Ian Paice is the only member of Deep Purple to appear on every album.
From Deep Purple’s 1968 first album “Shades of Deep Purple” until their most current album “Turning To Crime” (2021), Ian Paice was a founding member of the band. In 1969, he joined Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, Rod Evans, and Nick Simper to establish the band.
In 1969, bassist Nick departed, and Roger Glover took his place. After Rod Evans left in 1969, Ian Gillan took over. In 1975, Ritchie Blackmore left, and Tommy Bolin took his place. Don Airey took over for Jon Lord upon his retirement in 2002. 2012 saw Jon’s passing.
Watch the Noise11 interview with Ian Paice:
Ian Paice is the only person alive to have experienced every Deep Purple line-up. “I think the soul has pretty much remained the same,” Ian tells Noise11.com. “Being as creative as you can within a limited style of music.
But of course when you have five people in the band and you change 40% of the band, when Ian (Gillan) and Roger (Glover) left and David (Coverdale) and Glenn (Hughes) came in, of course it was going to change the whole dynamic. You have to adjust what you play to fit in with these new people. With Glenn it was not so much a massive difference but he was far busier with the notes than Roger is and that means there was less room for me to do stuff. It is always a balance.
“You only have 100% of everything. All these people who say I give it 110%. Nonsense. When you got to the top, you got to the top. I would adjust some of the things I played because of Glenn’s bass playing but that was a musical decision, that this was the best thing to do. If he is playing all these notes and I’m playing hundreds of notes, its just a mess. There is a little bit of compromise. Sometimes he’d back off a bit, sometimes I would. With Roger it’s a far more straight forward process. He is a wonderful foundation bass player. He sets the thing for me to sit on and give me all that freedom to do those things”.
