metal guitarist.
Everything that Steve provided in Deep Purple, no matter how special it was, is only a fraction of what he knows and can do
Thank you Steve for your music
@2 Hello Uwe and @5David: you nailed it!
November 6th, 2025 at 07:32I would like to have “sometimes I feel like screaming” as a legacy of the “morse-era-songs” in the setlist – I think it is his “signature piece”. And he should have played it with DP as a guest somewhere on the road where their paths crossed. Steve deserved a farewell like Jon but never got it.
Crocco Chanel wrote @4
“Nice shirt, Steve!”
🤣
Yeah, and he got it real cheap too from his favorite gas station on Highway 326 in Ocala, Fla,
https://maps.app.goo.gl/eXLvQjPiCRtBSbHY8?g_st=ipck
https://pilotflyingj.com/media/f21pssii/92-ocala-fl-pilot.jpg
where they held a(nother) bargain sale only recently. They’ve been the responsible couturiers for his exquisite stage fashion for decades, even if an ever so slight diesel scent is sometimes noticeable. Steve the mechanic alright!
November 6th, 2025 at 14:34The first four songs on purpendicular are good, especially ‘Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming,’ which is one of the best the band has ever done. The rest of the album is boring to the point of irrelevance. The album Abandon is a complete disaster. At least Bananas was largely homogeneous and listenable throughout. After Bananas, Steve should have quit and done something with progressive rock à la Flying Colours. With that band, he was able to play to his strengths, as is well known.
November 6th, 2025 at 17:06Purpendicular is a top 3 in DP’s discography for me. It’s clear the magic was stifled once they started reigning in Morse to make it more palatable to “rock fans”.
I like to listen how carefree he was in those mid 1990s concerts. Absolutely blasphemous when playing Smoke on the Water. Loved it, what a shame they made him tone his style down so much in subsequent tours and albums.
Also why =1 sounds so underwhelming to me. DP isn’t willing to take risks this time around.
November 6th, 2025 at 20:12I sense some bitterness in Steve’s words, beyond the usual complaint that the fans neither accepted him nor the music they’re playing with him. Around the time they toured with the orchestra (about 2010) I felt that he didn’t seem very happy and that was way before Ezrin started producing the band (and then it became more obvious, at least to me). You know, in the late 90ies or early 2000s, Gillan would oftentimes express his happiness about Steve being the guitar player. Maybe something changed during that huge gap between studio albums “Rapture of the Deep” and “Now What?!”. Even the title of the later sounds a little grumpy. I suppose that Gillan didn’t want to write another studio record at first. After all, he produced his autobiographical six-hour “The Highway Star – A Journey in Rock” documentary around that time, which also kind of felt like a swansong or career fade-out. I assume that their (difficult?!) “history”, like Steve calls it, may have begun right there. Steve would have probably stayed in the band until its end if it wasn’t for the illness of his wife, who knows. But I can’t really believe that. It rather seemed like a good opportunity to call it a day.
November 6th, 2025 at 20:22I don’t think that Steve has (unlike Ritchie!) done a single outright bad album with Purple though ROTD (even after the recent remix) and Infinite are approaching mediocre to my ears.
Unlike his cutoff sleeve T-shirts with various naive Native American & critters airbrush kitsch prints, I will always defend the man’s musical contribution to DP. The bad-dressed guitar(ist) with a heart of gold.
November 7th, 2025 at 01:41Laurie Wisefield, Ivica? Never thought of him as a potential DP guitarist, but I guess your choice isn’t any stranger than mine (–> Glenn Tipton, Priest was in hiatus when Ritchie left Purple). And after all Steve Morse was an unexpected choice too.
Laurie is endlessly versatile, there is even a touch of Bolin in his playing,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMH34qH_vyc
who knows, it might have worked, he certainly could write a song and solo …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rghykGNScBA
When he is not trying to be Peter Frampton that is! 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ56y1QsobU
Never mind, I love that song! It was even a minor hit in Germany.
November 7th, 2025 at 02:13I agree with BreisHeim!! The Steve Morse years were exciting!! My My top 4 Morse albums are Purpendicular, Now What, Abandon, and Whoosh though they are all good!
November 7th, 2025 at 08:32“Purpendicular, Now What, Abandon, and Whoosh …”
Leslie, stop thieving from my playlist, you undercover magpie! 😂
PS: I would modestly add Bananas as well.
November 7th, 2025 at 18:10I have to say Uwe, those 4 albums are excellent!! As for pie, make mine Chocolate Cream!! 🙂
November 8th, 2025 at 08:15😂
This Leslie creep has the nerve to want to eat me, I’ll just hang low and pretend I’m a bat!
https://i.makeagif.com/media/11-15-2016/1wgK2c.gif
They’re the most fun birds in our garden and smart as hell.
November 8th, 2025 at 14:55Hi Uwe. Nice “Squawking” at you!! 🙂 I like watching Hummingbirds come to their feeder I have in my yard!
November 9th, 2025 at 12:18