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
Ian Gillan song "Mitzi Dupree" on "The House of Blue Light" is the original demo as Blackmore refused to re-record it. This culminated in Blackmore calling a rehearsal session without Gillan. After an acrimonious argument, Glover told Gillan, "Ian, you've gone too far this time," and he was fired. Gillan, meanwhile, formed a new version of Garth Rockett and the Moonshiners with keyboardist Mark Buckle, bassist Keith Mulholland, drummer Louis Rosenthal and guitarists Harry Shaw and Steve Morris. The band toured regularly through 1989, and recorded the album "Naked Thunder". Gillan later expressed dissatisfaction with the album, calling it "rather hum-de-dum". During