RITCHIE BLACKMORE To Reunite With DEEP PURPLE!

Ritchie Blackmore's wife says that the legendary guitarist "would be willing to go on stage" and play "a couple of concerts" with DEEP PURPLE before the iconic hard rock band calls it quits.

Blackmore is a co-founder of DEEP PURPLE and wrote many of their most memorable riffs, including "Smoke On The Water", but he has not played with the group since his 1993 departure.

Steve Morse effectively took over Blackmore's slot in 1994 and has since been in the group longer than Ritchie.

Candice Night, who has been married to Ritchie for nine years but has been together with the guitarist for nearly 30, told 95.9 The Rat in a new interview that her husband harbors no ill will toward his former bandmates. "Honestly, from our perspective… You probably can read a lot of the interviews that Ritchie's done in the past… since he hasn't been with PURPLE anymore. It would be hard to find one [interview] where Ritchie doesn't say something [positive] about [DEEP PURPLE singer Ian] Gillan; he just doesn't talk about him in a negative context — he never does," she said. "Every once in a while, we'll be told by somebody or something will come up on a flash on the Internet where one of the guys over there [in the PURPLE camp] will say something [negative] about Ritchie, and we're, like, 'Why?' Like, 'Here it comes again. Why?' I mean, it's never coming from over here. He's so far beyond it.

"Ritchie's always in the now; he's in the present," she continued. "He's doing what he's doing and he doesn't have time for the B.S. of whatever else is going on — gossip and rumor and all that stuff. But at this point, I would say that things are cool with everybody — I would like to say that. As far as I know, they are."