Come Taste the Band Purple in 1984. When Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple in 1975, there was uncertainty over whether the band would continue, as they did when Ian Gillan and Roger Glover left in 1973. It was David Coverdale who asked Jon Lord to keep the band together, and Coverdale was also a major factor in recruiting Tommy Bolin to take the guitar slot after hearing Bolin's work on the Billy Cobham solo album "Spectrum". Rehearsals for the album were recorded by Robert Simon, who was originally engineering the album. But after a dispute with the band over scheduling, the band left Simon's
Born Again (Black Sabbath album) in the UK charts. The album also hit the top 40 in the United States. Following the departure of vocalist Ronnie James Dio and drummer Vinny Appice in 1982, Sabbath's future was in doubt. The band switched management to Don Arden (Sharon Osbourne's father) and he suggested Ian Gillan as the new vocalist. "That band was put together on paper," guitarist Tony Iommi revealed in the 1992 documentary "Black Sabbath: 1978–1992". "We'd never rehearsed." The band had considered vocalists such as Robert Plant and David Coverdale before settling on Gillan. They even received an audition tape from the then-unknown Michael