Metal Express Radio's Mick Burgess recently spoke to former DEEP PURPLE keyboardist Jon Lord. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Q: When David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes came in to replace Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, Burn was a strong album in the classic Deep Purple tradition. Did David and Glenn exert more of an influence with Stormbringer heading in a more soulful direction?

Lord: "We had a really good change when David and Glenn came in and we did a really good album in Burn and I thought it carried on with the Deep Purple tradition very well. David and Glenn certainly did have more of an influence on Stormbringer for the simple reason that Ritchie took his eye off the ball as he had his idea in his head about Rainbow and he didn’t feel that David and Glenn were the right kind of people to carry that side of him forward and then he decided to leave. He could’ve been stronger during the making of Stormbringer and if he had been stronger then Stormbringer could have been a better album, not that it’s a bad album but it could’ve been a better one. It’s quite a confusing album. At the time our fans got a little confused by it. With Burn we picked up the torch and ran with it, I just wish we could have stayed with it. I think Ritchie lost a bit of energy trying to deal with the runaway train that was Glenn Hughes. It’s well documented that Glenn has had his drug and alcohol problems and thank goodness he’s sorted those out now, but at the time he was a bit of a loose canon and hard to deal with and I think Ritchie just had enough."

Q: How did the dynamics of the band change when Ritchie left?

Lord: "For me, it changed things irreparably. My onstage chemistry with Ritchie was part of the energy that drove the band and that was carried into the studio. You can hear that it's not quite there with Tommy. Even though he was a great guitarist he wasn’t a Blackmore. He and I didn’t click on stage. We clicked OK in the studio as he was more controllable but on stage I was also beginning to run out of energy to deal with the drugs thing that was happening to Glenn and dear Tommy."

Go to this location for the complete interview.