Repo Depo

Debuting in Argentina, Ian Gillan's new four-piece band serial toured around the world, visiting countries such as Bolivia and Venezuela, neither of which had previously been graced by any Deep Purple family band. The fresh energy generated by new guitarist Dean Howard lead to increasingly powerful live performances as well as new songs such as 'Hard On You' and 'A Day Late And A Dollar Short'. However in mid-1992 they found themselves without a record deal and lacked the resources to relaunch themselves under their new name 'Repo Depo'. In late August 1992 Ian Gillan was asked to rejoin Deep Purple, and felt unable to say anything except yes. Gillan's own band played their final, manic, show at an outdoor festival in Bucharest, Romania on September 13th 1992. He thought the Deep Purple spell would be short lived and planned to rejoin Repo Depo, but Deep Purple soon unexpectedly found new life and new personnel. Of the unreleased songs, two were eventually recorded (albeit nowhere near the power of the live versions) for Ian's 1997 'Dreamcatcher' solo album. As well as collaborating on 'Dreamcatcher', Steve Morris also played two songs on Ian's solo segment at the 1999 Albert Hall Concerto shows and in the encore of 'Smoke On The Water', and continues to record with his band Heartland. Both Dean Howard (in the Dean Howard Project) and Leonard Haze (with Y&T) have played support on Deep Purple shows. Brett Bloomfield rejoined a version of Starship soon after Gillan folded. (photo, left to right: Brett Bloomfield, Leonard Haze, Ian Gillan, Dean Howard)