Classic Rock Revisited's Jeb Wright has issued a new interview with DEEP PURPLE guitarist Steve Morse. An excerpt follows:

Jeb Wright: I admire that despite your advanced abilities, you have remained a fan of music.

Steve Morse: "If you have your ears open, and you travel around, then you find out that every city has people who are top level, in terms of talent. They are separated by the people at the top only because the people at the top have an endurance level and can put up with the stuff you have to put up with. That is part of life in Purple. It’s easy to play with the guys. The touring is hard because it’s longer than I want to do but it has enabled me to have stability in this business.

I started with the band when I was going through a divorce. I thought I was going to be an airline pilot and be able to come home five nights a week; that was my plan. It didn’t work out because I didn’t have the burning desire to do that job after about six months. There is something about everybody’s job that sucks; it’s not just being a musician. I got to see a glimpse of reality, which was a good thing to do. I got together with KANSAS shortly after that and we did another album. I got really disillusioned by the whole MTV thing going on. I was not going to be the type of guy that could write trendy music. I had decided to go back underground and play to 100 people a night and that was going to be my life again; as that is what I did with the Dregs.

My manager called me up and said that Deep Purple needed a guitar player. We decided to do four shows because they didn’t know if I was going to be some sort of maniac and I didn’t know if they were going to be guys who were living off their past. I definitely didn’t want that. I had never wanted to be in a rock band that was successful because I would lose control over my own music. The first album we did was Purpendicualr and they all came to me and said, 'What have you got, Steve?' It went great. Our writing has always been a band venture and that really helped. The guys are absolute warhorses, they can’t be killed. I think there should be five graves, if you look at all we have done over the years, we should be doing the Big Sleep. They have some sort of alien, robotic substances inside of them."

Read the complete interview at this location.