IAN PAICE: SIMON MCBRIDE Has ‘Brought A More Riffy Approach’ To DEEP PURPLE’s Songwriting

In a recent interview with Brian Kachejian of ClassicRockHistory.com, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice was asked what he and his bandmates meant when they announced in 2022 that they had welcomed guitarist Simon McBride as an official member of the band. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, we’re a democratic outfit. Luckily, with five [members], we always get a decision. His vote is as valuable and as important as any one of the rest of four of us.”

Regarding how McBride ended up joining DEEP PURPLE, Paice said: “We knew very, very quickly, and we had an impossible situation with our friend Steve Morse [DEEP PURPLE‘s previous guitarist]. He had this tragedy in his family [when his wife was battling cancer] and he couldn’t be on the road. Family comes first. When we were in that situation, [we couldn’t] say, ‘Look, we might do a tour in the summer. You wanna book it now. We’ll let you know later.’ Nobody’s gonna go for that. So, Steve had his situation. And we knew, at this stage of our lives and careers, if we stopped and waited for him, we probably wouldn’t get going again. It would probably be the end. You can’t take a year, two years off. Not now. It’s not like being 21 again. It’s not the same. So we had this impossible situation, both him and us. And we decided that we had to continue.

“Simon had worked with [DEEP PURPLE keyboardist] Don Airey before, and I think he’d done some work with [DEEP PURPLE singer] Ian Gillan before, on their own solo projects. And they just said, ‘This guy is great.’ He’s gonna fall straight into the ethos of the band. So I said, ‘If he’s good enough for you, he’s good enough for me.’ And within — I don’t know — half an hour of just jamming around together on the first day, it was obvious. Not only was he good enough, he was his own man while at the same time paying respect to some of the stuff that had come before he was there. But it was great fun playing with him. It still is.”

On the topic of how playing with McBride‘s addition to DEEP PURPLE has affected the band’s sound, Paice said: “If I say it’s like a breath of fresh air, that’s not to deny Steve‘s genius and his input for the last 20-odd years. It’s just different, and sometimes a change of direction is very important. And I think Simon has given us that. He’s brought a more riffy approach to the songwriting. Some of Steve‘s stuff was far more cerebral. You had to really work out where he was going. He’s got a wonderful mind, Steve. He thinks of things that nobody else can come up with, and they’re beautiful, they’re clever. Simon is a little more — I get it straight away. And that is nice, ’cause, again, it’s just a slight change of direction. Nothing we haven’t done before. If anything, it harkens back to some of that stuff from the early ’70s.”