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
Graham Bonnet UK glam-rock band Sweet to replace Brian Connolly. However, he was chosen by Ritchie Blackmore to replace Ronnie James Dio as the vocalist of hard rock band Rainbow. This was something of a musical departure for Bonnet, who had previously identified himself more as an R&B singer. Bonnet would later credit his time in Rainbow, and his collaboration with Blackmore in particular as changing fundamentally his musical outlook to a more hard rock focus. He sang on the "Down to Earth" LP, which would become his most successful album. It spawned two hit singles in 1979 and 1980: "Since You