Heartbreaking news: Deep Purple just received a devastating news just now…..

This strange being was amazing to see.”
How do you replace the guy who wrote the iconic “Smoke on the Water” riff, contributed significantly to the success of albums like “In Rock,” “Machine Head,” and “Burn,” and impacted countless guitarists throughout the years? Dave Coverdale, bassist Glenn Hughes, keyboardist Jon Lord, drummer Ian Paice, and singer David Coverdale boldly chose to continue when Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975 to form Rainbow.

And in Purple, who would take over for Blackmore? It was none other than Tommy Bolin, the guitarist who had once been seen with the James Gang and who had proved himself a formidable opponent to both Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham on the fusion masterpiece “Spectrum.”

Coverdale recalled, “My top three recommendations were Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, and this guy called Tommy Bolin, who no one had really heard of.” “I had heard Tommy Bolin on two albums: Alphonse Mouzon’s “Mind Transplant” and Billy Cobham’s “Spectrum.” His work truly impressed me, and I was unaware that he was an African American man in his seventies. Everyone then exclaimed, “Whoa, he’s pretty good!” Therefore, we spread the word.”

It came out that the enigmatic guitarist lived close to Coverdale’s Malibu, California, residence at the time. Bolin accepted an invitation to jam with the band at Pirate Sound as soon as it was sent to him.

As the singer recalled, “This guy walks in with multi-colored hair, lime-green Arabian knight… They weren’t trousers, they were like pre-Steven Tyler floating pants. And on four or five-inch sole platform…they weren’t platform shoes, they were kind of platform sandals!” “I saw he had the Echoplex set up on a stand, his Hiwatt’s, and just the way he picked up the guitar, he was going to get the job,” said Hughes. “I particularly wasn’t looking for a Ritchie Blackmore clone. Let’s just say that if Yngwie Malmsteen would have been present at that time in the ’70s, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to go for a clone of Blackmore. As we didn’t clone [Ian] Gillan and [Roger] Glover with Coverdale and Hughes. So I think getting him in, we weren’t interested in jamming old Purple songs that day. We wanted to just forge ahead.”