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It’s a simple song

Classic Rock magazine rehashes the story we’ve heard a million times by now — how Smoke came to being. This includes an undated quote from Blackmore (that was at some point subjected to a rather poor OCR, and had to be corrected by us): I was jamming with Ian Paice at a soundcheck, because we […]

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Literally a family thing

Guitar World has a story how Steve Morse’s faulty pedal lead to his 40 years long collaboration with Ernie Ball: “The gear stripped out, and there was no way to fix it. So I went looking for a volume pedal, and the Ernie Ball booth was nearby. I saw they had this really cool pedal […]

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Variety of rhythms and syncopations

Bass Player magazine has an online feature on the Elf/RBR bassist Craig Gruber. There are no quotes from the man himself (he passed in 2015), but some input from the last Rainbow bass player Bob Curiano (a.k.a. Bob Nouveau and Sir Robert of Normandie). And it turns pretty technical pretty quickly. [Snake Charmer] begins with […]

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Weep for that future

Our recent foray into the trainspotting territory prompted another trip down the memory lane. Better Call Saul is a prequel/offshoot of the hit TV drama series Breaking Bad, and it has run between 2015 and 2020. Somebody in the writers’ pen of the show was obviously a fan.

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Skip­ping stones

There is a new interview with Gillan and Paice in the Uncut magazine, and the two Ians are adamant to continue making music into the foreseeable future. The online version is dated June 1, 2026, so which issue it appears in the printed version — your guess is as good as ours, and probably better. […]

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Fighting it out with swords

After a couple of teasers, Ultimate Classic Rock has posted, apparently in full, the interview they’ve recently done with Ritchie Blackmore. Release of the Rainbow 75/76 box set was the occasion, so the bulk of the conversation was actually devoted to that time period.

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The supergroup that destroyed itself

Since nobody bothered to make a documentary about Captain Beyond, it was left to our robotic overlords to create one. It is done on the cheap, with no music licensed to use, still — the facts are there, so here it is.

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All my life it seems just a crazy dream

Wikimetal celebrates 50th anniversary of Rainbow Rising with a short compendium of 6 interesting facts about the album. Which are in no way a surprise to anybody who’s been paying attention. Rainbow Mk1 was short lived and gutted way before work started on the second album. The artwork for the album has become iconic. Munich […]

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Apparently not a vampire

Ultimate Classic Rock publishes the next part of The interview they recently did with Ritchie Blackmore. They call it the first part, so apparently the Christopher Cross story that appeared a few days ago, was part zero. Ritchie talks about hi recent heals problems, prospects for touring (spoiler: very little), and also motivation for leaving […]

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With a flying V and long hair

In a new interview to the Ultimate Classic Rock, Ritchie Blackmore confirms the story that in 1970 Christopher Cross has played a gig with Deep Purple in his place. This episode became a minor controversy in the Purple lore as over the years Cross himself claimed it, with further corroboration by Eric Johnson, who opened […]

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To the four corners of the earth

Ian Gillan spoke to the Leona Graham Podcast. This sounds like it was done some time in 2025, but posted only now, in May 2026. They talked about Ian’s collaboration with Urock, his age of discovery, the hardest song he had to sing, and other things.

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Blow you out of your socks

More Tony Carey! This time he talks to the Classic Album Review poscast. These interviews are apparently being done on the occasion of his Planet P Project albums being reissued on vinyl by (who else!) Edel, but a good half of the conversation revolved around his stint with Rainbow.

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Here’s a song, tells the story…

During a May 2, 2026, 2. Budesliga football match between Dynamo Dresden and 1. FC Kaiserslautern fans started a chant that suspiciously sounds like The Riff. The game is posted to youtube, but we’re told that it is not available in many countries, so here’s an audio snippet

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A double dose of Hammersmith havoc

The online incarnation of the Classic Rock magazine has a short feature on Whitesnake’s classic live album Live… In The Heart Of The City. It is one of the greatest live albums of all time, a heavyweight double to rank up there alongside classics such as Thin Lizzy’s Live And Dangerous, Deep Purple’s Made In […]

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The Gillan Story

Another Martin Popoff’s book — Unchain Your Brain! The Gillan Story — is coming out at the end of August via Wymer Publishing in the UK. It is dedicated exclusively to Gillan the band. Between 1978 and 1982 Ian Gillan didn’t exactly reinvent himself, like many artists do, in fact the opposite—he returned to his […]

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Taking a breather

In anticipation for the one-off Dead Daisies/Glenn Hughes reunion, Glenn and Doug Aldrich were interviewed by the MetalKaoz podcast. Ahead of their one-night-only return to the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, IL, Glenn Hughes and Doug Aldrich join METAL KAOZ to reflect on Rock music, creativity, and the spirit that still drives them decades later. […]

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Billy couldn’t read or write

The first single from the upcoming new album Splat! is supposed to be landing on May 12, 2026, at 6:00pm BST, and little birdie tells us that it may or may not be Arrogant Boy.

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Squarely cylindrical

Along with the squarely analog, old school reel-to-reel tape deck and record player, Revox is also releasing a Deep Purple Splat! branded digital speaker.

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And a cardboard box for the tips

With the new album now announced, let the publicity blitz marathon begin. Ian Gillan has already made a couple of UK radio appearances.

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Splat!

Simon was slightly off with the timeframe of the new album release — the date is set for July 3, and the album is called Splat!. It will arrive in several formats, and the tour starting with North America in August will re-dress itself as the Splat! World Tour.

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