Simon McBride joined Deep Purple in 2022, off the back of an established career as a blues solo artist and as a touring member of Don Airey’s solo band.

So, by replacing the outgoing Steve Morse and becoming the band’s fourth permanent guitarist, he busied himself with understanding the band’s guitar parts intimately.

While he had little issue with the bulk of it – indeed, Morse said he “nailed” the gig – there was one tricky little Ritchie Blackmore lick that had him stumped for a while.

“Most of it is actually not too bad,” he told Ultimate Guitar. “There’s one little lick which annoyed me for a long, long time, it’s in Lazy. I don’t play the same solo he plays; Lazy is one of those songs where I feel I can just improvise a bit more and have fun with it.

“But there’s this one lick he does in it, and I said, ‘I have to play that.’ And it’s a bitch of a lick,” he expands.

“It’s not ultrafast. It’s just that there’s a lot of chromatic stuff in it and slides in a very tight space, within three or four frets, and that’s it. So that, to me, is the hardest thing about playing Purple.”

Blackmore wasn’t necessarily known as a particularly speedy or technical player, and McBride acknowledges that. But he’s been quick to praise his melodic sensibilities.