
Any time spent on the road can get to be gruelling for any touring rock and roll band. It’s nice to be able to bring music to legions of fans across the world, but once musicians start to realise that the constant cycle of album and tour doesn’t have any breaks, it’s usually enough for anyone to go a little bit mad. While Deep Purple had earned their stripes as one of the definitive hard rock giants, Jon Lord remembered that this gig was enough for them to pack up shop for a while.
Looking at the ever-changing lineups of the band, though, there was no reason to think that they would stop for any reason. They had already reinvented themselves from being a jam band to one of the kings of hard rock with Roger Glover and Ian Gillan, and when that didn’t work out, hearing David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes take over was a godsend when they went into the studio to create Burn.

But when it came to the road, everyone had their fair share of war stories. Outside of the iconic story of their live recording setup falling apart, chronicled in Smoke on the Water, Gillan and Ritchie Blackmore also had to deal with getting hepatitis midway through their time in the group. Even if the band still had some connective tissue to their early years, things began to go awry when Blackmore decided to call it quits.
He had been the raw fury behind the band at the best of times, so to see him suddenly let go of the reins and form Rainbow was a shock to the system for many. And despite Come Taste the Band still being a fairly solid record with newcomer Tommy Bolin, it was going to be an uphill battle trying to get anything done once they got on the road, especially with half the audience flipping off Bolin for committing the crime of not being named Blackmore.

But if that was the only thing wrong with the tour, most people wouldn’t be complaining. No, the true horrors came when the band were forced into playing certain gigs that they didn’t sign on for and leaving one of the members of their crew dead after either falling or being pushed down an elevator shaft, depending on who you ask.
By the time the band played their final show in Liverpool, Lord knew that any future plans with this lineup of Purple were dead in the water, saying, “I went straight to my dressing room that I was sharing with [drummer] Ian Paice, and I said, Is this it? and he said, Yeah. We shook hands and said, It’s over, thank God. Minutes later, Coverdale came in and says, I’m leaving the band, and we said, David, there’s no band to leave.
Although the band hung around in name only for a while, it didn’t take long for them to spark up the old flame again with the classic lineup. With Coverdale making waves with Whitesnake, Perfect Strangers was the perfect excuse for Blackmore to bury the hatchet with the band and return alongside Gillan and Glover, especially when tunes like the title track started to give off certain red-and-blue shades of what had been.
That lineup still had some life in it, but for all intents and purposes, any hope of the Come Taste the Band era of the group continuing on was practically over. They had faced a lot of setbacks, but the last tour was the final straw that made everyone absolutely sick of performing together again.