Blackmore & Purple Say No to Each Other for Hall of Fame
by Best Classic Bands Staff
Some of these men hold deep grudges.
The long-overdue and richly deserved induction of Deep Purple into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 8, 2016, at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center has hit a nasty snag as far as who will appear. It’s enough to make a fan throw up one’s arms and just say, “Really? Aren’t we all adults here?”
As the classic rock band’s legendary founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore posted on Facebook on Feb. 18, he had been “discussing the possibility of attending, until we received correspondence from the President of the Rock Hall of Fame [Joel Peresman], who said that Bruce Payne, management for the current Deep Purple Touring Band, had said ‘No……….!!!!!’
Therefore Ritchie will not be attending the ceremony.”
Did he jump or was he pushed? Whatever the case, this was not unexpected. The official induction list is Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Rod Evans and David Coverdale. As Paice warned back in December, “We have to accept that there are personalities that don’t see eye-to-eye in our history,” he said. “How that would work, I have no idea. Whether that could be put aside, I don’t know.”
As well, “precedence must now go to the guys that are still working the name and keeping it alive,” Paice noted. Gillan has already hinted that if current members Don Airey (keyboards) and Steve Morse (guitar) don’t perform, he may bow out.
“We’ve had many situations like this in the past and many times these things get worked out for one night, and then they go back to their neutral corners the next day,” Peresman told Rolling Stone. But he’s also a realist: “We can’t wrestle people to the ground and hold them down and make them perform together. If they want to and they can sort it out, terrific. If they can’t, we can’t make them.”
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