Deep Purple Credit: Photo via earMUSIC/Ben Wolf
It’s a travesty that it took so long for Deep Purple to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but after a farewell run of shows with Alice Cooper and Edgar Winter, the band realized that it’s not quite ready to fulfill that “long goodbye” it promised in 2017.

The purp rolls into St. Pete for a seemingly annual career retrospective, alongside Marshall Tucker Band, the latter of which had its piano tuner namesake pass away earlier this year at the age of 99.

Tickets to see Deep Purple play Mahaffey Theater’s Duke Energy Center for the Arts on Monday, Feb. 20 are still available and start at $83.

This article appears in Feb 16-22, 2023.

Josh Bradley is Creative Loafing Tampa Bay's calendar editor. He started as a freelance music writer in 2020 at the age of 18, and after spending years covering, announcing, and previewing concerts in...