Ritchie Blackmore is planning playing with Deep Purple tonight for the first time in more than three decades.
The guitarist, who last played with the band on November 17, 1993 in Helsinki, Finland, touring the The Battle Rages On… album, revealed during an Instagram Live appearance last night (August 11) that he’ll perform with the group tonight (August 12) at the Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York.
According to Blabbermouth, Blackmore said, “I sent my A.I. pigeon to Ian Gillan in Portugal, where he lives at the moment. And I said, How would you feel about if I got up just for an encore? Just one of the songs. I don’t want to intrude. And I said, No pressure – just kind of [for] old times’ sake.’ I’m 81 now. So he seemed to love the idea, put it to the band, got a thumbs up, and it looks like we might be doing that.
“I have my roadie there kind of now, setting up my amplifier,” Blackmore continued. “I’ll be using a small amplifier, but it’s very loud. It’s what I use when I record. I hope I can compete with the [current] guitar player [Simon McBride], ’cause I can see that he has very big amplifiers behind him. So, it’d probably just be the one number, as it’s been a while. I changed my strings on my Strat, which I haven’t done in over 25 years… I hope the guy out in the front can turn me up.”
Blackmore went on to say that he hasn’t played rock music in 25 years, which isn’t strictly true, as he played shows with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow from 2016 to 2019.
“It’ll be good to see the old guys again,” he added. “I just thought it might be an idea to let a few people know ’cause I think a lot of people would like to see that. So hopefully my guitar stays in tune, and I can play whatever song is going to be played. It’s just the one song, I think.”
Blackmore co-founded Deep Purple in 1968, but left in 1975 to form Rainbow. In 1984, he rejoined the group to reform their legendary Mark II line-up, and exited for the final time in 1993, to relaunch Rainbow once more.
