Ritchie Blackmore talked about his one time reunion with Deep Purple for the first time in more than three decades during the band’s headlining concert on August 12 at the Northwell at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York, and explained what happened behind the scenes.
He said, “I sat up in bed and thought, ‘What about if I got up on stage?’, as they’re in the area… They’re playing a great place called the Jones Beach Theater. And it’s outside, and the view is over the water. Magnificent place. And I’ve always wanted to play there.”
“But I sat up in bed and I thought, ‘I wonder if…’ [So I asked my wife Candice], ‘How do you feel about me just asking [Deep Purple singer] Ian Gillan if it’s all right to play in ‘Smoke On The Water’, then just disappearing?’ And then she thought it was a good idea, so we sent him an e-mail via Candice. I don’t deal with that nonsense. I’ve just learnt how to actually use the telephone, and it’s still difficult for me. And so we sallied forth and infiltrated.”
“Now Candice sent the e-mail and Ian said, ‘Yes, of course. Welcome aboard. All the band is up for it. Come on stage for ‘Smoke’.’ I just wanted to do one song, and I thought that would be the song. It’s big over here [in the U.S.] — bigger here than it was in Europe. And so we kind of advertised it in a little way. Not much, just enough. And funnily enough, the ticket sales went up, which was nice. Anyway, they thought it was a good idea.”
“I came along to their show, and everybody was so helpful. It was almost like overkill. Everybody was incredibly nice. And then we got up on stage. I got up on stage and played it, ‘Smoke On The Water’. I never did a soundcheck, which was a little bit off-putting, because I do like to do a soundcheck. But my roadie did that for me, thank goodness. And the sound was good. And I played my three or four minutes of ‘Smoke On The Water’, which seemed to go down like I just invented the cure for cancer.”
“The people went nuts, and half of them were sitting in water. For some reason, the venue kind of gets covered in water at certain points ’cause it is right on the water. So they’re now all sitting in the water, the front three or four rows. And I felt very good about it because it was like playing with old friends. Everybody was super nice and super efficient… Well, it’d been like 35 years since I’d actually played with the band, and nobody had changed.”
“Everybody was great. And thank goodness it went off without a hitch, but it could have quite easily have fallen apart, and that would’ve been embarrassing. I felt like I was one of the soldiers that had come back from the Western Front, and everybody thought I was dead. And there I was — I was alive. So it really went down incredibly well.”
“I almost felt like I was a celebrity for the four minutes that I was on stage, and I’m not a celebrity type of person. I just play the guitar — sometimes well, sometimes not so well. But it was well worth doing. It was a good idea that I had, and it came to me very early one morning when I was in bed. I just thought, ‘Why not?’ ‘Cause we never know when we’re going to meet again, which is like a sad note in a way.”
The reunion was a brief return to a relationship that has been complicated for half a century. Blackmore’s history with Deep Purple spans multiple departures, a handful of reunions and long stretches of silence, which makes his appearance at Jones Beach more than a simple guest spot. The story behind the band’s most famous song and the show itself adds further context to what happened that night in Wantagh.
Blackmore walked away from Deep Purple for the first time in 1975, unhappy with the funkier direction the group had taken on 1974’s “Stormbringer.” He left the band to avoid “stalemates” over creative choices and tour scheduling, and later described the situation bluntly: the group “wasn’t pulling its weight as a venture – it became a committee.” He went on to form Rainbow, where he could take full creative control, before returning to Deep Purple in 1984.
The frustration built up well before that first exit. Blackmore traced the moment he knew he would leave to a dispute over songwriting credits inside the band.
He explained: “The first time [I considered leaving] was when I thought about doing a song, and a band member said, ‘If we didn’t write it, there’s no point in doing it because we won’t get writing credits.’ I was really disappointed.”
Tension with Ian Gillan also shaped the band’s history. Blackmore said the friction between the two strong-willed musicians was a major factor behind the collapse of the Mark II lineup, admitting of Gillan, “He was, as they say, an alpha guy. So was I.” Blackmore left again in 1993, and his relationship with the band remained distant for decades afterward.
The song he chose for his return carries its own history. “Smoke on the Water” is based on real events and chronicles the 1971 fire at the Montreux Casino in Montreux, Switzerland, where the band had planned to record. The track became an international hit, and the exposure it gave Montreux created a lasting bond between the town and the band — a fitting detail given that Blackmore’s own return was built around a single, instantly recognizable riff.
The Jones Beach date itself was part of a broader run. The August 12, 2026 concert was a stop on Deep Purple’s 2026 North American Tour, with Kansas sharing the bill. The band’s current lineup consists of Ian Gillan on vocals, Roger Glover on bass, Ian Paice on drums, Don Airey on keyboards and Simon McBride on guitar — a configuration with “a character of its own,” as the outlet put it.
Setlist reports confirm how the night unfolded. Blackmore joined the band for “Smoke on the Water” late in the set, following a run that included “Highway Star,” “Lazy,” “When a Blind Man Cries” and “Perfect Strangers.” The appearance marked his first performance with Deep Purple in roughly 33 years, closing out an evening that the fan site described as history being made.
