Simon McBride doesn’t usually get nervous before shows, but right now he’s having a mini-meltdown. It’s May 22, 2022, and he’s due to walk out on stage at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena in less than 15 minutes. He’s played hundreds of gigs before, some of them in venues as big as this, but this is different: it’s his first show as guitarist with Deep Purple. And he’s bricking it.
“Basically the shit hit the fan,” he says now. “I was, like: ‘Oh crap, I’m going on stage to play to fifteen thousand people with Deep Purple. How am I going to do this? Aaagh!’”
