During a recent appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Ian Gillan said they named their ‘Long Goodbye’ tour to increase ticket sales.
“I think it is,” the singer noted when asked if he and his band are still not thinking about retirement, seven years after starting The Long Goodbye tour. “That was a joke, actually, because it was the promoters. And someone said, ‘We’ve gotta sell some more tickets.’”
Gillan continued, “And it’s the good old standby, the farewell tour. So I said, Okay, we’ll call it ‘goodbye’ tour, but let’s call it ‘the long goodbye’, and let’s make the emphasis on the word ‘long’,’ so it’s kind of an enigmatic phrase.”
“There’s no intention to stop,” Ian said of his future plans. “At the moment… I spoke to my manager the other day. I’ve got some solo project. He said, ‘You’re gonna have to put ’em back,’ and I’m putting them back years.”
The rocker added, “We’re already booked to the end of ’26, in the planning stage, in the diary, with all the projects we’ve got for Deep Purple. So, yeah, years to come, hopefully.”
Gillan also spoke about retirement in a new chat with Ultimate Classic Rock. He stated, “But to answer your question: it is what it is. As soon as you start feeling unable to deliver at that level — of course, you adjust, of course, you adapt and do the best you can.”
The musician also explained, “But when the energy level goes, that’s time to stop because then it gets embarrassing and nobody wants that. But so far, so good. I think that’s a much better title than what you just said.”
“We have never planned a date to stop working,” Ian Paice also previously discussed retirement. “We are realists. The guys are getting older, and there’s gonna come a point where maybe one or two of us don’t want to do it anymore or [it’s] not physically possible for them to do it. But we don’t think about that. We’re still having a great deal of fun. A lot of people still enjoy what we do, and so long as those two things stay in harmony, we’ll continue.”
Deep Purple’s new record ‘=1,’ arrived on July 19. Their joint tour with Yes started on August 14 in Hollywood, Florida.