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
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 — and almost exactly fifty years later, SPLAT! landed as studio album number twenty-four. The thread connecting those two dates runs straight through one producer, who spent 1976 in a studio with KISS.
The day the machine stopped
Here’s the scene in the summer of 1976: Deep Purple is over. Not “on hiatus,” not “exploring solo projects” — over. The official announcement came through the band’s management on July 19, 1976, though the machine had really 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).