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For the foreseeable future…
Glenn Hughes has announced his retirement from touring and live performances “for the foreseeable future”.
This past year, I’ve had some health issues. The results from numerous MRIs, CT scans, and an echocardiogram have alerted my medical team, that I need another open-heart surgery. I really have no option and no choice as health is my number one priority. Grateful to have been chosen with a life full with the gift of music… Thank you for walking beside me.
– Your friend Glenn
All his remaining live appearances are apparently cancelled, as they have been removed from his site. We are marking our calendar accordingly.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
With his abuse history and the cardiac issues he had before finally coming clean (with some hiccups and throwbacks), I understand how this is a daunting prospect for him. May the surgery be a good one, Glenn. Stepping down is the right thing to do now.
August 5th, 2026 at 02:30All the very best to you, dear Glenn!
August 5th, 2026 at 02:51Deep Purple Mark III has been my favorite version of Deep Purple.
Burn & Stormbringer are my favorite albums. I always found them cohesive and mature!
God bless you!
Really sad if not unexpecyed news? All the good guys are getting old etc? Have some loverly memories of seeing GH live over the yrs including a re formed Trapeze at the Hammy (honoring thier ‘late’ manager ) They supported FISH! Seen him in LND a couple of times, S’Hampton a couple of times, BTN. P’Mouth etc. Hoping for a full recovered Mr Hughes…All the Best – cheers PJ
August 5th, 2026 at 06:14Another open heart surgery ?!?! I can’t imagine getting one, let alone two. Glen says music is the healer, hope he’s right. Good luck
August 5th, 2026 at 07:00If you put the music to one side, I think GH is a great inspection to anyone who took the dark path down the road of substance addiction.
August 5th, 2026 at 08:13I still feel the sadness of losing TB at such a young age and what a life he could have had if he didn’t get dragged by the drug abuse.
Well done GH, your catalogue speaks volume and you don’t have to prove anything because you achieved all goals.
Looks like IG is the last man standing 🤞🤞🤞
Peace ✌️
Wishing you the very best Glenn 😊
August 5th, 2026 at 08:35I guess fragile is the word that came to mind the last time we saw him in concert on his Chosen tour. Given the fact that he is some years younger than the Mark II guys he looked very delicate and yes, weak in a way. His singing was very good and he smiled a lot but seemed more of a wise old man than a rock’n’roll singer. I had a feeling we’d not see much of him touring wise again. The fact he said Chosen might be his last album didn’t help. I sure hope he will recover and be able to enjoy life as a private person for a long time to come.
August 5th, 2026 at 08:43Wishing you the best Glenn!! Thoughts and prayers!!
August 5th, 2026 at 09:41Best wishes , Glenn!!
August 5th, 2026 at 12:20I was not a GH fan back when he was in MKIII ( the singing was fine but the “whoops” were annoying) however since taking up playing bass in the last 15 years, Ive gotten an new appreciation for Glenn and his playing style. Sad to hear of this but health is everything, get well Mr. Hughes. Wishing the best!
August 5th, 2026 at 12:29All the best wishes to you, Glenn…and thanx for the music, remembering the two times i saw you on stage, with BCC and solo
August 5th, 2026 at 12:30I saw Mr. GH 4 times, in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2023.The 2018 show was the best. Amazing!
August 5th, 2026 at 13:52What Max says, he‘s captured things perfectly with the description „fragile“. I saw Glenn three times last year: with the Rock Meets Classic revue, with BCC, and solo promoting Chosen. Neither the new hairdo nor the LA award ceremony chic clothes nor Glenn‘s generally extravagant nature could hide the fact that we had an old and frail man before us, albeit one who could still sing and play excellently. But his gait had changed and he wasn‘t quite as hyper/alert as he used to be. Nature always wins out in the end.
Given Glenn‘s 70s and 80s excesses, it is a small miracle that he still walks this earth at all. It also indicates that – unlike Tommy – he has/had nine lives. I sincerely hope he still has one or two spare ones for what is coming up next.
Anyway, 75 is a sensible age to decide for yourself that living in even a luxury tour bus for weeks on end is not for you anymore. I know that Ian and the “boys” have decided otherwise for themselves, but that cannot be a standard to meet for everyone.
August 5th, 2026 at 14:50Uwe Hornung@13
August 5th, 2026 at 21:11DP luxury tour bus is their final resting place.😁
Peace ✌️
I saw him with HTP, 2x solo, and 2025 with BCC…
What a voice … magic … incredible … but like we all together … he gets older too.
Good luck … and have a very long retirement … Mr. Voice of Rock …
LLRnR
August 6th, 2026 at 09:42@14 Adel,
You’re dangerously edging into a Kassandra’s job; later on the punters will tell you that you were a witch – beware! 😉
August 6th, 2026 at 10:50Indeed it will be, it’s how they want to go. Like men at work. I’m always bracing myself for the news one day here.
With the exception of Jagger, Richards, Wood, I know no other collective of men their age (Simon excepted) that has made international touring as much its centerpiece of life (without an economic need to do so, I believe they are by now all well-off enough to comfortably retire). And the non-touring breaks of the Stones are considerably longer.
August 6th, 2026 at 12:00Glenn best wishes hope all goes well for you. I have had the Quadruple bypass surgery which ultimately failed but still breathing. I will see you again if you ever come back to Glasgow.
August 6th, 2026 at 14:11This is really sad news ! I knew Glenn had problems with his knees, but I didn’t know he had also problems with his heart. I hope and pray that the surgery will be successful and I wish him a quick recovery.
What a nice picture of Glenn in full action with a vintage Rickenbacker. It would be a great pity that we will never see this amazing bass player on stage again !
Rudy
August 6th, 2026 at 15:28Heavy cocaine abuse (and I mean rock star real heavy) does that, damage your heart permanently. And that damage doesn‘t go away after you have kicked the habit. The number or former heavy cocaine users with severe and often enough lethal cardiac issues decades later is stunning. The heart just doesn‘t forget nor forgive. It sits there and waits until it reminds you.
You can be a heroin addict and as long as you have access to quality smack and dosage properly, all will be hunky-dory once you are physically clean again, no permanent damage to your body, but cocaine doesn‘t work that way, it leaves scars.
So let‘s just hope for the best and an excellent heart surgeon who Glenn will likely be able to afford. LA is full of them.
August 6th, 2026 at 23:06And he never even liked the Ric, Rudy, it was something Blackmore talked him into because he had liked how Roger‘s bass sound had improved with a Rickenbacker 4001. But Glenn was a Fender-man and discarded the Ric quickly once touring with it, returning to a Fender Precision by early 1974.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK9Og0EBK0POOEuQuRxkYTpVltIGfZ4zo8iPmHQBpa1pCEqIOuOI0gFFXzskNwdE8NPj4YnGGaC7wbDHA8usEZvDtEAX3DLCcZCqp-FBNFpJnrBRJssunoIKEU-ybWAX297xXoEUX5m73k/s1600/Glenn+Hughes.Deep+Purple.promoGHFB.0419-17.jpg
Ironically, history repeated itself when he started his Mk III revue a few years ago, initially he played a cherry sunburst (Ric-speak: “fireglo”) Ric again (likely because there are iconic pics of him using it, albeit neither on Live in London nor Made in Europe – the pics on the MiE sleeve are from early 1974 dates), but he again swapped it after a while for his boutique Fender type basses, giving as a reason that “my floor effects just work better with a Fender bass than a Rickenbacker signal”.
But visually I prefer Glenn with a Ric too. Offering not quite as long scale a neck scale as a Fender neck (34 inches as opposed to 33 1/4 inches with the Ric), string tension on a 4001 is slightly lower which some Fender players don’t like. The pick-up configuration of the Ric also makes slap bass more difficult/awkward.
August 6th, 2026 at 23:32It has been evident for a while that something has been ailing Glenn.
August 7th, 2026 at 00:09Sorry to learn that his situation is so serious.
Wishing him a successful surgery and quick recovery!
Thorsun @16
August 7th, 2026 at 07:05I was married to a witch for 6 years so I am fully qualified in witchcraft 😂
On a more serious note, does anyone knows what the heck is happening to ‘Abandon’ the album has been fully withdrawn from sales and not even on available on download on Spotify or Amazon.
I have a weird feeling that a big buy up of the DP catalogue is coming soon just as David Coverdale did with whitesnake catalogue.
Peace ✌️
Good health to our Glenn !
I watched BCC last year in Vienna…one of the best concerts in the last 10 years that I have seen.
Glenn one of the musical heroes of my life…from the first moment I heard him, (MiE and song ” You Fool No One” the first 7 and a half minutes.. in “a sandwich” of furious Rithie and little Ian ..incredible,feeling, groove ..and a great singer ..one of five in my close circle (there are Big Ian and David) who is able to make me cry with his performance, incredibly emotional …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDx_x7Igqhw
a wonderful moment in the DP wide songbook
Long Live Glenn!
August 7th, 2026 at 07:13Good luck to Glenn and his family!
August 7th, 2026 at 08:25I think Ian Gillan will have the claim to being the last man standing of the big 3 singers now.
Who is their out there to replace our heroes, we have willed them on for one last tour or album, wanted them to sound like they used to.
“I was married to a witch for 6 years so I am fully qualified in witchcraft 😂
Not really an experience that sets you apart much from most of us!
https://youtu.be/9xFkjmYaAfQ
August 7th, 2026 at 11:07Three years ago i had a heart surgery….Im here!!!!! The best for you from Buenos Aires,Argentina!!!!!
August 7th, 2026 at 11:47So glad I took nearly every chance to see Glenn from the 2005 ish era onwards. His shows never failed to blow me away, in particular those that drew heavily from the MKIII songbook and those Trapeze classics such as Medusa and You Are the music. One gig in particular, with his Scandi backing band – wow, possibly the first time we’d sen him ?? Anyway, it made the renaissance fair village fete beer tent parody BN look and sound like a limp prize winning leek – which, being entirely honest, it was at times – nice and jolly but severely lacking in genuine energy.
Glenn invited us to hop into his Time Machine and took us all back to the Cal Jam and to my ears he truly did and then some – kudos to all involved.
At times he’d just keep going through the gears and all those years ago he finished us with the quick one two of Soul Mover and Burn 🔥 he blew us all away and, more pertinently, blew MK (whatever) and Mr and Mrs embarrassingly out of the water.
I wish him peace and recovery ❤️🩹
Legend doesn’t go far enough.
August 7th, 2026 at 19:49Saddening news, though not totally surprising.
But its confusing as well.
For decades since his”comeback” around 90/92 he seemed indestructible, energy all over the place.
Looking great as well.
I read he experienced a falling back into old habits a few years later,but that was 1997?
I know things can change fast but ….. yes, I was very impressed by the 2018 shows.
His looks making me think he had stepped out of this timemachine from the 70 s.
Weird thing is my last good moment was summer of 18 and the decline since has been rough.
I d endured decades of heartaches and more around, Though “medicated” I was in good shape.
2019 spurred me on to go off the horrible meds, one does not totally feel happy with several side effects and extra debilitating ailments.
Its a totally different story and I dont ve the means to buy real care.
Enough about my stupid FAFO story.
I sent my best wishes to one of our heroes.
August 8th, 2026 at 17:06Very sorry to hear this news. Glenn’s performances have been brilliant in highlighting Mark 3 material and he has shown real energy and commitment to the music.
I wish him well for future treatment and recovery.
August 17th, 2026 at 14:44