DEEP PURPLE's IAN PAICE: 'People Don't Get Involved With Albums The Same Way That They Used To'

Ian Paice says that bands like DEEP PURPLE make their living by touring around the world and continue to make albums only "to keep new music happening and to make people aware" that they are "still there."

The drummer made his latest comments in response to a question about a statement made by his PURPLE bandmate Roger Glover about the importance of still being creative for a group whose fans are largely uninterested in buying new music from veteran rock artists.

"The album is a dying art form," Glover told TeamRock in April. "They don't make money, and they're a waste of time and effort.

"Someone in the band suggested we should just put out single songs," the bassist continued. "Release something every one or two months, and just keep touring. And while this might make financial sense, it didn't make any emotional sense to me. It might be old fashioned, but I don't care: we're an album band, and I'm proud of that."

"If an album's not going to achieve anything chart-wise, it still doesn't matter," added Glover. "Because we had a great time. I couldn't wait to do it again."

When asked by "Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon" if he agreed with Glover's assessment, Paice said (hear audio below): "It's a generalization, really. Everybody knows that the record industry isn't what it was twenty years ago and definitely not what it was forty years ago. In those days, if you were lucky enough to get a hit record, that's what you lived on and you sold that record by doing tours. Now it's the other way around — you earn your coin onstage and you make records to keep new music happening and to make people aware that you're still there. So it's a complete role reversal."

He continued: "You see, so many arists now don't make albums — they'll make singles or they'll make EPs — because the fact of life is that you earn your living onstage. But we've always made albums. We've had a few singles which have either been forced on us or they've come from albums."

Paice added: "This is what we do. We've been doing it so long now with a certain degree of success, so we see no reason why we should change. But as a generalization, Roger is right — people don't get involved with albums the same way that they used to. So I don't think he was putting it down. I think it's just a fact of life, the world we live in."

DEEP PURPLE's latest studio album, "InFinite", was released on April 7 via earMUSIC. The disc was tracked in February 2016 at a studio in Nashville, Tennessee and was once again helmed by Bob Ezrin, who has previously worked with KISS, PINK FLOYD, PETER GABRIEL, ALICE COOPER and KANSAS, among others.