Deep Purple live at Notodden Bluesfestival, Norway, 2024 — photo: Birgit Fostervold, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are the great longitudinal study of rock: lineups labeled like experiments (Mark I, Mark II, Mark III…), a 1976 dissolution that was supposed to be the end, and then a reunion that has now outlasted the original run several times over. “Smoke on the Water” is the entry point everyone knows; the interesting part is everything around it.
They’re also a connector’s dream — members and producers radiating out to Rainbow, Whitesnake, and half the hard-rock family tree. When a band announces its own death and then releases studio album twenty-four fifty years later, that’s not nostalgia. That’s a system that never actually switched off.
Pull a thread
Deep Purple split in 1973 — and grew back as four bands
Ian Gillan says “outside influences” broke Mark II. Ritchie Blackmore says two alpha males who couldn’t share a room. Neither version explains the stranger part: what the wreckage built.
Five guys in a van in 1968. By 1980, if you had a rock station on, you were hearing Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the same hour — and the people in those four bands had mostly stopped speaking to each other. One argument, four discographies.
Keith Richards Wants a Rolling Stones Residency — Here's the 57-Year Thread Behind That Idea
Keith Richards told Uncut the Stones may swap touring for a residency. That one sentence sits on a straight line running from Elvis in 1969 to the Eagles at the Sphere, and Mick Jagger just pushed back.
The quote
Talking to Uncut around the release of Foreign Tongues, the Rolling Stones’ 25th studio album, out July 10, 2026, Keith Richards was asked about the band’s live future. His answer, as reported by Rolling Stone and Billboard citing that interview:
Deep Purple Broke Up in July 1976. Fifty Years Later, Bob Ezrin Just Produced Their 24th Album.
Deep Purple’s management announced the band’s dissolution on July 19, 1976. Almost exactly fifty years later, SPLAT! landed as studio album number twenty-four. The thread connecting those two dates runs through one producer, who spent 1976 in a studio with KISS.
The day the machine stopped
In the summer of 1976, Deep Purple was over, with none of the usual hedging about hiatuses or solo projects. The official announcement came through the band’s management on July 19, 1976, though the machine had seized up months earlier, on a stage in Liverpool.
Deep Purple Named Their Farewell Tour Ten Years Ago. They Just Refused to Finish It.
Deep Purple have a new album out, Splat!, released July 3, and an 86-show run across 28 countries and three continents booked behind it. That’s not the schedule of a band winding down, which is funny, because Deep Purple officially started saying goodbye a decade ago.
Asked about the end, bassist Roger Glover didn’t blink. “We’re not gonna have a final tour, a final gig and make a hoopla about it,” he told Paul Cashmere in a video interview with Noise11 (2026).