“I work all day.” Steve Morse spends his days fixing tractors and flying planes — and says it makes him more creative

Most guitarists slow down as they get older.

But most guitarists aren’t Steve Morse.

The former Deep Purple guitarist spends his days fixing tractors, cutting hay, flying airplanes and maintaining the 56-acre farm he calls home. The routine sounds exhausting, but he says it actually fuels his creativity.

Speaking to Premier Guitar while promoting Triangulation — the first Steve Morse Band album in 16 years and his first new music since leaving Deep Purple in 2022 — the 71-year-old reflected on the surprisingly busy life he leads away from the stage.

“I fly all the time,” he says. “I’ve never stopped flying.”

Morse has stepped away from the music industry twice before, seeking distance from the chaos and burnout that can come with a life onstage.

When his pioneering jazz-fusion outfit Dixie Dregs broke up in 1981, he traded guitars for heavy machinery, with his days spent running bulldozers and cutting hay.

Music eventually pulled him back. The Steve Morse Band gave him a new outlet when Capricorn Records offered him the freedom to record whatever he wanted, entirely on his own terms.

But the grind of the industry caught up with him again. Burned out, Morse left music once more and pursued another lifelong passion: aviation. He trained as a commercial airline pilot before being lured back onto the stage when Lynyrd Skynyrd invited him to join their lineup.

These days, Morse still balances playing the electric guitar with the practical realities of running a working farm — one that even has its own small runway.

Steve Morse Band - Triangulation (Official Music Video) feat. John Petrucci - YouTube

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“I think it’s very important, because you have more to say with the music if you have a life outside of it,” he says.

Much of that life revolves around keeping aging machinery running.

“The biggest part of my extracurricular thing is fixing stuff because I’ve got old hay equipment and old machines, and I have to learn the systems for each one,” he explains. “So a lot of my life is spent looking for manuals, finding sources for parts, learning hydraulics and learning the way electrical systems work so I can basically fix everything.”

It’s demanding work.

“I work all day, basically,” Morse says. “I don’t wake up early, but when I do wake up, I just go straight outside and start working until dark. Then I’ll work on music after dinner.”

For many musicians, that kind of schedule might stifle creativity. For Morse, it has the opposite effect.

“I think it’s super important, because when I’m doing laps in the tractor, cutting weeds or whatever, I’m thinking about stuff,” he says. “Melodies and parts come to mind that I’ve been working on recently, and I just kick them around.”

His curiosity extends well beyond guitars.

“When I’m at a gig and I walk by and see a guy welding something in the back, I stop and ask questions: How are you doing that? Did you preheat that? Does that make it crack?” he says. “I’m a student of everything.”

In recent years, Morse has also had to adapt physically. He continues to battle severe arthritis in his right-hand wrist — a condition so serious that a sports doctor once laughed when he said he intended to keep playing guitar.

Instead of stopping, Morse modified his guitar and continues adjusting his playing style, often day by day, to stay onstage.

The determination mirrors the resilience that has defined much of his career, including his nearly three-decade tenure in Deep Purple, where he stepped into the formidable role once held by Ritchie Blackmore.

Even there, Morse says creative frustrations were common. At one point, he estimated that about 95 percent of his ideas were rejected by the band. But one sympathetic bandmate appreciated his more unusual compositions, allowing a handful of Morse’s more adventurous ideas to slip onto Deep Purple records.