Across his 28 years with Deep Purple, Steve Morse became the band’s longest-serving guitarist. However, the creative impact he had on the British rock giants wasn’t as big as many would believe.
The fusion ace joined the group in 1994 to replace founding riffer Ritchie Blackmore, who had returned to the band after leaving in 1975 to form Rainbow. Deep Purple had hired Joe Satriani for a year of touring before Morse was sworn in, and though his fretboard mastery made him a tour de force onstage, his role was diminished when it came to composing songs.
“My job with Purple became providing ideas for the writing sessions, and one out of 20 might get used,” he tells MusicRadar. “Ninety-five percent of the time I was hearing, ‘That’s not going to work.’”
When he joined, the band was fronted by vocalist Ian Gillan, who was serving a second spell with the group after a clash of egos with Blackmore forced him to depart in 1973. The group was rounded out by bass guitarist Roger Glover, drummer Ian Paice and keyboard maverick Jon Lord.
It was in Lord that Morse found a kindred spirit to make his ideas work with the band.
“Jon was the guy who listened to my ideas and thoughtfully added to them, rather than just saying, ‘That doesn’t sound like Purple,’” Morse says. “When Jon was around, he would hear something and say, ‘That’s a little bit left field, but what if we do this?’ And he would play it with a slight twist.”
He recalls a time writing 1996's Purpendicular, when the rest of the band had stopped to drink tea. As the band's only American, he kept on playing, and at one point, Lord placed his cup down, turned to Morse and said, “Ah, that’s something there.”
It sounds like the rest of the group were a little more conservative regarding the Deep Purple sound, doubling down on an identity forged by Morse's predecessor. Blackmore himself, speaking in a now-taken-down video on YouTube in 2018, didn't exactly give Satriani and Morse a glowing review, despite praising their talents.
“Joe Satriani is a brilliant player, but I never see him really searching for notes. I never hear him playing a wrong note,” Blackmore said. “Jimi Hendrix used to play lots of wrong notes because he was searching all the time… ‘Where the hell is that correct note?!’ And when he did find that right note, wow, that was incredible.
“But if you’re always playing the correct notes, there’s something wrong; you’re not searching, you’re not reaching for anything. That’s not to say that he isn’t a very brilliant player. It's the same thing with Steve Morse, a fantastic player.
“Certain people play from the heart, and other people play from the head,” he concluded. “I prefer a ‘heart’ player. If I hear someone really technical running up and down the fingerboard, I can hear that for a couple of minutes, then I start to get bored.”
In related news, Morse reveals that he broke his wrist on the eve of a tour with the band, forcing him to modify his guitar to aid his shredding.
And as he battles his arthritis issues with ingenuity, he's also given Guitar Player readers top tips for keeping your cool when the going gets tough, something he certainly had to do in that moment.
