In a new interview with SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan opened up about the band’s retirement, more than seven years after they launched “The Long Goodbye” tour.
During the interview, Ian Gillan was asked if retirement is out of the vocabulary for him and the rest of Deep Purple’s members, replying:
“I think it is. That was a joke, actually, because it was the promoters. And someone said, ‘We’ve gotta sell some more tickets.’ And it’s the good old standby, the farewell tour. So I said, Okay, we’ll call it ‘goodbye’ tour, but let’s call it ‘the long goodbye’, and let’s make the emphasis on the word ‘long’,’ so it’s kind of an enigmatic phrase.
“There’s no intention to stop. At the moment… I spoke to my manager the other day. I’ve got some solo project. He said, ‘You’re gonna have to put ’em back,’ and I’m putting them back years.
”We’re already booked to the end of ’26, in the planning stage, in the diary, with all the projects we’ve got for Deep Purple. So, yeah, years to come, hopefully.”