What does an 81-year-old do before picking up a guitar again? For Ritchie Blackmore, the answer was restringing his Stratocaster — something he hadn't done in 25 years. He could only manage one song's worth of playing, still dealing with vertigo, gout, arthritis, plus old heart and back issues. These details came straight from his own mouth, in a 33-minute voice message he posted on Instagram.
The most interesting part of that message wasn't the health rundown — it was how he described reaching out in the first place. Blackmore said he texted Ian Gillan sounding like a guy who just lives down the street: "I don't want to be a bother, but could I just come up and play one song, for old times' sake?" That's not the language of a press release. That's one of the co-founders of Deep Purple, the man who wrote the riff to "Smoke On The Water," practically pleading with an old bandmate to borrow the stage for one night.
And then it actually happened. Wednesday night at Jones Beach Theater, Blackmore walked out and stood on a Deep Purple stage for the first time in 33 years, playing through "Smoke On The Water" — the song he wrote over 50 years ago. Bassist Roger Glover and drummer Ian Paice, both of whom go back with him to the '60s and '70s lineup, were right there with him.
Ian Gillan's response on stage told the story better than any official statement could. He told the crowd he'd gotten a message a few days earlier — "like some guy from around the corner writing in, asking if he could come jam with us" — then called Blackmore "the legendary, immortal founding member," before dropping the line: "I'll be waiting for you in the bathtub." That mix of ribbing and warmth is probably the truest snapshot of their relationship after all these years.
There's real history behind this reunion. When Deep Purple was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, Blackmore skipped the ceremony, saying at the time that the current lineup didn't want him there. Gillan's version was that the band simply didn't want to stage a reunion performance involving someone who wasn't a current member. The two sides never quite agreed on what happened, and the standoff dragged on for years. This one song basically settled the score.
After leaving the band, Blackmore formed Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio on vocals — a project that broke up and reformed multiple times, including a reunion and a few years of touring around a 2016 German festival gig. Since the '90s, he and his wife Candice Night have been running the folk-rock project Blackmore's Night, which is still active today. Before taking the stage this time, he warned fans not to expect too much: "We'll probably all need canes or wheelchairs to get up there, though everyone else seems to be doing fine." But judging from the footage, this 81-year-old legend held up a lot steadier than he gave himself credit for.
