ROGER GLOVER: 'There'll Probably Be' A New DEEP PURPLE 'Album Next Year'

During an August 26 appearance on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk", DEEP PURPLE bassist Roger Glover spoke about the band's ongoing tour, "The Long Goodbye", which started in May 2017. Asked if he and his bandmates will "just keep moving forward" with live shows while they are still physically able to, without ever announcing a final concert, Glover replied (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, I see a lot of bands doing the farewell tour or the farewell gig — BLACK SABBATH just did it recently, and other people have done it before — but it doesn't appeal to me, and I don't think the rest of the band either. To actually put a date on the final [show], now where's it gonna be? The pressure is too great. I'd much rather just play and play and play, and suddenly we're not playing. We don't need to go out with a fanfare — I don't think, anyway. It's possible other people disagree with me, but that's my feeling."

Asked if the other members of DEEP PURPLE feel the same way as he does about the idea of not announcing a final gig, Roger said: "Quite a few years ago now, at the start of 'The Long Goodbye', [then-PURPLE guitarist] Steve Morse, he said, 'Why don't we finish on a high and name the last tour and we'd make a lot of money because it's the last tour and then kiss it goodbye?' And that didn't go down well with the band, which is why we called it 'The Long Goodbye', because we knew it was gonna happen sometime, but, of course, we didn't know it was gonna go on and on and on. And thankfully so.

"This year is a bit of an off year," Glover explained. "We've been writing and stuff, and there'll probably be an album next year. And the last — actually, the last two or three years have been so busy. We haven't stopped touring and working. So it's good to have a little bit of a breather. We did one gig in Brazil — a festival in June — and there's a couple of gigs coming up at the end of the year, but it's not really a touring year. It's a resting year."

Asked by host Eddie Trunk if he thinks the final DEEP PURPLE concert will just happen without it being "a pre-announced thing," Glover said: "Yeah. I think that would be the way to do it. I mean, who knows? The business side of things, we all disagree. We haven't talked about it. It's just we assume we're just gonna carry on. Bop till you drop."

After Trunk noted that so many artists have announced farewell tours, only to come back for select shows or extend their farewell tours indefinitely, Glover said: "It's all about the money. See, it's all about the money. And then we're more about the music. Yeah, money's important, but music is more important. And having a big finale like that [for DEEP PURPLE] … of course it may happen, but it wouldn't be my decision."

Regarding the health and physical fitness of the PURPLE bandmembers, Roger said: "Well, I don't think anyone, when they're around 80, feels like they did when they were 20. We all have aches and pains and stuff like that. But so far, certainly playing live and playing in the studio, we're still on top of the game. So, I don't see any problem coming up. Ian [Gillan, PURPLE singer] turned 80 this year. I'll be 80 later this year. It's a horrible number. I still haven't quite got used to it. I'm hanging on to 79 as much as I can."

Glover also talked about DEEP PURPLE's insistence on still putting out new music, with the band's 23rd studio album, "=1", having arrived in July 2024.

"That's what we do, isn't it?" he said. "We write music. Even if there was no band, I'd still be writing music, certainly for my own pleasure. It's one of the things you do. The idea is not to try and repeat yourself, to find new ways of being a hard rock band. And we seem to do that. I don't know how we do it. We just do it. It's kind of a natural thing."

Elaborating on why it's so important for him to stay creative as he approaches his 80th birthday, Roger said: "I'm working on my book right now, writing about my life, and the more I write, the more I realize what an amazing journey that we've been on, and certainly I've been on. And you kind of owe it to yourself to sort of not squash it, just to continue as much as possible. [Working on my book] keeps reinforcing what an amazing — almost against the odds of joining a band and having been going for 60 years, or 50-whatever it is, years, I mean, just it doesn't make sense. We were just very lucky or just in the right place at the right time, or just the right mix of people. I don't know what it is, but we kind of owe it to our legacy to not give up."

In August 2024, Gillan was asked by "Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk" if retirement is out of the vocabulary for him and his DEEP PURPLE bandmates, eight years after they launched "The Long Goodbye" tour. He responded: "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."

He continued: "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."

In December 2023, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice, who turned 77 in June, was asked by Zoom when he and his bandmates will eventually retire from performing live. He responded: "We have never planned a date to stop working. We are realists. The guys are getting older, and there's gonna come a point where maybe one or two of us don't want to do it anymore or [it's] not physically possible for them to do it. But we don't think about that. We're still having a great deal of fun. A lot of people still enjoy what we do, and so long as those two things stay in harmony, we'll continue.

"I don't think we'll ever know what the last gig, what the last tour is," he continued. "I think it'll come and just smack us in the face. Unless there's a definite plan, which there isn't, to do something as a final bye-bye, I just think we'll just go, 'Sorry, guys. We're finished. We can't do it anymore. It's been wonderful.' But even then, I think if we stopped touring, there's no reason why we couldn't make more records. That's the easiest thing in the world. All you've got to do is have the ideas. That's the hardest thing in the world. But physically making a record is easy."

Paice added: "Touring only works if you enjoy it. You can't just enjoy the two hours a night when you're playing. You've got to be able to deal with the whole thing. You've got to be able to deal with a ten-hour flight, a hotel which is less than perfect, transportation which goes wrong. You've gotta deal with all that. And if you can, and still enjoy it, then why would you stop something that you got into as a kid 'cause it made you happy? And if it still makes you happy, why would you stop it?"

Glover expressed a similar sentiment about the band's final tour in a June 2023 interview with Rock Hard Greece. The bassist, who turned 79 last November, said: "I don't like the idea of announcing the last show: 'And here they are. This is their last show.' I mean, the stress involved in that would be ridiculous. Where would it be? When would it be? For me, the ideal ending for PURPLE is that we just carry on until it stops. No announcement. We're not gonna announce, 'This is the last one.' People would buy tickets: 'Oh, this is the last one.' It's an exercise in making money. It's not very good. I've never liked it. I'd rather go and play and play and play and play, and one day when something happens and one of us drops dead or gets really ill or whatever, [we say], 'Well, that's that.' And leave it at that."

In 2022, DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Don Airey, who turned 77 in June, told Rolling Stone magazine that there is no concrete plan for him and his DEEP PURPLE bandmates to stop playing live shows.

"We started the farewell tour in 2017. It was due to end in 2019," he noted. "But the thing is, when you're a musician in a band, you think you're in control of it, but you're not. The business is running you. Of course, there was so much demand for the band to continue from the promoters and agents that we said, 'Okay, we'll do one more year.'"

Regarding when he thinks DEEP PURPLE will finally call it quits, Don said: "The words of T.S. Eliot [the greatest English-language poet of his generation] come to mind: 'This is the way the band ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.' I think we won't know it's the last gig. We won't have a clue that this one is going to be the last one. That's how it's going to end. It's going to be no big scenario.

"I like what Buddy Guy said. He said, 'Musicians don't retire. They drop.' You do have thoughts about being in the garden and bouncing the grandchildren on your knee, but it's part of your blood system, playing and touring. It's an addiction. I hope I keep playing for a while yet."

In July 2022, Morse officially left PURPLE to care for his wife, Janine, who is battling cancer. He has since been replaced by Simon McBride.