Deep Purple will not retire and plan to “go on till we drop”, Roger Glover says
In an exclusive interview with Far Out, Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover has revealed why the band will never retire and insisted they will “go on till we drop”.
Following on from their previous album =1, released in 2024, the heavy metal pioneers released their 24th album Splat! on July 3rd, celebrating their prog rock roots while facing the reality of ageing.
Despite this, in a new interview with Far Out, Glover, who has served as the band’s bassist since 1969, was resolute that this is far from the last anyone will hear from Deep Purple.
“I noticed that bands do this thing about announcing the final gig, [like] Black Sabbath, and we won’t do that,” he said, comparing the band’s mantra to that of the Birmingham rockers, who went out on a hometown blaze of glory last summer.
“We’ll just go until we can’t go on, and the final gig won’t be announced, because I think, where would we do it? And the stress and the emotion of saying, ‘this is it’. None of us want to face that, so we just go on till we drop,” Glover added.
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This admission is likely to come as a relief to fans, not least in the short-term because of the massive world tour Deep Purple are undertaking in the coming months, but because of the health issues the band have contended with in recent years.
Frontman Ian Gillan admitted in an interview with Uncut last year that sight issues have left him with only around “30 per cent vision”, with him admitting at the time that the prospect of retirement was “not far off”.
However, between the latest Deep Purple ventures and the announcement of his own solo spoken word tour, it seems that Gillan and the rest of the band are still being kept busy.
For Glover’s part, in terms of future plans, he said, “I think the next year certainly is not going to be as hard as this year. This is a long touring year, but if we survive this tour, then I’d like to do another album, and I think if we tour in 2027 it’s not going to be as hard.”
Deep Purple are just about to embark on their huge world tour which will last the rest of the year, taking them across Europe, North America, the UK, and South America.
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