How Deep Purple Keep Reinventing Themselves and Refusing to Die

By David Cohen

From Rod Evans to Simon McBride, Deep Purple have cycled through nine official lineups in fifty-eight years — and somehow, in 2026, they sound more alive than bands a third their age.

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There is a particular kind of pub argument that any serious classic rock fan has had at least once: which lineup of Deep Purple was the real Deep Purple? Mark II, obviously, the Gillan-Blackmore-Lord-Glover-Paice quintet that gave us In Rock, Machine Head, and Made in Japan? Mark III, the Coverdale-Hughes era that brought Burn and a shot of blues/funk/soul? The Steve Morse years, which lasted nearly three decades and quietly produced some of the band’s most underrated work?

The honest answer, in 2026, is that the question itself is becoming less interesting. Because the more you look at Deep Purple’s nine official lineups — yes, nine — the more you realise the band’s genius has never really been about any single combination of musicians. It’s been about an institutional refusal to stop. Most rock bands die when a key member leaves. Deep Purple, somehow, have turned the lineup change into their core competency.

And against absolutely every prediction, the current Mark IX lineup is, at the time of writing, gearing up for a 24-date North American tour, a Japan run, a European summer, a UK leg in November, and a 24th studio album. The drummer is 82. The frontman is 80. The newest member is from Belfast, was born the year Machine Head turned seven, and has fitted in like he was always there.

This is the story of how a band cycled through nine lineups and ended up, somehow, more vital than most.

The Mark system, briefly explained

Deep Purple’s lineups are numbered Mark I through Mark IX, and the changes break down roughly like this.

Mark I (1968-1969) was the founding lineup: Rod Evans on vocals, Nick Simper on bass, Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Jon Lord on Hammond organ, and Ian Paice on drums. This was the psychedelic, slightly proggy version of the band that had a surprise US hit with “Hush.” It was good, but it was not yet the Deep Purple anyone now means when they say “Deep Purple.”

Mark II (1969-1973) is the holy version. Evans and Simper out, Ian Gillan in on vocals, Roger Glover in on bass. This is the lineup that recorded Deep Purple in Rock, Fireball, Machine Head, Who Do We Think We Are, and Made in Japan. This is the lineup that the 1975 Guinness Book of World Records officially called “the globe’s loudest band.” Everything you think Deep Purple sounds like comes from these four years.

Mark III (1973-1975) brought David Coverdale (later founder of the highly successful Whitesnake) on vocals and Glenn Hughes on bass and co-vocals after Gillan and Glover left. Burn and Stormbringer came from this era — bluesier, funkier, and to some ears more interesting than Mark II.

Mark IV (1975-1976) was the strange, short-lived version with American guitarist Tommy Bolin replacing Blackmore, who had left to form Rainbow. Come Taste the Band is its only studio album. Bolin died of a drug overdose in December 1976, and the band broke up shortly afterwards. For eight years, there was no Deep Purple at all.

Mark II Reunion (1984-1989) reunited the classic five for Perfect Strangers and The House of Blue Light. It was a genuine commercial and critical success — Perfect Strangers is one of the great rock reunion albums — but the old tensions between Gillan and Blackmore re-emerged.

Mark V (1989-1992) saw Gillan replaced by Joe Lynn Turner, who appeared on the divisive Slaves and Masters album before being dismissed.

Mark VI (1992-1993) brought Gillan back for The Battle Rages On… — and then Blackmore left for good.

Mark VII (1994-2002) is where the modern Deep Purple really begins. After a brief Joe Satriani holding pattern, American virtuoso Steve Morse took over on guitar. Morse was a different kind of player from Blackmore — more technical, less mercurial — and he stabilised the band in a way nobody had managed before. Purpendicular (1996) and Abandon (1998) came from this period.

Mark VIII (2002-2022) added Don Airey on keyboards after Jon Lord retired (Lord died in 2012). The Mark VIII lineup of Gillan, Glover, Paice, Morse, and Airey became the longest-lasting in the band’s history — twenty years, six studio albums, and a level of stability the band had simply never known before.

Mark IX (2022-present) began when Steve Morse stepped away to care for his wife during her cancer battle. The band’s first lineup change in twenty years brought in Belfast guitarist Simon McBride — and that brings us to the genuinely surprising part.

The Simon McBride moment

When Morse announced his hiatus in 2022, the immediate question was whether Deep Purple could survive another guitar transition. The Blackmore-to-Morse handover in the 1990s had been traumatic and had taken the better part of a decade to feel natural. Could the band really do it again, this time with members in their seventies and eighties?

The answer turned out to be: easily, because they had quietly been preparing for it for years. Simon McBride was already in the Deep Purple family. He had toured with Don Airey’s solo band. He had played sessions with Ian Gillan. When Morse called him to say he was stepping away, the band already knew who their guy was.

McBride is, by any measure, an extraordinary guitarist. A former Young Guitarist of the Year winner who was tipped as a teenager, he had spent his adult career as one of the most respected blues-rock players in the business — touring with Joe Satriani, Jeff Beck, and Joe Bonamassa, and eventually being endorsed by PRS Guitars. When he joined Deep Purple full-time in September 2022, Steve Morse himself said McBride had “the gig nailed” and joked that he was “handing over the keys to the vault which holds the secret of how Ritchie’s Smoke on the Water intro was recorded.”

What McBride brought to the band was not just technical chops — Deep Purple has never lacked those — but a slightly harder edge and a roots-rock sensibility that nudged the group back toward its 1970s instincts. The 2024 album =1, his studio debut with the band, was widely received as one of the best Deep Purple records in years. It is not nostalgia music. It is a band still writing.

Why they keep working

There are a few reasons, I think, that Deep Purple have managed to navigate nine lineups without losing the plot when so many of their peers have either quit, died out, or become cover versions of themselves trundling around the casino circuit.

The first is that they have always treated the band as bigger than any individual member. Even Ritchie Blackmore — the most charismatic and arguably the most musically central figure in the band’s history — was allowed to walk away twice without the band collapsing. There’s a deep institutional ego at play: the name and the songs matter more than the personalities. Few bands manage this. The Rolling Stones have a Mick-and-Keith problem. The Who became, essentially, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey with a backing group. Deep Purple, at every transition, has insisted on being a band.

The second is that they have always recruited from inside the family. Don Airey was already a friend and frequent collaborator (including in Rainbow) before he joined. Simon McBride was a known quantity. Steve Morse was a working musician the others had admired for years. Deep Purple don’t audition strangers; they promote from within an extended ecosystem of people who already get it.

The third — and this is the unfashionable one — is that they have kept making records. A lot of legacy bands stopped writing new material around 1995 and turned themselves into greatest-hits machines. Deep Purple have released Now What?! (2013), Now What?! (Gold) (2014), Infinite (2017), Whoosh! (2020), Turning to Crime (2021), =1 (2024), and have a 24th studio album with producer Bob Ezrin scheduled for 2026. Whether or not you love every album — and not all of them are essential — the act of continuing to create keeps the band alive in a way that pure nostalgia tours cannot.

What 2026 actually looks like

The current touring schedule is, for a band whose drummer turns 82 this year, slightly absurd. Japan in April. Europe in the summer. Hellfest in Clisson in June. A North American run of 24 dates through August and September with Kansas and Jefferson Starship as special guests. The UK in November with Mammoth and Jayler. And a new album somewhere in there.

Ian Gillan said in an interview a couple of years ago that he had started to wonder whether the band were getting close to the point where they should stop — “I don’t want to be an embarrassment to anyone” — and then promptly retracted it and got back on the bus. Watching the footage from the =1 tour, you understand why. The band still sound like Deep Purple. McBride’s solos on “Lazy” and “Highway Star” land. Don Airey’s Hammond work is, if anything, better than it was a decade ago. Glover and Paice remain one of the great rhythm sections in rock.

There will come a moment, of course, when this version of Deep Purple ends. Either the touring will stop, or there will be a Mark X with another adjustment to the lineup, or the band will simply quietly retire. Nobody plays forever. But what’s remarkable is how far past the expected expiry date they have already travelled. In 2002, when Jon Lord retired, fans assumed the end was near. In 2022, when Steve Morse left, fans assumed it again. Both times, the band reorganised, kept their heads down, and carried on.

The argument about which lineup was the real Deep Purple was always a kind of category error. There is no real Deep Purple. There is just Deep Purple — a name, a sound, an institution that keeps swapping musicians the way a football club swaps players, and somehow keeps winning. Mark IX is not Mark II. Simon McBride is not Ritchie Blackmore. But the band on stage in 2026 is recognisably, undeniably, gloriously, Deep Purple. Long may they refuse to die.

© David Cohen 2026. All rights reserved.