Here is something a bit different for THS. It’s an article by an actual journalist! Marcelo Soares is a Brazilian journalist and a huge fan of Deep Purple. Some of you probably know him from the comments here at THS and in various forums online. This article was written for a Brazilian magazine so some of the back history of the band is probably already known to most of you. But it is a good read. Enjoy!

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“How come you got so much taller than me?”, asked legendary guitar player Ritchie Blackmore, 81, a founder of Deep Purple and Rainbow and an inspiration for three generations of guitarists.

“It’s the other way around, mate – you’re shrinking”, replied singer Ian Gillan, 80 years old and one head taller than his former colleague, old friend and favourite rival.

For 33 years they had not performed together, and the last known register of a hug between them onstage is from 1985, in Malmö, Sweden. Ritchie now looked very small for a musician who always seemed bigger than his own stature. And affable, against his old fame.

During six minutes, Blackmore, Gillan, bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice made true the dream of fans around the world by gathering 80% of the classic Deep Purple lineup to play a slower version of “Smoke on the Water”. In the last decades, Blackmore only talked to the others about musical rights management, and always through managers. A meeting at this point in life, though, is always urgent: Jon Lord died in 2012, and who knows who will still be up for a jam in ten years.

Richard Hugh Blackmore started his career in music as a teenager, He did a tour with Jerry Lee Lewis and had the mandatory seasons at the port zone of Hamburg, playing adult clubs like the Beatles did before. He played whatever was faster, even “Tico-Tico no Fubá”. At 20, he was a demanded session musician, often getting no credit. At 22, he was back in Hamburg when he got invited to create a innovative band with the experienced Jon Lord. It was Deep Purple’s first lineup, including long musical interludes and classical music quotes.

In 1969, Deep Purple was a one-hit wonder when, upon listening to Led Zeppelin, Blackmore decided to replace crooner Rod Evans with a more potent voice. His drummer friend Mick Underwood (who died in 2024) told him about Ian Gillan, who brought along bassist and composer Roger Glover. With the second lineup, success came.

Having been a disciple to a showman like Screaming Lord Sutch, Blackmore was given to theatrics in his playing. He threw the guitar to the air. He played with the soles of his shoes. He scratched strings as if he had tiger claws. At the height of the band’s success, he set amps on fire and destroyed a camera with his guitar. His impetus and musical ideas inspired the heavy metal that came afterwards: Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Metallica and many others drank from the fountain Blackmore helped flow.

He was a spectacle so unmissable that he began to decide the firing of his colleagues, with tacit support from the rest of the band. When the third lineup decided against recording a song he wanted so much, he dropped out and formed Rainbow, his band to hire and fire at will. They had some radio hits in the early 1980s, but it was not Deep Purple. In 1984, Deep Purple was back and their manager was Rainbow’s manager. That made it easier for Blackmore to impose his will. He was ruthless and for all effects the band was his. In 1989, he got Ian Gillan fired.

The members of the best-known Purple lineup shared a stage for the last time in November 17th 1993, in Helsinki, when Blackmore and Gillan were 48 and Glover was a couple of weeks from that. The press only knew it was his last concert with them afterwards*. The mercurial genius of the guitar, founder and up until then uncontested leader of Deep Purple, did so much to sabotage Ian Gillan’s return to the band, imposed by the record company, that he ended up sabotaging himself.

A duel between Blackmore and Gillan for the band loomed over the title of their last album together, “The Battle Rages On”, and its cover – a dragon with two feuding heads, passing at the middle of the band’s trademark DP logo.

In November 9th, Blackmore was particularly bad tempered. He entered the stage in the middle of the first song, got a glass of water and threw it against a cameraman, soaking in the process the wives of Gillan and Glover. At that moment, Blackmore lost all support from the whole band, which released that show in video with comments from all remaining members between songs. Years later, when the whole show was released as a CD, Gillan gave an interview criticizing the move, because it was their lowest moment. The headline was “Don’t buy our record, says Deep Purple’s singer”.

In a last attempt to upset the band, Blackmore tore his passport in pieces so he wouldn’t be able to play in Japan in December. Quickly, the others decided to move ahead and finish the tour with an acclaimed, smiling guitar player – Joe Satriani. When he went back to his solo career, they recruited the kindly Steve Morse for the next 28 years. The seventh lineup reached places they had never been to before, including India, China, Russia and South Africa. In 2014, no other international band had done as many gigs in Brazil as Deep Purple, and a comedy website joked the band would become Brazilian citizens so they wouldn’t have to apply for visas.

After losing Deep Purple and doing one album with a new Rainbow, Blackmore practically retired from rock, playing acoustic on an Renaissance-inspired group with his wife for a niche audience. If someone went to a Blackmore’s Night concert with a Deep Purple t-shirt, they’d get a brand-new tee and be urged to change fast.

Blackmore and Gillan spent two decades saying bad things about each other in interviews, at least once even with threats of aggression. When someone asked Deep Purple members about the likelihood of a one-off jam with Blackmore, the answer was always that it would be impossible. First, because the guitar player doesn’t contact anyone. Second, because life was good. The former colleagues remembered the nasty pranks Ritchie played on them, as well as the demands for the biggest pay and the best dressing room.

In 2016, when the band was honoured by the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, he refused to go and claimed he was excluded. The band said they didn’t exclude him and he would be welcome for a jam. Since he didn’t go, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, from the third lineup, were also not invited to play Smoke on the Water even if they were at the premises. That took to a decade of damning quotes from them about the band in interviews.

Everything suggested that Blackmore and his former bandmates would only meet again if hell froze over. Turns out all it took was a solar eclipse followed by a meteor rainfall in one same day, as it happened in August 12th, 2026.

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Jones Beach Amphitheater is a traditional venue for 15,000 in Long Island. At the night of August 11th, there were still many available tickets for that night’s gig, which also included Kansas and Vanilla Fudge, an inspiration for Deep Purple’s first lineup.

Ritchie Blackmore happens to live near there. Suffering from gout, Blackmore decided recently only to perform around Long Island, where he lives with his wife, singer Candice Night, and their two young children. Even so, a heart condition made him cancel the last dates they scheduled.

On Tuesday night, Candice posted on social media that she and Ritchie had an important announcement to make. They opened an unusual live stream on Instagram, with a blocked camera. The screen was dark and one could only listen to the voices of the couple. Candice said they were not dressed for the occasion, and Ritchie said he had holes in his socks. On Candice’s lives, the former grumpy guitar man loves to crack a joke.

For some minutes, Candice saluted fans from Colombia, Argentina and Mexico, and Blackmore answered questions about his gear and his old snake skin boots. Then Candice asked him to tell the big news: Blackmore would perform with Deep Purple the next night. He even went to a doctor to take a steroids injection so he could stand onstage. According to him, he sent Ian Gillan an AI carrier pigeon and asked him to jam with them, since they were playing just around their corner. The band had said yes.

Over the next hours, fan groups of Deep Purple and Blackmore (there is an intersection, but they are often not exactly the same) went crazy. Was it a prank? Would he try to play Child in Time to get Gillan riled up? Would there be tension? Could he even play nowadays?

Some managed to buy last-minute tickets and brace themselves for four hour trips. After having been underwhelmed by Ritchie with Rainbow a decade ago, some decided it was not worth it to spend so much for the occasion. And some believed it was another elaborate prank. Only when Candice published a picture of Deep Purple in circle, with Blackmore standing by Ian Gillan’s side, it became clear: it WAS true.

Nathan Beaudry, from the Deep Purple Podcast, was on second row and captured, in high quality video, the moment when Blackmore is about to enter the stage. The musician hesitates, while his most recent successor, Simon McBride, plays the first G power chord of the most famous riff in the world and gestures for the crowd to wait. Meanwhile, Candice argues with Blackmore and her last word is legible on her lips: an emphatic “NOW!”

Backstage, behind Candice, was actress Sally Day, Ian Gillan’s assistant. The video she published on Facebook captures a moment in which Blackmore’s roadie pushes him to the stage, with a kind firmness. Don Airey, who played with Blackmore in Rainbow, does a reverence that doesn’t appear on most front-shot videos.

Blackmore enters the stage a bit hesitant, with his hat on his hand, lacking the flair of the past. He leaves his hat on top of an amp and checks the equipment of McBride, a musician as old as he was when he lost the band he baptized with the title of his grandmother’s favourite song. They greet each other, Blackmore comments on Simon’s pedals and both laugh.

Slowly, Ritchie leaves the right corner of the stage, where he reigned in the past. On the center of the stage, he meets Gillan, Glover, Airey (all of whom he fired once) and Ian Paice, the only man who was present in all Deep Purple concerts since 1968. Blackmore and Gillan point fingers at each other, smiling.

Before any hug is attempted, Ritchie lowers his head and begins to play the riff that pays some of his bills to his day: duh-duh-duh, duh-duh da-duh…

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When Deep Purple and british rock were at their height, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Britain had a severe tax bracket for those who had exceptionally high income, and few were better paid than rockstars.

Around that time, a Rolling Stones manager decided to exploit a tax loophole: recording abroad, taxes would be smoother. So, they built a studio inside a truck and sent it wherever it was necessary for tax planning purposes. They also rent it out to other bands when the studio was idle. In December of 1971, Deep Purple booked the truck to record their new album in Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shore line.

They wanted to record a studio album under the same conditions of a live presentation, so they would use the Montreux Casino, where since 1967 promoter Claude Nobs hosted a jazz festival. Deep Purple had played there in 1969 and in the summer of 1971. To clear the place for the band, there was only one gig left, with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, to which the band was invited. In a given moment, someone in the audience shot a flare gun (or was it matches?) and set the wooden ceiling on fire. A human tragedy was avoided mostly because Zappa immediately stoped the concert and instructed the crowd to calmly walk to the exit. Only property was lost.

While the smoke column extended over the lake, Deep Purple tried to plan where to record next. In the first place, they had recorded a base with a simple riff while the police banged on the door upon receiving complaints about the noise. So, they went to the Grand Hotel, which was away from the urban center and closed for reforms. One night, Glover dreamed up the title “Smoke on the Water” and Gillan wrote lyrics describing what had happened since the fire.

The riff became the most well-known in the world, played by any kid who picks up the guitar for the first time. Smoke on the Water became an unofficial anthem of Montreux, and the band always plays there in round dates. In 2006, their forms were printed on the posters. In 2011, they played with an orchestra. Blackmore was often invited, but he never went.

Onstage, jamming with his old mates for one last time, Blackmore takes advantage of the fact there is another guitar player doing the riff and does a beautiful fast flourish on the introduction. Later, he approaches McBride, stops playing the riff and checks if he’s playing it straight. With an approving nod, he gets back to playing again.

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Music plays with the notion of time in the mind. It makes time fly, it stops time and brings listeners back in time.

The solo in Lady Double Dealer brings me back to when I was 13, coming back from school and playing air guitar. The duel between Blackmore and Gillan on Strange Kind of Woman was always on my walkman when I walked to college. The Concerto for Group and Orchestra was playing loudly on the night the new century came about and I was alone in a darkened apartment, living in a new city for the first time. Black Night was the song my wife most jumped to when she attended her first Deep Purple gig with me, in Lingen (Germany), ascertaining the men I talk about more often than my own relatives really did exist.

All rock fans of a certain age have seen their parents, relatives and teachers get old or die before that. We look at the mirror and see the signs of our own age naturally, even if sometimes we wonder who that old man looking back at us is. But our musical heroes will be forever 25 in their glorious recordings, and that’s the origin of dissonances. Photos in albums may fade, but recorded music is always fresh. Blackmore, Gillan and Glover will always be 26 when you play Machine Head.

When Ian Gillan announced he had lost most of his vision due to rhetinopathy, there were some people online who questioned why he was even performing. “I don’t sing with my eyes”, he said in an interview to the Daily Telegraph in Montreux. He doesn’t attempt the vocal athletics of his youth anymore, and savours more each word he sings. The progressively lost vision explains a puzzling scene fans saw in the 2024 tour: at a certain moment, he walked to Roger Glover’s side and stopped, just looking at the crowd. He didn’t dance, he didn’t shake his fists – only looked. He was absorbing all he could of his passion while he still could see most of it.

Once I asked Roger Glover how he keeps his knees so healthy. A man of nearly 80 by then, he had spent two hours jumping up and down with a 4kg lump of wood strapped to his neck. Being 30 years younger, my feet were hurting because I stood during all the same time. “It can only be the energy that comes from the audience”, he remarked.

In 2026, some of the finest rock albums were released by octogenarians. Paul McCartney reminisced about his youth on “The Boys of Dungeon Lane”, while Deep Purple wondered about a reinvention of humanity in “Splat” and the Rolling Stones came out with “Foreign Tongues” with McCartney on bass for one track. As long as their bodies support them, the rocktogenarians won’t stop making music. Nobody does it better.

But then health sometimes intervenes. David Coverdale, ex-Deep Purple alum, stopped performing during the pandemic due to a lung condition, and became one of the greatest dad jokers on Twitter. Last year, he first announced he was officially retired and then retreated from social media, on a sad video. Glenn Hughes, the other half of Purple’s un-righteous brothers, kept his voice remarkably fit but had to anticipate his retirement plans due to an emergency heart procedure.

Getting old is fragile, but it’s still far better than the alternative. Tommy Bolin, won’t have that chance, since he joined the 27 Club at 25. All those who survived the 27 Club are exposed to all kinds of health conditions with come with age, including Blackmore’s gout, Gillan’s eye condition, the stroke Ian Paice had some years back and the cancer that took Jon Lord in 2012. So are us, by the way.

Deep Purple, like Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones, chose to age in full public view, showing each new wrinkle and white strand of hair. Our musical heroes age at the same place as our personal elders, and that’s beautiful. Neither our elders or our heroes are as invincible as they looked in our youth. But they don’t give up.

Roger Glover says Deep Purple will never schedule a “last show”, as so many bands have done more than once. They will stop when one of the senior members can’t perform anymore. We will only know when the last Deep Purple gig happened after it has passed, so it will be less announced than the impromptu jam with Blackmore.

Such is life, fragile and unpredictable.

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Ritchie Blackmore is not a tall man, but his poise and the distance he imposed on colleagues (also some special shoes) made him seem much bigger than his stature would grant. Upon meeting his former bandmates onstage, he was the only one who still sported the artificially dark mane of three decades ago.

Still, he looked much more frail than his old mates at the same age.

This affable fragility didn’t stop Blackmore from giving hints of the same ole Man in Black. He pointed fingers at Glover and Paice at the time they should join the “Smoke” riff, only this time it didn’t look like he was in charge as in the old times. They merely join in the same order every show since 1972. In one of the verses, Ian Gillan sang by Ritchie’s side, with a hand on his shoulder. Blackmore looked at him and pointed one finger to his own lips, as if he was saying “you don’t sing the same”. Gillan pointed in jest to his old rival’s hear, as if he was saying “no, it’s you who are nuts”. Then, Ritchie took Ian’s hand and used it as the biggest plectrum he ever strummed against his strings.

When it came the time to play the solo for the last time, Blackmore deviated from the melodic line he wrote in 1971 and his successors since Satriani always tried to repeat nearly note by note. Once, Blackmore criticized the fast guitar players of the 1980s and 1990s by saying “they don’t search for the notes”. Slowly, with his fingers hurt by arthritis, Blackmore searched for a new melody. Note by note, as someone who weighs each word they want to say, Blackmore told a new story in the middle of Smoke on the Water.

At the end, hugging his old mate, Gillan asked the audience to salute “the great legend, the immortal Ritchie Blackmore”. While the singer said they’d meet at the bar soon, Ritchie handed him the heavy ‘89 Strat to go greet the crowd. He hugged Roger Glover, the target of many pranks of yore, and went backstage.

Maybe – just maybe – this was the last jam of the Man in Black. But, as we all know, rocktogenarians are stubborn and never want to give up.

* When proof-reading this article, Editor Emeritus Trond J. Strøm said: “Blackmore leaving was announced at a press conference in Oslo before the show on November 15th 1993. The press conference was probably not well attended, but one newspaper did run the story as a note, besides the positive review of the penultimate Mark II concert.”