Deep Purple, the band behind Ritchie Blackmore's guitar, Jon Lord's Hammond organ, and Ian Paice's drums

Deep Purple is the London band that put a distorted Hammond organ on equal footing with a screaming guitar, then spent five decades cycling through nine different lineups around that one idea. Formed in March 1968 by Ritchie Blackmore, keyboardist Jon Lord, bassist Nick Simper, and drummer Ian Paice, with vocalist Rod Evans completing the first lineup, the band found its defining sound in mid-1969 when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover replaced Evans and Simper. That five-piece, retroactively named "Mark II," recorded Deep Purple in Rock (1970), Machine Head (1972), and the riff that outlasted everything else in the catalog, "Smoke on the Water."

Nine lineups later, Deep Purple is still touring and still recording: SPLAT!, its 24th studio album, came out on July 3, 2026. Paice is the only member who has played on every era; Glover and Gillan aren't far behind. This page is the band-level reference: the full Mark-by-Mark lineup history, the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, and the documented gear behind each classic-era member, cross-linked to CYS's full profiles where they exist.

London businessman Tony Edwards financed a project originally conceived by ex-Searchers drummer Chris Curtis as a rotating-membership "supergroup" called Roundabout. Curtis was pushed out early, but the musicians he'd helped assemble stuck: classically trained Hammond organist Jon Lord, bassist Nick Simper, and, after Lord alerted them to the opening, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, then working session gigs out of Hamburg. In March 1968 the group moved into Deeves Hall, a rehearsal house in South Mimms, Hertfordshire, kitted out with Marshall amplification and, at Lord's insistence, a Hammond C3. After auditioning "dozens" of singers, the band settled on Rod Evans of the club band the Maze, whose drummer, an 18-year-old Ian Paice, came with him.

During an April 1968 tour of Denmark and Sweden, Blackmore proposed renaming the band Deep Purple, after his grandmother's favorite song. The band recorded its debut, Shades of Deep Purple, at Pye Studios in London that May; a cover of Joe South's "Hush" reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 that September, and the band spent the rest of 1968 touring the US behind Cream. Two more albums, The Book of Taliesyn and the self-titled Deep Purple, followed before Lord, Blackmore, and Paice decided in 1969 that Evans and Simper didn't fit the heavier direction they wanted to take the band.

Jon Lord, born John Douglas Lord on June 9, 1941, in Leicester, studied classical piano from age five and carried that grounding, Bach especially, into a rock instrument nobody had pushed this hard before. He co-founded Deep Purple in 1968 and played on every album from the 1968 debut through 1998's Abandon, retiring amicably in March 2002. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside the rest of the band in 2016; he had died on July 16, 2012, in London, at 71.

By the Purpendicular tour in the mid-1990s his rig had modernized considerably: a Hammond XB-2, Yamaha DX-7 and Korg M1 synthesizers, a Roland piano, and two Leslie 122 cabinets. Steve Morse said he personally encouraged Lord to bring back more distortion in that era, going as far as lending him a guitar effects unit. Lord doesn't have a full CYS gear profile yet; this section is the fullest sourced account on the site so far.

Paice's playing anchors every era: the single-stroke roll velocity on "Highway Star" (Machine Head, 1972) is one of the most-imitated drum breaks in hard rock, and the composed, 9-plus-minute solo "The Mule" on Made in Japan (1972) remains a genre-defining showcase.

Ian Gillan, born August 19, 1945, in Chiswick, West London, joined Deep Purple in 1969 alongside Roger Glover, arriving together from their previous band, Episode Six. He fronted the classic Mark II run through 1973, then left to build the Ian Gillan Band and, later, the band simply called Gillan. In 1983 he spent a year as Black Sabbath's vocalist, replacing Ronnie James Dio for the album Born Again, one of the more polarizing records in either band's catalog. He rejoined Deep Purple's Mark II reunion in 1984, was fired in 1989, returned again in 1992, and has fronted every lineup since, including Mark IX's SPLAT! in 2026.

Three other vocalists have fronted the band. Rod Evans sang on the Mark I catalog before his 1969 dismissal. David Coverdale replaced Gillan in Mark III, recording Burn and Stormbringer before leaving in 1976 to found Whitesnake, a band Paice and Lord both later played in. Joe Lynn Turner, previously Ritchie Blackmore's singer in Rainbow, fronted the single-album Mark V lineup in 1990 before Gillan's 1992 return.

Deep Purple was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, in the Performer category, at an April 8 ceremony at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Metallica's Lars Ulrich delivered the induction speech, expressing bewilderment that the band had waited so long, decades after contemporaries Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The Hall's official plaque credits eight members across the band's history: Roger Glover, Rod Evans, Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, and David Coverdale.

Ritchie Blackmore did not attend. Gillan, Glover, and Paice performed "Smoke on the Water" at the ceremony alongside the band's then-current touring lineup, guitarist Steve Morse and keyboardist Don Airey. Jon Lord, who had died four years earlier, was inducted posthumously.

Deep Purple's current lineup, the one fans and the band itself call Mark IX, is Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, Don Airey, and Simon McBride, in place since September 2022 when McBride's stand-in role for the departing Steve Morse became permanent. The band released its 24th studio album, SPLAT!, worldwide on July 3, 2026, on earMUSIC, produced by longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin, who has also produced the band's previous five studio records dating back to Now What?! (2013), several of which topped the album charts in Germany and Switzerland. Three singles preceded it: "Arrogant Boy" (May 2026), "Diablo" (June 2026), and "Guilt Trippin'" (June 2026).

"Deep Purple is in a great place right now," Gillan said in the band's own announcement. The record turns what the band describes as "the end of humanity" into a hard rock concept album, framed as transformation rather than destruction. Deep Purple has an extensive world tour booked for the rest of 2026, spanning European festival dates, North American amphitheaters through August and September, and further European and South American shows through the year's end.