Members of Deep Purple commented on a hypothetical reunion with Ritchie Blackmore during a recent SiriusXM interview. You can check out their comments below:
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Ian Gillan
“Me personally, no. I mean, I get on great with Ritchie these days, but I don’t think Ritchie’s playing great these days. And for that reason mostly, I don’t think it would work.
“I’m only in contact with Ritchie through our offices, through our connections and everything else. We have invited each other to dinner a couple of times, but we haven’t been able to make it because I’m in London, he’s in Long Island.”
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Ian Paice
“I enjoy going on stage every night knowing that I’m [there] with my four friends and they’re all gonna play every night. That wasn’t always the case [while Ritchie was in the band], and I wouldn’t want to go back to that again.
“It’s just the way the man is. He is a man of great emotions. He works it out in black and white; there’s no gray areas to Ritchie: ‘I will or I won’t,’ ‘I like it or I don’t like it.’
“Sometimes your bandmembers can’t suffer from that. And I wanna go on stage and have fun. I don’t wanna go on stage and come off feeling so down and miserable. I’m not prepared to go back on that route again, no.”
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Roger Glover
“I haven’t spoken to Ritchie in 20-odd years. I’d be happy to talk to him. He made himself very private. I don’t think he approves of me very much, because of the remixes and the remasters that I did of the older albums. That’s what I’ve heard anyway.
“You can never say never, but I would doubt it very much.”