Steve Morse on the hostility from Deep Purple fans after replacing Ritchie Blackmore: “It happened in the form of things whizzing by my face”
Despite having proved his fretwork worth in the Dixie Dregs, Kansas and across his own solo work, fans weren’t very happy when Steve Morse first joined Deep Purple in 1994. To this day, Morse admits that some fans still haven’t accepted him as an official member – despite being the band’s longest-standing lead guitarist.
Morse, however, isn’t surprised by the hostility. In fact, he’s fully aware why fans didn’t accept him; considering the guitarists stepped up to the plate to replace the beloved Ritchie Blackmore, he knew he’d have to win people over. “For acceptance from a percentage of them, it took the first album and out first tour,” he tells Prog magazine. “But I never won over the whole audience. You can’t!”
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Certain fans made their distaste for Morse painfully clear. “It sure as hell happened in the form of things whizzing by my face,” he says. “One of the bottles one time hit Jon [Lord, keyboardist] right in the head, nearly knocked him out.”
While the experience wasn’t great, Morse admits he understood where fans were coming from. He likens it to Ronnie Wood joining The Rolling Stones in 1975. While Wood’s role started out as a temporary stint, he would later become the official lead guitarist following the departure of guitarist Mick Taylor. “As a child I was really fixated on the early Stones, so I understood that,” Morse says.
Luckily, Morse had experienced this hostile reception in the past. The guitarist had already handled the same cold-shoulder from Kansas fans after replacing Kerry Livgren. “In a lot of people’s eyes, I had taken Kerry Livgren’s place in Kansas – it was as if I had pushed him out,” he recalls. “There was a lot of hostility that came from that, too, but I was at least exposed to that concept and ready for that to happen [again with Deep Purple].”
Of course, even if you loved the Ritchie Blackmore era of Deep Purple, his departure did result in the birth of Rainbow. There’s always a silver lining!
Regardless, Morse looks back on his time with Deep Purple with pride. “It was a mighty rock band with very, very good players,” he says. “I was really eager to do my best at everything. Part of that was learning to play a little less like having a stick up my butt, because I was real formal and stressed out with my own band.”
In Morse’s words, the band really let him “let loose and have a party onstage”, with everyone improvising and fully embracing the flow of the music. However, he admits that he had to reign his excitement in as the band got older and more set in their ways. “I think the guys got sick of me improvising and adding stuff,” he jokes. “I was sometimes going off script too much!”
Steve Morse’s his latest record, Triangulation, is out now.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
