Deep Purple's Ian Gillan Has No Desire to Reunite with Ritchie Blackmore

Deep Purple released a successful album earlier this summer. So did Ritchie Blackmore's band, Blackmore's Night.

But is there a chance these guys will get together and release a Deep Purple album with Blackmore?

According to Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan, it's never gonna happen.

Gillan, whose decades-long feuds with the ex-Deep Purple guitarist are part of rock lore, was asked about the possibility of reaching out to Blackmore during a recent interview with Argentina radio station Vorterix Rock 103.1.

[[ Check out Ritchie Blackmore with Deep Purple in a new DVD — Perfect Strangers Live ]]

His response (which you can hear in the video below): “If you want to talk about Ritchie, I guess we have to — not many people do these days. But the truth of the matter is, from a historical point of view, the band was dying. If Ritchie had stayed in the band, it would have been the end of Deep Purple.

"The shows were getting shorter and shorter, the audiences were getting smaller and smaller. We were playing in small halls, and they weren't even full — they were half empty — and Ritchie was walking off stage every night.

"And so, when he left 20 years ago, it stopped raining and the sun came out, and Jon Lord, amongst others, started walking up straight; his personality re-emerged. So did Roger Glover and Ian Paice; they became they were people originally, instead of fending and cowering in case they upset Ritchie. And so this situation ended, and we're all glad it ended, and we had to rebuild. And, of course, now the distance of time is so great that we just remember the good times.

"And we remember Ritchie as a great player, a great performer, a great writer, and I remember him as my roommate; I used to share rooms with him. But something happened with Ritchie, and that's the end of that. So we remember the past as it was; it was completely and totally different to Jon Lord."

Blackmore left Deep Purple (for good) in November 1993.