Steve Morse is one of the best guitar players to ever pick up the instrument – really, he is. He can play any type of genre, from classical to hard rock to jazz to folk to, well you get the idea. For 18 years he has been the lead guitar player for Deep Purple, before that he played with Kansas and before that he played with the Dixie Dregs. He also has his own trio and a long solo career.

While he may have long hair and look like a rock star, nothing could be further from the truth. Steve Morse is a musician. He is fan friendly, easy going, fun loving and talented beyond belief, although he remains nearly egoless. He is a family man and even once gave up being a professional musician to become a commercial pilot. He came back shortly after he left, though as he is a person born to play guitar and no other job has a chance of keeping his heart and soul from dictating he pick up the six string.

In the interview that follows, Morse talks about the recent USA orchestral tour with Deep Purple as well as his appearance of the latest Kansas DVD, There’s No Place Like Home. Morse speaks of his years with Kansas as well as music for the next Deep Purple album. Steve Morse is one of the most talented guitar players in the word but as the following interview proves; he is also a normal guy.

Steve: It actually went really well. The conductor was really a cool guy and he did great. He can do anything; write, conduct and he plays electric violin. By the end of the tour he was jamming with us on “Lazy.”

Steve: We did a tour of three continents a few years ago. We did Europe, Japan and South America. Back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, Jon Lord, who is classically trained, wrote a concerto. It was a half an hour piece, which was the centerpiece of what we did. Ronnie Dio and some other guests came out and sang with us. Ronnie sang one of the songs that Roger Glover wrote for an animated movie.

Steve: It’s been eighteen years.

Steve: It is amazing. The 40^th Anniversary came and went and we are still going strong.

Steve: We are going to play in Montreux, where they record everything. We never get to hear it before it comes out. It is pretty much embarrassing because they just record stuff and release it and you don’t even know about it. It would take so much time to get everyone’s permission to release it so it would never happen if they did it any other way.

Steve: On the US tour we played with a different band each day. The conductor went in early to go over the hard spots with them. They would all wear these little earphones so they could hear what was going on. We also had a separate guy mix the orchestra. He provided the feed to them so they could turn the guitar, bass and drums up or down. It was pretty intense. The most amazing thing to me was that all these wires actually got hooked up each day. These guys are pros and they can read this stuff in their sleep, so they rehearse it once and then they take a dinner break and then we do the show. It is no big deal to them.

In Germany, where we play in a few weeks, we will have to have a day of rehearsal as we will be using the same orchestra on the tour of Europe. It is also farther for me to go. They can go a long way but they seem to not be bothered by that.

Steve: To me, it’s neat because we were able to do things like “Contact Lost” or “Well Dressed Guitar” that were really designed for playing with an orchestra. In fact, I wrote “Well Dressed Guitar” when we had an orchestra tour. I had an arrangement of “Night Meets Flight,” a Dregs tune that the orchestra was doing. Everyone got to do a little solo and choose the music for their part during that tour. My choice was to do “Night Meets Flight,” which is a very challenging song. It sounded incredible when the London Symphony Orchestra did it but Van Romaine, my drummer was there. When we tried it with a traveling orchestra, with just the conductor and me, it just didn’t work. I had to come up with something for that little slot or they would have written me out of the show. I wrote the “Well Dressed Guitar” which is typical classical rock in terms of tempo and progression. It works really well. It was nice to hear that with the orchestra because there is nothing like the sound of the real thing.

Jeb: Deep Purple is your main band but I wonder if you are still allowed to create freely for your other projects as a member of the group?

Steve: We have a very open policy in the band about that. We think it makes the band stronger for people to be known in other types of music. Ian [Gillan] just did a recording with Tony Iommi and a bunch of other famous English guys… I think it is called Famous English Guys [laughter].

I just finished recording with Mike Portnoy and Neal Morse. Jason McPherson, he is a younger guy who is a singer/songwriter but he is fantastic. He is like a VH1, MTV guy. Dave LaRue is playing bass and this came out really good. We did a whole album. We are trying to get a deal and I am not sure how it is going to work out. The way it used to be compared to today you can chop a zero off the deal [laughter].

Steve: It came out good and I really enjoyed it. It is very diverse. I went to Nashville for a few days are recorded it. Neal came over to my place and we did some writing.

Steve: We have done enough writing for the next album. We started a couple of months ago in Spain. If you look at a map, that is pretty far from where I live. I was able to get them to record some stuff in Florida for some albums early on but that was the end of that. Part of the payback is that when we record then it has to be a certain number of thousands of miles away from where I live.

Steve: It was really easy to fall in to it. I grew up playing rock n’ roll and Deep Purple was one of the bands that I really liked, mainly because of the guitar and organ stuff that Ritchie [Blackmore] and Jon [Lord] did. I had a tape that had “Child in Time” on it. I didn’t even know it was Deep Purple as it was what we would call a mix tape now. It was an open reel-to-reel tape that got passed from one music aficionado to another.

We recorded stuff off the radio because you couldn’t find records in this small town in Georgia, where I was from. Once a week there was an hour of hard rock and I would just turn on the tape recorder for the whole hour. I would then splice the tapes to edit out the commercials. The deejays always talked through the intro and cut off the solo at the end!

Steve: If you have your ears open, and you travel around, then you find out that every city has people who are top level, in terms of talent. They are separated by the people at the top only because the people at the top have an endurance level and can put up with the stuff you have to put up with. That is part of life in Purple. It’s easy to play with the guys. The touring is hard because it’s longer than I want to do but it has enabled me to have stability in this business.

I started with the band when I was going through a divorce. I thought I was going to be an airline pilot and be able to come home five nights a week; that was my plan. It didn’t work out because I didn’t have the burning desire to do that job after about six months. There is something about everybody’s job that sucks; it’s not just being a musician. I got to see a glimpse of reality, which was a good thing to do. I got together with Kansas shortly after that and we did another album. I got really disillusioned by the whole MTV thing going on. I was not going to be the type of guy that could write trendy music. I had decided to go back underground and play to 100 people a night and that was going to be my life again; as that is what I did with the Dregs.

My manager called me up and said that Deep Purple needed a guitar player. We decided to do four shows because they didn’t know if I was going to be some sort of maniac and I didn’t know if they were going to be guys who were living off their past. I definitely didn’t want that. I had never wanted to be in a rock band that was successful because I would lose control over my own music. The first album we did was Purpendicualr and they all came to me and said, “What have you got, Steve?” It went great. Our writing has always been a band venture and that really helped. The guys are absolute warhorses, they can’t be killed. I think there should be five graves, if you look at all we have done over the years, we should be doing the Big Sleep. They have some sort of alien, robotic substances inside of them.

Jeb: At some age one would think Ian Gillan’s voice would fail but it keeps on going.

Steve: He works it hard. We all have our limitations now, at this point, but he does not give into his limitations. He really puts his heart and soul into what he does.

I really like the fact that the band has zero image. You don’t have to look a certain way and you don’t have to be cool, you just have to get up there and play. The fact that they are not trendy really appeals to me.

Jeb: When Jon retired I thought, “No one can replace him. They are done.” Then they get Don Airey. He is the only man who could have made it so seamless.

Steve: Don is an amazing player who is extremely talented – please don’t tell him I said that [laughter]. They had some guys that they personally knew who they were going to have to try out for that position. After we did a couple of replacement gigs with Don I told the manager that the deal was done. Don was doing the gigs fantastically. He asked the other guys and pretty much everybody agreed. It got them off the hook with having to audition the other guys that they knew. I pushed hard to keep Don as he fit in really good.

Steve: It was a big deal for me. I never got to play with Kerry [Livgren]. The day we did that I went to Kerry’s house and recorded a song with him. I got to talk tractors, planes and recording studios with him, which are the three things we have in common. Instead of having to deal with the fact that I was not Kerry, which was the kind of gig that I had fallen into when I joined them, instead of that, I got to listen to their concert as a fan. I got with them because I was a fan. I went to every Kansas concert that I could.

Steve: That’s a good reason. I couldn’t put any fret lines on his violin.

Steve: Kansas moved to Atlanta and the Dregs were living in Atlanta. I went to see them as I was a fan. Steve actually recorded on a Dregs album but he didn’t let us give him credit. He sings background vocals on a song called “Crank It Up.” He sings all those high vocals on the song. We knew each other. Steve and I met and we worked together a little bit. Overall, it was just bad timing when I was with Kansas. It was the whole MTV era and there was a lot of pressure for Kansas to have a hit.

I was brought in to help be a pop writer and to have a hit. I wanted to play “Magnum Opus.” I wanted to do the big, grandiose prog rock. We got to do some of that. Steve and I were at odds at the direction. Phil [Ehart] wanted a solid radio hit. I didn’t feel that I was the best person to be in the band and do all that. I was really getting disillusioned with the music business in general. I really thought what would be best for me was just to quit and became an airline pilot. I thought I would have a kid and have a family and be a normal person.

Steve: [laughing] I had to cut my hair to be an airline pilot.

Steve: It is the most diverse solo album I have ever done.

Steve: I really enjoyed working with Bob Ezrin. He was very knowledgeable and also very funny; we had a blast. The writing part of it was more difficult. There were literally four people pulling in four different directions for what we thought we needed; that made it very challenging. The final result with anything that Kansas does is going to be good. They are a bunch of hardworking Midwestern guys and they do not settle until it sounds good. It may not be exactly the style that I wanted in every song but the end result is that it sounded good. That is one thing that you can take to the bank with Kansas, they are always going to sound great.

Steve: I am proud to have been in Kansas, the Dregs, my trio and Deep Purple. I have been fortunate to be around people that are world class.