DEEP PURPLE's IAN GILLAN: 'SIMON MCBRIDE Has Been Amazing'

In a new interview with Qobuz, Ian Gillan was asked about DEEP PURPLE's announcement in 2022 that he and his bandmates had welcomed guitarist Simon McBride as an official member of the group. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It was funny. He'd been with us for about a year, and we came out of a bar one night somewhere, and I said, 'Are you in the band yet or what?' He said, 'I think so.' I said, 'Yeah, I guess.' So, it was like that."

Gillan continued: "Simon's been amazing. He's taken over from Steve Morse, and he's changed things quite a lot. He's a catalyst in the sense that how human chemistry can be that one little thing can change everything else.

"I think we all feel very relaxed with Simon's style of playing," the singer added. "It's very compatible with the way we started — very straight ahead. The platforms are simple. The virtuosity is on top. So it's not like the showing off comes first. That's just beautiful playing. It's very natural, second nature to him. And they put a lot of drive back into the rhythm section, because he's also a great rhythm player. And so when he's sat in there with Ian [Paice, DEEP PURPLE drummer] and Roger [Glover, DEEP PURPLE bassist] and they're cranking away, boy, it's exciting. It's really great. He doesn't fake anything. There's no pretense. He actually plays every single note accurately and I think we need, we like that. That's a hallmark, I think, of DEEP PURPLE guitar players. They're right at the top of their tree. He's very well respected in the guitar world."

Earlier this month, Paice told ClassicRockHistory.com about McBride's addition to PURPLE as an official member of the band: "Well, we're a democratic outfit. Luckily, with five [members], we always get a decision. His vote is as valuable and as important as any one of the rest of four of us."

Regarding how McBride ended up joining DEEP PURPLE, Paice said: "We knew very, very quickly, and we had an impossible situation with our friend Steve Morse [DEEP PURPLE's previous guitarist]. He had this tragedy in his family [when his wife was battling cancer] and he couldn't be on the road. Family comes first. When we were in that situation, [we couldn't] say, 'Look, we might do a tour in the summer. You wanna book it now. We'll let you know later.' Nobody's gonna go for that. So, Steve had his situation. And we knew, at this stage of our lives and careers, if we stopped and waited for him, we probably wouldn't get going again. It would probably be the end. You can't take a year, two years off. Not now. It's not like being 21 again. It's not the same. So we had this impossible situation, both him and us. And we decided that we had to continue.

"Simon had worked with [DEEP PURPLE keyboardist] Don Airey before, and I think he'd done some work with Ian Gillan before, on their own solo projects. And they just said, 'This guy is great.' He's gonna fall straight into the ethos of the band. So I said, 'If he's good enough for you, he's good enough for me.' And within — I don't know — half an hour of just jamming around together on the first day, it was obvious. Not only was he good enough, he was his own man while at the same time paying respect to some of the stuff that had come before he was there. But it was great fun playing with him. It still is."

On the topic of how playing with McBride's addition to DEEP PURPLE has affected the band's sound, Paice said: "If I say it's like a breath of fresh air, that's not to deny Steve's genius and his input for the last 20-odd years. It's just different, and sometimes a change of direction is very important. And I think Simon has given us that. He's brought a more riffy approach to the songwriting. Some of Steve's stuff was far more cerebral. You had to really work out where he was going. He's got a wonderful mind, Steve. He thinks of things that nobody else can come up with, and they're beautiful, they're clever. Simon is a little more — I get it straight away. And that is nice, 'cause, again, it's just a slight change of direction. Nothing we haven't done before. If anything, it harkens back to some of that stuff from the early '70s."

DEEP PURPLE's new album, "=1", was released on July 19 via earMUSIC. The LP marks DEEP PURPLE's first material with McBride.

Since 2022, Simon has already played to DEEP PURPLE audiences totaling more than half a million people.

With the legendary Bob Ezrin once again producing, "=1" evokes the pioneering band's classic sound, without relying on nostalgia.