KISS
Pull a thread
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).