title: Ivanka Trump

text: In 2010, Trump cofounded Girl Up with the United Nations Foundation. Of the program, Trump said, “Girl Up ‘for girls, by girls’ approach encourages American girls to become forces of global change. I am proud to be working with Girl Up and girls in this country to help ensure that all girls – no matter where they are born – get the tools they need to be educated, healthy, counted and positioned to be the next generation of leaders.”


title: Ivanka Trump

text: Trump was a member of the Donald J. Trump Foundation board until the foundation was dissolved after then New York attorney general Barbara Underwood filed a civil lawsuit against the foundation, alleging "persistently illegal conduct" with respect to the foundation's money. In November 2019, Trump's father was ordered to pay a $2 million settlement for misusing the foundation for his business and political purposes. The settlements also included mandatory training requirements for Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: Trump also has ties to a number of Jewish charities, including Chai Lifeline, a charity which helps to look after children with cancer. Other charities she supports include United Hatzalah, to which her father, Donald Trump, has reportedly made six-figure donations in the past.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: After she was appointed advisor to the president, Trump donated the unpaid half of the advance payments for her book "Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success" to the National Urban League and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. She further said that any royalties exceeding the advances would also be given to charity.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: Trump has a close relationship with her father, who has publicly expressed his admiration for her on several occasions. Ivanka has likewise praised her father, complimenting his leadership skills and saying he empowers other people.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: According to her late mother, Ivanka speaks French and understands Czech. Sarah Ellison, writing for "Vanity Fair" in 2018, indicated Ivanka Trump was the family member that "everyone in the family seems to acknowledge" is her father's "favorite" child. This had been confirmed by the family members themselves in a 2015 interview with Barbara Walters on network television where the siblings were gathered and acknowledged this.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: In January 2017 it was announced that she and Kushner had made arrangements to establish a family home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Federal filings implied that, in 2017, Trump and her husband may have assets upwards of $740 million. They had previously shared an apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, which Trump chose due to its proximity to her work with the Trump Organization. The residence was featured in "Elle Decor" in 2012 with Kelly Behun as its interior decorator. Since leaving Washington in 2021, Ivanka and her husband have been residents of Surfside, Florida.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: In college, Trump was in a nearly four-year relationship with Greg Hersch. From 2001 to 2005, she dated James "Bingo" Gubelmann.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: In 2005, she started dating real estate developer Jared Kushner, whom she met through mutual friends. The couple broke up in 2008 due to the objections of Kushner's parents but got back together and married in a Jewish ceremony on October 25, 2009. They have three children: daughter Arabella Rose, born in July 2011, and sons Joseph Frederick and Theodore James born in October 2013 and March 2016 respectively. In an interview on "The Dr. Oz Show", Trump revealed that she had suffered from postpartum depression after each of her pregnancies.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: Raised as a Presbyterian Christian, Trump converted to Orthodox Judaism in July 2009, after studying with Elie Weinstock from the Modern Orthodox Ramaz School. Trump took the Hebrew name "Yael" (). She describes her conversion as an "amazing and beautiful journey" which her father supported "from day one", adding that he has "tremendous respect" for the Jewish faith. She attests to keeping a kosher diet and observing the Jewish Sabbath, saying in 2015: "We're pretty observant... It's been such a great life decision for me... I really find that with Judaism, it creates an amazing blueprint for family connectivity. From Friday to Saturday we don't do anything but hang out with one another. We don't make phone calls." When living in New York City, she used to send her daughter to Jewish kindergarten. She said: "It's such a blessing for me to have her come home every night and share with me the Hebrew that she's learned and sing songs for me around the holidays."


title: Ivanka Trump

text: Trump and her husband made a pilgrimage to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a popular prayer site, shortly before her father's election victory. On May 22, 2017, the couple also accompanied her father on his first official visit to Israel as president. As part of the trip to Israel, her father became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall . Ivanka also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in western Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem during the trip.


title: Ivanka Trump

text: In 2012, the Wharton Club of New York, the official alumni association of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for the New York metropolitan area, gave Trump the Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership, one of their four annual awards for alumni.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Addison Mitchell McConnell III (born February 20, 1942) is an American politician and retired attorney serving as the senior United States senator from Kentucky and the Senate minority leader since 2021. Currently in his seventh term, McConnell has held the seat since 1985. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as Senate majority leader from 2015 to 2021, and as minority leader from 2007 to 2015.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell first served as a Deputy United States Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford from 1974 until 1975 and went on to serve as Jefferson County Judge/Executive from 1977 until 1984 in his home state of Kentucky. McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate. During the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, he was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He was elected Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and re-elected to the post in 2004. In November 2006 he was elected Senate minority leaderthe post he held until Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell holds conservative political positions, although he was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling "Citizens United v. FEC" that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. McConnell worked to withhold Republican support for major presidential initiatives during the Obama administration, having made frequent use of the filibuster, and blocked many of President Obama's judicial nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: During the Trump administration, the Senate Republican majority under his leadership passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018, and confirmed a record number of federal appeals court judges during a president's first two years. McConnell invoked the "nuclear option" to eliminate the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, after his predecessor Harry Reid had previously eliminated the filibuster for all other presidential nominations; Trump subsequently won confirmation battles on Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. While supportive of many of Trump's domestic and foreign policies, McConnell was critical of Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and despite voting to acquit on Trump's second impeachment trial on reasons related to the constitutionality of impeaching a former president, deemed him "practically and morally responsible" for the January 6 United States Capitol attack.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell is married to former secretary of transportation and former secretary of labor Elaine Chao. In 2015 and 2019, "Time" listed McConnell as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell was born on February 20, 1942, to Julia Odene "Dean" ( Shockley; 1919–1993) and Addison Mitchell "A.M." McConnell II (1917–1990). McConnell was born in Sheffield, Alabama, and grew up in nearby Athens, Alabama, where his grandfather, Robert Hayes McConnell Sr. and his great uncle Addison Mitchell McConnell, owned McConnell Funeral Home. He is of Scots-Irish and English descent. One of his ancestors fought on the American side in the American Revolutionary War.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1944, at the age of two, McConnell's upper left leg was paralyzed by a polio attack. He received treatment at the Roosevelt Warm Springs Institute for Rehabilitation. The treatment potentially saved him from being disabled for the rest of his life. McConnell said his family "almost went broke" because of costs related to his illness.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1950, when he was eight, McConnell moved with his family from Athens to Augusta, Georgia, where his father, who was in the Army, was stationed at Fort Gordon.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1956, his family moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he attended duPont Manual High School. McConnell was elected student council president at his high school during his junior year. He graduated Omicron Delta Kappa from the University of Louisville with a B.A. in political science in 1964 with honors. He was president of the Student Council of the College of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1964, at the age of 22, he attended civil rights rallies, and interned with Senator John Sherman Cooper. He has said his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate later in life.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1967, McConnell graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where he was president of the Student Bar Association.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In March 1967, shortly before the expiration of his educational draft deferment upon graduation from law school, McConnell enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve as a private at Louisville, Kentucky. This was a coveted position because the Reserve units were mostly kept out of combat during the Vietnam War. His first day of training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was July 9, 1967, two days after taking the bar exam, and his last day was August 15, 1967. Shortly after his arrival, he was diagnosed with optic neuritis and was deemed medically unfit for military service. After five weeks at Fort Knox, he was honorably discharged. His brief time in service has repeatedly been put at issue by his political opponents during his electoral campaigns.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: From 1968 to 1970, McConnell worked as chief legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook in Washington, D.C., managing a legislative department consisting of five members as well as assisting with speech writing and constituent services.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1971, McConnell returned to Louisville, where he worked for Tom Emberton's candidacy for Governor of Kentucky, which was unsuccessful. McConnell attempted to run for a seat in the state legislature but was disqualified because he did not meet the residency requirements for the office. He then went to work for a Louisville law firm, Segal, Isenberg, Sales and Stewart, for a few years. During the same time period, he taught a night class on political science at the University of Louisville.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In October 1974, McConnell returned to Washington to fill a position as Deputy Assistant Attorney General under President Gerald Ford, where he worked alongside Robert Bork, Laurence Silberman, and Antonin Scalia. He also served as acting United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs under President Ford in 1975.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1977, McConnell was elected the Jefferson County judge/executive, the top political office in Jefferson County, Kentucky, at the time, defeating incumbent Democrat Todd Hollenbach, III, 53% to 47%. He was re-elected in 1981 against Jefferson County Commissioner Jim "Pop" Malone, 51% to 47%, outspending Malone 3–1, and occupied this office until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1984.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In his early years as a politician in Kentucky, McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican. Over time he shifted to the right and became more conservative. According to one of his biographers, McConnell transformed "from a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and public employee unions to the embodiment of partisan obstructionism and conservative orthodoxy on Capitol Hill." McConnell has widely been described as an obstructionist.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: From 1997 to 2001, McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the body charged with securing electoral victories for Republicans. On February 12, 1999, he was one of fifty senators to vote to convict and remove Bill Clinton from office. He was first elected as Majority Whip in the 108th Congress and was unanimously re-elected on November 17, 2004. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist did not seek re-election in the 2006 elections. In November, after Republicans lost control of the Senate, they elected McConnell as the minority leader. After Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 Senate elections, McConnell became the Senate Majority Leader. In June 2018 he became the longest-serving Senate Republican leader in the history of the United States. McConnell is the second Kentuckian to serve as a party leader in the Senate (after Alben W. Barkley led the Democrats from 1937 to 1949) and is the longest-serving U.S. senator from Kentucky in history.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell has a reputation as a skilled political strategist and tactician. This reputation dimmed after Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in 2017 during consolidated Republican control of government.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell regularly obtained earmarks for businesses and institutions in Kentucky, until the practice was banned by Congress in 2010. McConnell has received criticism for funding "temporary patches" to Kentucky's long-term healthcare problems, while simultaneously opposing and obstructing national programs that seek to improve healthcare more systematically, such as Obamacare and Medicaid expansion.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: As the leading Republican senator, McConnell confronted and pressured other Republican senators who were willing to negotiate with Democrats and the Obama administration. According to Purdue University political scientist Bert A. Rockman, "pure party line voting has been evident now for some time... but rarely has the tactic of 'oppositionism' been so boldly stated as McConnell did." According to University of Texas legal scholar Sanford Levinson, McConnell learned that obstruction and Republican unity were the optimal ways to ensure Republican gains in upcoming elections after he observed how Democratic cooperation with the Bush administration on No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D helped Bush's 2004 re-election. Levinson noted, "McConnell altogether rationally... concluded that Republicans have nothing to gain, as a political party, from collaborating in anything that the president could then claim as an achievement." A number of political scientists, historians, and legal scholars have characterized McConnell's obstructionism and constitutional hardball as contributors to democratic erosion in the United States.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In October 2010, McConnell said "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Asked whether this meant "endless, or at least frequent, confrontation with the president", McConnell clarified that "if [Obama is] willing to meet us halfway on some of the biggest issues, it's not inappropriate for us to do business with him." According to political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, "Facing off against Obama, [McConnell] worked to deny even minimal Republican support for major presidential initiativesinitiatives that were, as a rule, in keeping with the moderate model of decades past, and often with moderate Republican stances of a few years past." "The New York Times" noted early during Obama's administration that "on the major issuesnot just health care, but financial regulation and the economic stimulus package, among othersMr. McConnell has held Republican defections to somewhere between minimal and nonexistent, allowing him to slow the Democratic agenda if not defeat aspects of it." The Republican caucus threatened repeatedly to force the United States to default on its debt, McConnell saying he had learned from the 2011 debt-ceiling crisis that "it's a hostage that's worth ransoming."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell worked to delay and obstruct health care reform and banking reform, two of the most notable pieces of legislation that Democrats navigated through Congress early in Obama's tenure. Political scientists noted that "by slowing action even on measures supported by many Republicans, McConnell capitalized on the scarcity of floor time, forcing Democratic leaders into difficult trade-offs concerning which measures were worth pursuing... Slowing the Senate's ability to process even routine measures limited the sheer volume of liberal bills that could be adopted."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: One of McConnell's most common tactics as minority leader to delay or obstruct legislation and judicial appointments has been the filibuster. A filibuster is an attempt to "talk a bill to death", forcing Senate leadership to abandon a proposed measure instead of waiting out the filibuster―or at least to delay the measure's passage. In the United States Senate, any senator may speak for unlimited duration unless a 60-person majority votes to invoke cloture, or end debate, and proceed to a final vote. Political scientists have referred to McConnell's use of the filibuster as "constitutional hardball", referring to the misuse of procedural tools in a way that undermines democracy.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Political scientists Hacker and Pierson describe the rationale behind McConnell's filibusters, "Filibusters left no fingerprints. When voters heard that legislation had been 'defeated', journalists rarely highlighted that this defeat meant a minority had blocked a majority. Not only did this strategy produce an atmosphere of gridlock and dysfunction; it also chewed up the Senate calendar, restricting the range of issues on which Democrats could progress."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2012, McConnell proposed a measure allowing President Obama to raise the debt ceiling, hoping some Democratic senators would oppose the measure, thus demonstrating disunity among Democrats. However, all Democratic senators supported the proposal, which led McConnell to filibuster his own proposal.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid eliminated the filibuster for all presidential nominations except the Supreme Court. By that time, nearly half of all votes to invoke cloture in the history of the Senate had occurred during Obama's presidency. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by McConnell eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch. In August 2019, McConnell wrote an editorial for "The New York Times", strongly opposing the elimination of the filibuster on legislation.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell initially endorsed fellow Kentucky senator Rand Paul during the 2016 presidential campaign. Following Paul's withdrawal from the race in February 2016, McConnell endorsed presumptive nominee Donald Trump on February 4, 2016. However, McConnell disagreed with Trump on multiple subsequent occasions. In May 2016, after Trump suggested that federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel was biased against Trump because of his Mexican heritage, McConnell responded, "I don't agree with what he (Trump) had to say. This is a man who was born in Indiana. All of us came here from somewhere else." In July 2016, after Trump had criticized the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan, a Muslim-American soldier who was killed in Iraq, McConnell said, "All Americans should value the patriotic service of the patriots who volunteer to selflessly defend us in the armed services." On October 7, 2016, following the Donald Trump "Access Hollywood" controversy, McConnell said, "As the father of three daughters, I strongly believe that Trump needs to apologize directly to women and girls everywhere, and take full responsibility for the utter lack of respect for women shown in his comments on that tape." In private, McConnell reportedly expresses disdain for Trump and "abhors" his behavior.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In October 2017, White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and other Trump allies blamed McConnell for stalling the Trump administration's legislation. In response, McConnell cited the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to show that the Senate was supportive of Trump's agenda.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: After Joe Biden won the election of 2020 against Donald Trump, McConnell at first refused to recognize Biden as the winner of the election. In his public statements, McConnell did not repeat any of Trump's false claims of voter fraud, but did not contradict them, ignoring questions about evidence and instead arguing that Trump had the right to challenge the results. At the same time that McConnell refused to recognize Biden, he did celebrate Republicans who won their races in the Senate and the House in the same elections.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On December 15, one day after the electoral college vote, McConnell reversed his previous stance and publicly acknowledged Biden's win, stating "Today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden." On January 6, during the Electoral College vote count, McConnell spoke out against the efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the election:


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Later that day, he described the storming of the Capitol building (which occurred while the Electoral College votes were being counted) as a "failed insurrection" which "tried to disrupt our democracy".


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On April 10, 2021, Trump called McConnell a "dumb son of a bitch". Trump added: "I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?" Trump has continued to attack McConnell in personal terms since then, but McConnell has not responded publicly.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On November 5, 2019, as the House of Representatives began public hearings on the impeachment of President Trump, McConnell said, "I'm pretty sure how [an impeachment trial is] likely to end... If it were today, I don't think there's any questionit would not lead to a removal."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On December 14, 2019, McConnell met with White House counsel Pat Cipollone and White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland. Later that day, McConnell declared that for Trump's impeachment trial, he would be in "total coordination with the White House counsel's office" and Trump's representatives. He also declared that there was "no chance" the Senate would convict Trump and remove him from office.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On December 17, 2019, McConnell rejected a request to call four witnesses for Trump's impeachment trial because, according to McConnell, the Senate's role was to "act as judge and jury", not to investigate. Later that day, McConnell told the media: "I'm not an impartial juror [in this impeachment trial]. This is a political process. There's not anything judicial about it."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: After Trump's acquittal, McConnell was noted for his ability to block witnesses, to secure Trump's acquittal, and to maintain party unity during the impeachment process. Commentators noted that McConnell had kept Republican senators "marching in lockstep" throughout the process.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On January 12, 2021, it was reported that McConnell supported impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, believing it would make it easier for Republicans to purge the party of Trump and rebuild the party. On January 13, despite having the authority to call for an emergency meeting of the Senate to hold the Senate trial, McConnell did not reconvene the chamber, claiming unanimous consent was required. McConnell called for delaying the Senate trial until after Joe Biden's inauguration. Once the Senate trial started, McConnell voted to acquit Trump on February 13, 2021, and said it was unconstitutional to convict someone who was no longer in office.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: The vote was a bipartisan majority (57–43) but not enough to pass the two-thirds threshold. After the vote McConnell lambasted and condemned Trump, despite his vote to acquit, in a 20-minute speech on the floor of the Senate, saying he believes Trump to be guilty of everything alleged by the House managers. He stated that:


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Former President Trump's actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty... There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day... If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell also said that Trump remains subject to the country's criminal and civil laws, stating, "He didn't get away with anything yet." He also said why he voted to acquit: "ArticleII, Section4 must have force. It tells us the President, Vice President, and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the president. Clearly that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to somebody who has left office. The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible."


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2021, McConnell sought to organize Republican Senators into filibustering a bipartisan commission to investigate the storming of the Capitol on January 6.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On May 28, 2021, McConnell voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the January 6 United States Capitol attack.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Throughout Obama's tenure McConnell led Senate Republicans in what has been called "a disciplined, sustained, at times underhanded campaign to deny the Democratic president the opportunity to appoint federal judges". In June 2009, following President Obama's nominating Sonia Sotomayor as Associate Justice, McConnell and Jeff Sessions opined that Sotomayor's seventeen years as a federal judge and over 3,600 judicial opinions would require lengthy review and advocated against Democrats hastening the confirmation process. On July 17, McConnell announced that he would vote against Sotomayor's confirmation. In August, McConnell called Sotomayor "a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background" but added he did not believe she would withhold her personal or political views while serving as a justice. Sotomayor was confirmed days later.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In May 2010, after President Obama nominated Elena Kagan to succeed the retiring John Paul Stevens, McConnell said during a Senate speech that Americans wanted to make sure Kagan would be independent of influence from White House as an associate justice and noted Obama's referring to Kagan as a friend of his in announcing her nomination. McConnell announced his opposition to Kagan's confirmation, saying she was not forthcoming enough about her "views on basic principles of American constitutional law". Kagan was confirmed the following month.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2014, Republicans gained control of the Senate, and McConnell became majority leader; he used his newly heightened power to start what was considered "a near blockade of Obama's judicial appointments." According to "The New York Times", Obama's final two years as president saw 18 district court judges and one appeals court judge confirmed, the fewest since President Harry S. Truman. In comparison, the final two years of the presidencies of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan had between 55 and 70 district court judges each confirmed and between 10 and 15 appeals court judges confirmed. According to the "Los Angeles Times", McConnell brought about an "extraordinary two-year slowdown in judicial confirmations," detailing 22 confirmations of Obama's judicial nominees, the lowest since President Truman in 1951–1952. The number of federal judicial vacancies more than doubled comparing the figure near the end of Obama's term to the figure at the end of George W. Bush's term. Later in a 2019 interview, McConnell credited himself for the large number of judicial vacancies created in the last two years of Obama's presidency.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On February 13, 2016, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia died. Shortly thereafter, McConnell issued a statement indicating that the U.S. Senate would not consider any Supreme Court nominee put forth by Obama. "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president," McConnell said at the time. On March 16, 2016, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a Judge of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court. Under McConnell's direction, Senate Republicans refused to take any action on the Garland nomination. Garland's nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In an August 2016 speech in Kentucky, McConnell made reference to the Garland nomination, saying that "one of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, 'Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.'" In April 2018, McConnell said the decision not to act upon the Garland nomination was "the most consequential decision I've made in my entire public career". McConnell's refusal to hold Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland during Obama's final year in office was described by political scientists and legal scholars as "unprecedented", a "culmination of [his] confrontational style", a "blatant abuse of constitutional norms", and a "classic example of constitutional hardball".


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In January 2017, Republican president Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left after Scalia's death. Gorsuch's nomination was confirmed on April 7, 2017, after McConnell eliminated the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On July 18, 2018, with Andy Oldham's Senate confirmation, Senate Republicans broke a record for largest number of appeals court judiciary confirmations during a president's first two years; Oldham became the 23rd appeals court judge confirmed in Trump's term. McConnell said he considers the judiciary to be the item of Trump's first two years with the longest-lasting impact on the country. The record for the number of circuit court judges confirmed during a president's first year was broken in 2017, while the previous two-year record took place under President George H. W. Bush, and included 22 nominations. By March 2020, McConnell had contacted an unknown number of judges, encouraging them to retire prior to the 2020 election. He confirmed 260 federal judges over the course of Trump's four-year term, shifting the federal judiciary to the right.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In July 2018, President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Anthony Kennedy as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. McConnell accused Democrats of creating an "extreme" distortion of Kavanaugh's record during his hearing process. In September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford publicly alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh in 1982. After a report came out of Democrats' investigating a second allegation against Kavanaugh, McConnell said, "I want to make it perfectly clear... Judge Kavanaugh will be voted on here on the Senate floor." Kavanaugh was confirmed on October 6. McConnell afterward admitted the confirmation process was a low point for the Senate, but also downplayed reports of dysfunction in the Senate; he said claims that the Senate was "somehow broken over this [were] simply inaccurate".


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In October 2018, McConnell said if a Supreme Court vacancy were to occur during Trump's 2020 re-election year he would not follow his 2016 decision to let the winner of the upcoming presidential election nominate a justice. He noted that in 2016 the Senate was controlled by a party other than the president'sand argued that for that reason, the 2016 precedent was not applicable in 2020, when the presidency and Senate were both controlled by Republicans. In September 2020, following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he announced the Senate would vote on Trump's nominated replacement. On October 23, 2020, McConnell set in place the Senate debate for the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ginsburg's seat. Barrett was confirmed on October 26, 2020.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: The United States federal government shut down October 1–17, 2013, following a failure to enact legislation to fund the government. McConnell later vowed Republicans would not force the U.S. to default on its debt or shut down the government in 2014, when stop-gap funding measures were set to expire. He also said he would not allow other Republicans to obstruct the budget-making process.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In July 2018, McConnell said funding for the Mexico–United States border wall would likely have to wait until the midterms had concluded. President Trump tweeted two days later that he was willing to allow a government shutdown to get funding. Several spending bills were approved that August; the approvals were seen as a victory for McConnell in his attempts to prevent another government shutdown.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: From December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019, the federal government was shut down when Congress refused to give in to Trump's demand for $5.7billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall. In December 2018, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding, and the bill appeared likely to be approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Trump. After Trump faced heavy criticism from some right-wing media outlets and pundits for appearing to back down on his campaign promise to "build the wall", he announced that he would not sign any appropriations bill that did not fund its construction.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: During this shutdown, McConnell blocked the Senate from voting on appropriations legislation, and said it was not his place to mediate between the Senate and Trump. Privately, McConnell had advised Trump against initiating the shutdown. Democrats criticized McConnell for not putting appropriations legislation up for a vote, noting that the Republican-controlled Senate had unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding and that the Senate could override Trump's veto.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: By January 23, McConnell had blocked four Senate bills to reopen the government and a bill funding the Homeland Security Department through February 8. McConnell called for Democrats to support a Trump administration-backed measure that included $5.7billion in wall funding, together with a temporary extension of protections for DACA recipients, a Democratic priority. Privately, other Republican senators pressured McConnell to stop blocking appropriations legislation.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: The shutdown ended on January 25, when President Trump signed a three-week funding measure reopening the government until February 15 without any funds for a border wall. This was the longest government shutdown in American history.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, McConnell initially opposed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, calling it a Democratic "ideological wish list". He subsequently reversed his position when Trump endorsed the proposed package. The bill passed in the Senate by a vote of 90–8.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell also directed Senate Republicans in negotiations for two other COVID-19 response packages: the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2020, and the CARES Act. The CARES Act was the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history, amounting to 10% of total U.S. gross domestic product. It passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Speaking on the Hugh Hewitt radio show on April 22, 2020, McConnell suggested that states should be able to declare bankruptcy instead of receiving additional COVID-19 aid fundsfunds which he implied would be used to save insolvent state pension funds, instead of COVID-19 relief as intended. His comments were met with sharp criticism from various state and local officials. States currently cannot declare bankruptcy.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: After the passage of the CARES Act, McConnell waited several months before advancing any additional COVID-19 relief measures in the Senate, saying in May "I don't think we have yet felt the urgency of acting immediately," and that Congress should "[hit] pause" to evaluate how the allocated funds were working before approving more. In negotiations between congressional Democrats and White House officials for an additional aid package, McConnell was absent from the talks.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: On September 10, a pared-down COVID-19 relief bill crafted by McConnell failed to advance the Senate past a Democratic filibuster. Democrats panned the bill as "completely inadequate" given the scope of the crisis brought on by the COVID-19and as a partisan maneuver to help Republican senators up for reelection. McConnell called the bill a choice between "do[ing] something" and "do[ing] nothing", and said he was holding the procedural vote to get lawmakers on the record about their willingness to compromise on COVID-19 legislation.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: As the leader of the Senate Republicans, McConnell has been at the receiving end of much of the criticism and disapproval that Republicans receive from Democratic voters, receiving near uniform disapproval from left-of-center voters. Furthermore, as a result of his unpopularity with Trump and the more populist base, McConnell has had historically low approval for a senator when looking at the electorate as a whole, as a 2012 poll and a 2016 poll each found that McConnell had the lowest home-state approval rating of any sitting senator. With a 49% disapproval rate in 2017, McConnell had the highest disapproval rating of all senators.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In September 2019, the Morning Consult found that his approval rating had been underwater since the first quarter of 2017, when it was 44% positive and 47% negative. The best rating since that time was in the fourth quarter of 2018, when he had a 38% positive rating and a 47% negative rating among Kentuckians. At that time he was briefly not the least popular Senator, and was surpassed by Senators Claire McCaskill and Jeff Flake. As of the second quarter of 2019, however, McConnell's ratings were 36% positive and 50% negative. He netted −56 among Democrats, +29 among Republicans, and −24 among Independents. An average of polls by the Economist/YouGov, Politico/Morning Consult, and Harvard-Harris from the end of July through August 2019 (7/31–8/27), was 23% favorable and 48% unfavorable (−25.0 spread).


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2020, according to Morning Consult, Susan Collins edged out McConnell as the most unpopular senator with a 52% unfavorable rating from Maine voters compared to 50% unfavorable for McConnell.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell has taken conservative stances for the past several decades. During his Senate tenure, McConnell led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010. He led opposition against Obamacare, first through efforts to delay or prevent the law's passage, and later to repeal or replace it, including via the American Healthcare Reform Act. McConnell has opposed stronger regulations, gun control measures and efforts to mitigate climate change. He has criticized proposed legislation by House Democrats such as the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, and was criticized by Nancy Pelosi for withholding votes on measures passed by the Democratic-controlled House during his time as Senate Majority Leader, including the For the People Act of 2019, the Equality Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. McConnell has supported stronger border security, free trade agreements and reductions in taxes. As Senate Majority Leader, he led the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act in 2018. His foreign policy views have included support of sanctions on Cuba, Iran and Russia, opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and support of Israel. He voted for the Iraq Resolution, which authorized military action against Iraq, and supported the Iraq War troop surge of 2007 in public.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Earlier in his political career, during the 1960s and 1970s, McConnell held moderate stances, including support of abortions, support of unions, and support of the civil rights movement.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1984, McConnell ran for the U.S. Senate against two-term Democratic incumbent Walter Dee Huddleston. The election race was not decided until the last returns came in, when McConnell won by 3,437 votes out of more than 1.2 million votes cast, just over 0.4%. McConnell was the only Republican Senate challenger to win that year, despite Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in the presidential election.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell's campaign was noted for a series of television campaign spots called "Where's Dee", which featured a group of bloodhounds trying to find Huddleston, implying that Huddleston's attendance record in the Senate was poor. He was the first Republican to win a statewide election in Kentucky since 1968, and benefited from the popularity of President Ronald Reagan, up for re-election, who was supported by 60% of Kentucky voters in the same year.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1996, he defeated Steve Beshear by 12.6%, even as Bill Clinton narrowly carried the state. McConnell's campaign ran television ads warning voters to not "Get BeSheared" and included images of sheep being sheared.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2014, McConnell faced Louisville businessman Matt Bevin in the Republican primary. The 60.2% won by McConnell was the lowest voter support for a Kentucky U.S. senator in a primary since 1938. He faced Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in the general election, and defeated Grimes, 56.2–40.7%.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In the November 2020 general election, McConnell faced Democratic nominee Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot; and Libertarian nominee Brad Barron, a businessman and farmer. During the campaign, McConnell and McGrath agreed to one hour-long, socially distanced debate on October 12. McConnell was elected to his seventh term on November3 when he defeated McGrath.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell is a Southern Baptist, baptized at age 8. He was married to his first wife, Sherrill Redmon, from 1968 to 1980 and had three daughters, Porter, Eleanor (Elly), and Claire. Following her divorce from McConnell, Sherrill became a feminist scholar at Smith College and director of the Sophia Smith Collection. His second wife, whom he married in 1993, is Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush and Secretary of Transportation under President Donald Trump.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 1997, he founded the James Madison Center for Free Speech, a Washington, D.C.-based legal defense organization.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In February 2003, McConnell underwent a triple heart bypass surgery in relation to blocked arteries at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In 2018, the OpenSecrets website ranked McConnell one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. Senate, with a net worth of more than $25 million. His personal wealth was increased after receiving a 2008 personal gift to him and his wife, given by his father-in-law James S. C. Chao after the death of McConnell's mother-in-law, whose value has been estimated to be $5–25million.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: In May 2019, McConnell's brother-in-law Gordon Hartogensis, who is married to Chao's sister Grace, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a part of the Labor Department. McConnell voted to confirm.


title: Mitch McConnell

text: McConnell's detractors have called him by a number of nicknames, including "Moscow Mitch", "Cocaine Mitch", the "Grim Reaper", "Darth Vader", "Rich Mitch", "Nuclear Mitch", "Midnight Mitch", and "Old Crow". McConnell is known to embrace several of them; however, he objected strenuously to the nickname "Moscow Mitch".


title: Mitch McConnell

text: Host Jon Stewart repeatedly mocked McConnell on "The Daily Show" for his resemblance to a turtle or tortoise. McConnell has been portrayed by Beck Bennett in various sketches on "Saturday Night Live". In 2017, McConnell was portrayed satirically on an episode of "South Park".


title: Mitch McConnell

text: During the 2014 campaign season, McConnell was lampooned for posting campaign B-roll footage online for use by allied PACs. Various Internet posters satirically interspersed the B-roll with footage from sitcoms and movies, and popular music. The practiceeither of posting B-roll footage online for usage by PACs, or of lampooning the B-rollwas termed "McConnelling".


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in London in 1968. They are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock music, but their musical style has changed over the course of its existence. Originally formed as a psychedelic and progressive rock band, they shifted to a heavier sound with their 1970 album "Deep Purple in Rock". Deep Purple, together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, have been referred to as the "unholy trinity of British hard rock and heavy metal in the early to mid-seventies". They were listed in the 1975 "Guinness Book of World Records" as "the globe's loudest band" for a 1972 concert at London's Rainbow Theatre and have sold over 100 million records worldwide.


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple have had several line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus (1976–1984). The first four line-ups, which constituted the band's original 1968–1976 run, are officially indicated as Mark I (1968–1969), Mark II (1969–1973), Mark III (1973–1975) and Mark IV (1975–1976). Mark II was the most commercially successful line-up, with Ian Gillan (vocals) and Roger Glover (bass) joining Jon Lord (keyboards), Ian Paice (drums) and Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), the latter three having been members of Mark I with Rod Evans (vocals) and Nick Simper (bass). Mark III saw David Coverdale (vocals) and Glenn Hughes (bass and vocals) replace Gillan and Glover, while Mark IV featured Tommy Bolin (guitar) replacing Blackmore. Mark II was revived from 1984–1989 and again from 1992–1993, with Joe Lynn Turner (vocals) replacing Gillan in the intervening 1989–1992 period. Mark II definitively ended in 1993, when Blackmore left Deep Purple for the second and final time. He was replaced temporarily by Joe Satriani (guitar) and then permanently by Steve Morse (guitar). In 2002 Don Airey (keyboards) replaced Lord, which saw Deep Purple settle into it's longest running line-up, unchanged for the next twenty years, until Morse announced his departure from the band in 2022. His place was taken by Simon McBride (guitar). Ian Paice, Roger Glover, Ian Gillan, Don Airey and Simon McBride comprise the current line-up of Deep Purple.


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple were ranked number 22 on VH1's "Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" programme, and a poll on radio station Planet Rock ranked them 5th among the "most influential bands ever". The band received the Legend Award at the 2008 World Music Awards. Deep Purple (specifically Blackmore, Lord, Paice, Gillan, Glover, Coverdale, Evans, and Hughes) were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: Deep Purple

text: In 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards, in the hope he would manage a new group he was putting together, to be called Roundabout. Curtis' vision was a "supergroup" where the band members would get on and off, like a musical roundabout. Impressed with the plan, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with his two business partners John Coletta and Ron Hire, who comprised Hire-Edwards-Coletta Enterprises (HEC).


title: Deep Purple

text: The first recruit to the band was classically trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, Curtis's flatmate, who had most notably played with the Artwoods (led by Art Wood, brother of future Faces and Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, and including Keef Hartley). Lord was then performing in a backing band for the vocal group The Flower Pot Men (formerly known as the Ivy League), along with bassist Nick Simper and drummer Carlo Little. (Simper had previously been in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and survived the 1966 car crash that killed Kidd.) Lord alerted the two that he had been recruited for the Roundabout project, after which Simper and Little suggested guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, whom Lord had never met. Simper had known Blackmore since the early 1960s when his first band, the Renegades, debuted around the same time as one of Blackmore's early bands, the Dominators.


title: Deep Purple

text: HEC persuaded Blackmore to travel in from Hamburg to audition for the new group. He was making a name for himself as a studio session guitarist, and had also been a member of the Outlaws, Screaming Lord Sutch, and Neil Christian, the latter artist prompting Blackmore's move to Germany. Curtis's erratic behaviour and lifestyle, fuelled by his use of LSD, caused him to display a sudden lack of interest in the project he had started, forcing HEC to dismiss him from Roundabout. However, HEC was now intrigued with the possibilities Lord and Blackmore brought and persuaded Ritchie to return from Hamburg a second time. Lord and Blackmore began the recruitment of additional members, retaining Tony Edwards as their manager. Lord convinced Nick Simper to join on bass, but Blackmore insisted they leave Carlo Little behind in favour of drummer Bobby Woodman. Woodman was the former drummer for Vince Taylor's Play-Boys (for whom he had played under the name Bobbie Clarke). The band, still calling themselves Roundabout, started rehearsing and writing in Cadogan Gardens in South Kensington.


title: Deep Purple

text: In March 1968, Lord, Blackmore, Simper and Woodman moved into Deeves Hall, a country house in South Mimms, Hertfordshire. The band would live, write and rehearse at the house; it was fully kitted out with the latest Marshall amplification and, at Lord's request, a Hammond C3 organ. According to Simper, "dozens" of singers were auditioned (including Rod Stewart and Woodman's friend Dave Curtiss) until the group heard Rod Evans of club band the Maze, and thought his voice fitted their style well. Tagging along with Evans was his band's drummer Ian Paice. Blackmore had seen an 18-year-old Paice on tour with the Maze in Germany in 1966, and had been impressed by his drumming. The band hastily arranged an audition for Paice, given that Woodman was vocally unhappy with the direction of the band's music. Both Paice and Evans won their respective jobs, and the line-up was complete.


title: Deep Purple

text: During a brief tour of Denmark and Sweden in April, in which they were still billed as Roundabout, Blackmore suggested a new name: "Deep Purple", named after his grandmother's favourite song. The group had resolved to choose a name after everyone had posted one on a board in rehearsal. Second to Deep Purple was "Concrete God", which the band thought was too harsh to take on.


title: Deep Purple

text: In May 1968, the band moved into Pye Studios in London's Marble Arch to record their debut album, "Shades of Deep Purple", which was released in July by American label Tetragrammaton, and in September by UK label EMI. Deep Purple's early sound was a blend of psychedelic and hard rock, with Lord often bringing a classical influence to the song structures. Vanilla Fudge was a notable influence on the band, Lord and Blackmore even claiming that, when the group started, they wanted to be a "Vanilla Fudge clone". The group had success in North America with a cover of Joe South's "Hush", and by September 1968, the song had reached number 4 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the US and number 2 in the Canadian "RPM" chart, pushing the "Shades" LP up to No. 24 on "Billboard"s pop albums chart. The following month, Deep Purple were booked to support Cream on the US leg of their "Goodbye" tour.


title: Deep Purple

text: The band's second album, "The Book of Taliesyn", was quickly recorded, then released in North America in October 1968 to coincide with the tour. The album included a cover of Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman", which cracked the Top 40 in both the US (No. 38 on the "Billboard" chart) and Canada (No. 21 on the "RPM" chart), though sales for the album were not as strong (No. 54 in US, No. 48 in Canada). "The Book of Taliesyn" would not be released in the band's home country until the following year and, like its predecessor, it failed to have much impact in the UK Albums Chart.


title: Deep Purple

text: Early in 1969, the band released the non-album single "Emmaretta", named after Emmaretta Marks, then a cast member of the musical "Hair", whom Evans was trying to seduce. By March of that year, the band had completed recording for their third album, "Deep Purple". The album included the track "April", which featured strings and woodwind, showcasing Lord's classical antecedents such as Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov. This would be the last recording by Deep Purple Mark I.


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple's North American record label, Tetragrammaton, delayed production of the "Deep Purple" album until after the band's 1969 American tour ended. This, as well as lackluster promotion by the nearly broke label, caused the album to sell poorly, finishing well out of the "Billboard" Top 100. Soon after "Deep Purple" was finally released in late June 1969, Tetragrammaton went out of business, leaving the band with no money and an uncertain future (Tetragrammaton's assets were eventually assumed by Warner Bros. Records, who would release Deep Purple's records in the US throughout the 1970s).


title: Deep Purple

text: During the 1969 American tour, Lord and Blackmore met with Paice to discuss their desire to progress the heavy rock side of the band further. Having decided that Evans and Simper would not fit well with the style they envisioned, both were replaced that summer. Paice stated, "A change had to come. If they hadn't left, the band would have totally disintegrated." Both Simper and Blackmore noted that Rod Evans already had one foot out of the door. Simper said that Evans had met a girl in Hollywood and had eyes on being an actor, while Blackmore explained, "Rod just wanted to go to America and live in America." Evans would go on to co-form the hard rock/progressive rock band Captain Beyond in 1971.


title: Deep Purple

text: In search of a replacement vocalist, Blackmore set his own sights on 19-year-old singer Terry Reid. Though he found the offer "flattering", Reid was still bound by an exclusive recording contract with his producer Mickie Most and more interested in his solo career. Blackmore had no other choice but to look elsewhere. The band sought out singer Ian Gillan from Episode Six, a band that had released several singles in the UK without achieving any great commercial success. Six's drummer Mick Underwood – an old comrade of Blackmore's from his days in the Outlaws – introduced the band to Gillan and bassist Roger Glover. According to Nick Simper, "Gillan would join only with Roger Glover." This effectively killed Episode Six, which gave Underwood a persistent feeling of guilt that lasted nearly a decade, until Gillan recruited him for his new post-Purple band in the late 1970s. According to Blackmore, Deep Purple was only interested in Gillan and not Glover, but Roger was retained on the advice of Ian Paice.


title: Deep Purple

text: This created Deep Purple Mark II, whose first release was a Roger Greenaway-Roger Cook tune titled "Hallelujah". At the time of its recording, Nick Simper still thought he was in the band and had called John Coletta to inquire about the recording dates for the song. He then found that the song had already been recorded with Glover on bass. The remaining original members of Deep Purple then instructed management to inform Simper that he had been officially replaced. Despite television appearances to promote the "Hallelujah" single in the UK, the song flopped. Blackmore had told the British weekly music newspaper "Record Mirror" that the band "need to have a commercial record in Britain", and described the song as "an in-between sort of thing"—a compromise between the type of material the band would normally record, and openly commercial material.


title: Deep Purple

text: The band gained some much-needed publicity in September 1969 with the "Concerto for Group and Orchestra", a three-movement epic composed by Lord as a solo project and performed by the band at the Royal Albert Hall in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Alongside "Days of Future Passed" by the Moody Blues and "Five Bridges" by the Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra. This live album became their first release with any kind of chart success in the UK. Gillan and Blackmore were less than happy at the band being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras", both feeling that the "Concerto" was a distraction that would get in the way of developing their desired hard-rocking style. Lord acknowledged that while the band members were not keen on the project going in, at the end of the performance "you could have put the five smiles together and spanned the Thames." Lord would also write the "Gemini Suite", another orchestra/group collaboration in the same vein, for the band in late 1970, although the band's recording of the piece wouldn't be released until 1993. In 1975, Blackmore stated that he thought the "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" wasn't bad but the "Gemini Suite" was horrible and very disjointed. Roger Glover later claimed Jon Lord had appeared to be the leader of the band in the early years.


title: Deep Purple

text: Shortly after the orchestral release, Mark II began a hectic touring and recording schedule that was to see little respite for the next four years. The second album, and first studio album, of the Mark II era, released in 1970, was "In Rock" (a name supported by the album's Mount Rushmore-inspired cover), which contained the then-concert staples "Speed King", "Into The Fire" and "Child in Time". The non-album single "Black Night", released around the same time, finally put Deep Purple into the UK Top Ten. The interplay between Blackmore's guitar and Lord's distorted organ, coupled with Gillan's powerful, wide-ranging vocals and the rhythm section of Glover and Paice, now started to take on a unique identity that separated the band from its earlier albums. Along with Zeppelin's "Led Zeppelin II" and Sabbath's "Paranoid", "In Rock" codified the budding heavy metal genre.


title: Deep Purple

text: On the album's development, Blackmore stated: "I got fed up with playing with classical orchestras, and thought, 'well, this is my turn.' Jon was into more classical. I said, 'well you've done that, I'll do rock, and whatever turns out best we'll carry on with.'" "In Rock" performed well, especially in the UK where it reached No. 4, while the "Black Night" single reached No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart, and the band performed the song live on the BBC's "Top of the Pops". In addition to increasing sales in the UK, the band were making a name for themselves as a live act, particularly with regard to the sheer volume of their shows and the improvisational skills of Blackmore and Lord. Said Lord, "We took from jazz, we took from old fashioned rock and roll, we took from the classics. Ritchie and myself...used to swap musical jokes and attacks. He would play something, and I'd have to see if I could match it. That provided a sense of humour, a sense of tension to the band, a sense of, 'what the hell's going to happen next?' The audience didn't know, and nine times out of ten, neither did we!"


title: Deep Purple

text: A second Mark II studio album, the creatively progressive "Fireball", was issued in the summer of 1971, reaching number 1 on the UK Albums Chart. The title track "Fireball" was released as a single, as was "Strange Kind of Woman", not from the album but recorded during the same sessions (although it replaced "Demon's Eye" on the US version of the album). "Strange Kind of Woman" became their second UK Top 10 single, reaching No. 8.


title: Deep Purple

text: Within weeks of "Fireball"s release, the band were already performing songs planned for the next album. One song (which later became "Highway Star") was performed at the first show of the "Fireball" tour, having been written on the bus to a show in Portsmouth, in answer to a journalist's question: "How do you go about writing songs?" On 24 October 1971 during the US leg of the Fireball tour, the band was set to play the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago when Ian Gillan contracted hepatitis, forcing the band to play without him, with bassist Glover singing the set. After this, the rest of the US dates were canceled and the band flew home.


title: Deep Purple

text: In early December 1971, the band travelled to Switzerland to record "Machine Head". The album was due to be recorded at the Montreux Casino using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but a fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention concert, caused by a man firing a flare gun into the ceiling, burned down the Casino. This incident famously inspired the song "Smoke on the Water". The album was later recorded in a corridor at the nearby empty Grand Hôtel de Territet, with the exception of the music track to "Smoke on the Water". That was recorded at a vacant theatre called The Pavillon before the band was asked to leave. On recording "Smoke on the Water", Blackmore stated to BBC Radio 2: “We did the whole thing in about four takes because we had to. The police were banging on the door. We knew it was the police, but we had such a good sound in this hall. We were waking up all the neighbours for about five miles in Montreux, because it was echo-ing through the mountains. I was just getting the last part of the riff down, we'd just finished it, when the police burst in and said 'you've got to stop'. We had the track down."


title: Deep Purple

text: Continuing to progress the musical direction of the previous two albums, "Machine Head" was released in late March 1972 and became one of the band's most famous releases. It was the band's second No. 1 album in the UK while re-establishing them in North America, hitting No. 7 in the US and No. 1 in Canada. It included tracks that became live classics, such as "Highway Star", "Space Truckin'", "Lazy" and "Smoke on the Water", the last of which remains Deep Purple's most famous song. They continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on; when "Machine Head" was recorded, the group had only been together three-and-a-half years, yet it was their sixth studio album and seventh album overall.


title: Deep Purple

text: In January 1972 the band returned to tour the US once again, then headed over to play Europe before resuming US dates in March. While in America Blackmore contracted hepatitis, and the band attempted one show in Flint, Michigan, without a guitarist before attempting to acquire the services of Al Kooper, who rehearsed with the band before bowing out, suggesting Spirit guitarist Randy California instead. California played one show with the group, in Quebec City, Quebec on 6 April, but the rest of this tour was cancelled as well.


title: Deep Purple

text: The band returned to the US in late May 1972 to undertake their third North America tour (of four total that year). A Japan tour in August of that year led to a double live album, "Made in Japan". Originally intended as a Japan-only release, its worldwide release became an instant hit, reaching platinum status in five countries, including the US. It remains one of rock music's most popular and highest selling live albums.


title: Deep Purple

text: Mark II continued to work and released the album "Who Do We Think We Are" in 1973. Spawning the hit single "Woman from Tokyo", the album hit No. 4 in the UK charts and No. 15 in the US chart, while achieving gold record status faster than any Deep Purple album released up to that time. But internal tensions and exhaustion were more noticeable than ever. Following the successes of "Machine Head" and "Made in Japan", the addition of "Who Do We Think We Are" made Deep Purple the top-selling artists of 1973 in the US.


title: Deep Purple

text: Gillan admitted in a 1984 interview that the band was pushed by management to complete the "Who Do We Think We Are" album on time and go on tour, although they badly needed a break. The bad feelings, including tensions with Blackmore, culminated in Gillan quitting the band after their second tour of Japan in the summer of 1973, followed by the dismissal of Glover, at Blackmore's insistence. In interviews later, Lord called the end of Mark II while the band was at its peak "the biggest shame in rock and roll; God knows what we would have done over the next three or four years. We were writing so well."


title: Deep Purple

text: The band hired Midlands bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. According to Paice, Glover told him and Lord a few months before his official termination that he wanted to leave the band, so they had started to drop in on Trapeze shows. After acquiring Hughes, they debated continuing as a four-piece, with Hughes as bassist and lead vocalist. According to Hughes, he was told the band was bringing in Paul Rodgers of Free as a co-lead vocalist, but by that time Rodgers had just started Bad Company. "They did ask", Rodgers recalled, "and I spoke to all of them at length about the possibility. Purple had toured Australia with Free's final lineup. I didn't do it because I was very much into the idea of forming Bad Company." Instead, auditions were held for lead vocal replacements. They settled on David Coverdale, an unknown singer from Saltburn in north-east England, primarily because Blackmore liked his masculine, blues-tinged voice.


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple Mark III's first album, "Burn", released in February 1974, was highly successful, reaching No. 3 in the UK and No. 9 in the US, and was followed by another world tour. The title track, which opens the album and would open most concerts during the Mark III and IV eras, was a conscious effort by the band to embrace the progressive rock movement, which was popularised at the time by bands such as Yes, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis and Gentle Giant.


title: Deep Purple

text: Mark III embarked on a spring tour that included shows at Madison Square Garden, New York, on 13 March, and Nassau Coliseum four days later. The band co-headlined (with Emerson, Lake & Palmer) the California Jam festival at Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, southern California, on 6 April 1974. Attracting over 250,000 fans, the festival also included 1970s rock giants Black Sabbath, Eagles and Earth, Wind & Fire. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC Television in the US, exposing the band to a wider audience. During the show, Blackmore broke one of ABC's cameras with his guitar, after having told the cameraman several times between songs that he was getting too close, which ruined his concentration on his playing. Blackmore also, accidently, blew up the stage, when his intention to set fire to his amplifiers, for visual effect, didn't go according to plan, although he was still pleased with the result. A month later, the band's 22 May performance at the Gaumont State Cinema in Kilburn, London, was recorded and later released in 1982 as "Live in London".


title: Deep Purple

text: Hughes and Coverdale brought vocal harmonies and elements of funk and blues, respectively, to the band's music, a sound that was even more apparent on the late 1974 release "Stormbringer". Along with the title track, the "Stormbringer" album had a number of songs that received much radio play, such as "Lady Double Dealer", "The Gypsy" and "Soldier of Fortune", and the album reached No. 6 in the UK and No. 20 on the US "Billboard" chart. However, Blackmore publicly disliked most of the album, particularly it's funk and soul elements, derisively calling it "shoeshine music". A new live album, "Made in Europe", culled from three shows on the "Stormbringer" tour, was assembled during the summer of 1975, but wouldn't see release until late 1976. Blackmore left the band on 21 June 1975 to form his own band with Ronnie James Dio of Elf, called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, shortened to Rainbow after the first album.


title: Deep Purple

text: Following Blackmore's departure, the group considered disbanding but decided to continue and find another guitarist. Clem Clempson (Colosseum, Humble Pie), Zal Cleminson (The Sensational Alex Harvey Band), Mick Ronson (The Spiders From Mars) and Rory Gallagher were considered, and the final choice was American Tommy Bolin. There are at least two versions of the Bolin recruitment story: Coverdale claims to have been the one who suggested auditioning Bolin. "He walked in, thin as a rake, his hair coloured green, yellow and blue with feathers in it. Slinking along beside him was this stunning Hawaiian girl in a crochet dress with nothing on underneath. He plugged into four Marshall 100-watt stacks and...the job was his." But in an interview published by "Melody Maker" in June 1975, Bolin claimed that he came to the audition following a recommendation from Blackmore. Bolin had been a member of many late-1960s bands – Denny & The Triumphs, American Standard, and Zephyr, which released three albums from 1969 to 1972. Before he joined Deep Purple, Bolin's best-known recordings had been made as a session musician on Billy Cobham's 1973 jazz fusion album "Spectrum", and as lead guitarist on two post-Joe Walsh James Gang albums: "Bang" (1973) and "Miami" (1974). He had also played with Dr. John, Albert King, the Good Rats, Moxy and Alphonse Mouzon, and was busy working on his first solo album, "Teaser", when he accepted the invitation to join Deep Purple.


title: Deep Purple

text: The resulting album from Deep Purple Mark IV, "Come Taste the Band", was released in October 1975, one month before Bolin's "Teaser" album. Despite mixed reviews and middling sales (#19 in the UK and #43 in the US), the collection revitalised the band once again, bringing a new, extreme funk edge to their hard rock sound. Bolin's influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Hughes and Coverdale, the guitarist developed much of the album's material. Despite Bolin's talents, his personal problems with hard drugs began to surface. During the "Come Taste the Band" tour many fans openly booed Bolin's inability to play solos like Ritchie Blackmore, not realising that Bolin was physically hampered by his addiction. At this same time, as he admitted in interviews years later, Hughes was suffering from cocaine addiction.


title: Deep Purple

text: The last show on the tour was on 15 March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. The break-up was finally made public in July 1976, with then-manager Rob Cooksey issuing a statement: "the band will not record or perform together as Deep Purple again". Bolin went on to record his second solo album, "Private Eyes". On 4 December 1976, after a show in Miami supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend and bandmates. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death was multiple-drug intoxication. Bolin was 25 years old.


title: Deep Purple

text: After the break-up, most of the members of Deep Purple went on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow (1975–1984, Ritchie Blackmore and, from 1979, Roger Glover), Whitesnake (1978–present, David Coverdale, Jon Lord until 1984 and Ian Paice from 1980–1982) and Gillan (1978–1982, Ian Gillan). Ian Gillan also joined Black Sabbath from the end of 1982 to the beginning of 1984 (Glenn Hughes would also join Sabbath for a short time later in the 1980s). The now-defunct Deep Purple began to gain a type of mystical status, with fan-driven reissues and newly assembled live and compilation albums being released throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. This fueled a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1980, a touring version of the band surfaced with Rod Evans (who had left Captain Beyond at the end of 1973) as the only member who had ever been in Deep Purple, eventually ending in successful legal action from the legitimate Deep Purple camp over unauthorised use of the name. Evans was ordered to pay damages of US$672,000 for using the band name without permission.


title: Deep Purple

text: In April 1984, eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, a full-scale (and legal) reunion took place with the "classic" Mark II line-up of 1969–1973: Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. The reformed band signed a worldwide deal with PolyGram, with Mercury Records releasing their albums in the US, and Polydor Records in the UK and other countries. The album "Perfect Strangers" was recorded in Vermont and released in October 1984. The album was commercially successful, reaching number 5 in the UK Albums Chart and number 12 on the "Billboard" 200 in the US. The album included the singles and concert staples "Knockin' At Your Back Door" and "Perfect Strangers". "Perfect Strangers" became the second Deep Purple album to go platinum in the US, following "Machine Head" ("Made in Japan" would also finally hit platinum status in the US in 1986, the same year "Machine Head" increased to double platinum).


title: Deep Purple

text: The reunion tour followed, starting in Australia and winding its way across the world to North America, then into Europe by the following summer. Financially, the tour was also a tremendous success. In the US, the 1985 tour out-grossed every other artist except Bruce Springsteen. The UK homecoming saw the band perform a concert at Knebworth on 22 June 1985 (with main support from the Scorpions; also on the bill were UFO and Meat Loaf), where the weather was bad (torrential rain and of mud) in front of 80,000 fans. The gig was called the "Return of the Knebworth Fayre".


title: Deep Purple

text: Mark II followed "Perfect Strangers" with "The House of Blue Light" in 1987, which was supported by another world tour (interrupted after Blackmore broke a finger on stage while trying to catch his guitar after throwing it in the air). A new live album "Nobody's Perfect", which was culled from several shows on this tour, was released in 1988. In the UK a new Mark II version of "Hush" was also released in 1988 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Deep Purple.


title: Deep Purple

text: Gillan was fired in 1989; his relations with Blackmore had again soured, and their musical differences had diverged too far. Originally, the band intended to recruit Survivor frontman Jimi Jamison as Gillan's replacement. However, after two weeks of sessions with the band, Jamison announced he could not join Deep Purple owing to complications with Scotti Brothers Records, his record label. Eventually, after auditioning several high-profile candidates, including Brian Howe (White Spirit, Ted Nugent, Bad Company), Doug Pinnick (King's X), Australians Jimmy Barnes (Cold Chisel) and John Farnham (Little River Band), Terry Brock (Strangeways, Giant) and Norman "Kal" Swan (Tytan, Lion, Bad Moon Rising),the band agreed on Joe Lynn Turner, who had previously been a member of Rainbow with Blackmore and Glover. This Mark V line-up recorded just one album, "Slaves and Masters" (1990), and undertook a world tour for most of 1991. The album achieved modest success, reaching number 45 in the UK and number 87 in the US "Billboard" chart,with some fans and critics feeling the music was closer in style to Rainbow than to Deep Purple.


title: Deep Purple

text: With the tour complete, the band set to work on another album, the early sessions of which saw Turner being forced out. 1993 would be Deep Purple's twenty-fifth anniversary year, with Lord, Paice and Glover (and the record company) wanting Gillan back for another Mark II reunion to celebrate this milestone. Although Blackmore prefered Turner to remain in the group, he eventually, grudgingly, relented, after requesting and eventually receiving 250,000 dollars in his bank account and Mark II completed the aptly-titled "The Battle Rages On..." in 1993. Despite going ahead with another reunion, Blackmore still publicly disagreed with the decision, which led to a new level of, very public, tension between himself and the rest of the band, particularly Gillan. Of particular contention was that Gillan reworked much of the existing material which had been written with Turner for the new album. Blackmore felt Gillan's rewrites made the songs less melodic than they had been in their original versions. The band began a European tour, which was documented on the live album "Come Hell or High Water", released in 1994. A live home video of the same name was also released, covering a show in Birmingham, England, with an album of the complete show being released in 2006 as "Live at the NEC", but this latter release was quicky withdrawn after Gillan publicly complained, feeling it represented a bad time in the groups history: "It was one of the lowest points of my life – all of our lives, actually". Ritchie Blackmore left Deep Purple for the second and final time, after a show in Helsinki, Finland on 17 November 1993. Joe Satriani was drafted to complete the Japanese dates in December and stayed on for a European summer tour in 1994. He was asked to join permanently, but his commitments to his contract with Epic Records prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs/Kansas guitarist Steve Morse to become Satriani's successor on August 23, 1994.


title: Deep Purple

text: Morse's arrival revitalised the band creatively, and in 1996 a new album titled "Purpendicular" was released, showing a wide variety of musical styles. Though in the post-grunge mid '90s it was no surprise that it never made chart success on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.. This Mark VII line-up then released a new live album "Live at The Olympia '96" in 1997. With a revamped set list to tour, Deep Purple enjoyed successful tours throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the harder-sounding "Abandon" in 1998, and touring with renewed enthusiasm.


title: Deep Purple

text: In 1999, Lord, with the help of a Dutch fan, who was also a musicologist and composer, Marco de Goeij, painstakingly recreated the "Concerto for Group and Orchestra", the original score having been lost. It was once again performed at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1999, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann. The concert also included songs from each member's solo careers, as well as a short Deep Purple set, and the occasion was commemorated on the 2000 album "In Concert with The London Symphony Orchestra". 2001 saw the release of the box set "The Soundboard Series", containing concerts from the 2001 Australian Tour plus two from Tokyo, Japan. Much of the next few years was spent on the road touring. The group continued forward until 2002 when founding member Lord (who, along with Paice, was the only member to be in all incarnations of the band) announced his amicable retirement from the band to pursue personal projects (especially orchestral work). Lord left his Hammond organ to his replacement, rock keyboard veteran Don Airey, who had helped Deep Purple out when Lord's knee was injured in 2001. Airey had previously worked with Glover as a member of Rainbow from 1979-1982.


title: Deep Purple

text: In 2003, the new Mark VIII line-up released "Bananas", their first studio album in five years, and began touring in support. EMI Records refused a contract extension with Deep Purple, possibly because of lower than expected sales. Actually "In Concert with The London Symphony Orchestra" sold more than "Bananas".


title: Deep Purple

text: The band played at the Live 8 concert in Park Place (Barrie, Ontario) in July 2005, and in October released their next album, "Rapture of the Deep", which was followed by the Rapture of the Deep tour. Both "Bananas" and "Rapture of the Deep" were produced by Michael Bradford. In 2009 Ian Gillan said, "Record sales have been steadily declining, but people are prepared to pay a lot for concert tickets." In addition, Gillan stated: "I don't think happiness comes with money."


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple did concert tours in 48 countries in 2011. The Songs That Built Rock Tour used a 38-piece orchestra, and included a performance at the O Arena in London. Until May 2011, the band members had disagreed about whether to make a new studio album, because it would not really make money any more. Roger Glover stated that Deep Purple should make a new studio album "even if it costs us money." In early 2011, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes told VH1 they would like to reunite Mark III for the right opportunity, such as a benefit concert. The current band's chief sound engineer on nine years of tours, Moray McMillin, died in September 2011, aged 57. After a lot of songwriting sessions in Europe, Deep Purple decided to record through the summer of 2012, and the band announced they would release their new studio album in 2013. Steve Morse announced to French magazine "Rock Hard" that the new studio album would be produced by Bob Ezrin.


title: Deep Purple

text: On 16 July 2012 the band's co-founding member and former organ player, Jon Lord, died in London, aged 71. In December 2012 Roger Glover stated that the band had completed work on 14 songs for a new studio album, with 11 or 12 tracks set to appear on the final album to be released in 2013. On 26 February 2013 the title of the band's nineteenth studio album was announced as "Now What?!", which was recorded and mixed in Nashville, Tennessee, and released on 26 April 2013. The album contains the track “Vincent Price”, named after the horror actor who had worked with both Gillan and Glover earlier in their careers. The band's performance at Waken Open Air later 2013, and in Tokyo in 2014, were released in 2015 as the live albums and DVDs "From the Setting Sun..." and "...to the Rising Sun".


title: Deep Purple

text: On 25 November 2016, Deep Purple announced "Infinite" as the title of their twentieth studio album, which was released on 7 April 2017. In support for the album, Deep Purple embarked on 13 May 2017 in Bucharest, Romania on The Long Goodbye Tour. At the time of the tour's announcement in December 2016, Paice told the Heavyworlds website it "may be the last big tour", adding that the band "don't know". He described the tour as being long in duration and said: "We haven't made any hard, fast plans, but it becomes obvious that you cannot tour the same way you did when you were 21. It becomes more and more difficult. People have other things in their lives, which take time. But never say never." On 3 February 2017, Deep Purple released a video version of "Time for Bedlam", the first track taken from the new album and the first new Deep Purple track for almost four years.


title: Deep Purple

text: On 29 February 2020, a new track, "Throw My Bones" was released online, with a new album "Whoosh!" planned for release in June. The release of the full-length album would later be postponed to 7 August 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A review in "NME" said the album sounded nothing like contemporary music of 2020, but suggested that "maybe that's a good thing". Gillan confirmed in an interview on 4 August 2020 that he and the other members of Deep Purple have no immediate plans to retire.


title: Deep Purple

text: On October 6, 2021, the band had announced the title of their covers album, "Turning to Crime" which was released on 26 November 2021.


title: Deep Purple

text: In March 2022, Morse announced that he had to take a hiatus from the band after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. The band, who had recently returned to live performances, continued touring with Simon McBride, formerly of Sweet Savage, standing in for Morse who at that point officially remained in the band. On 23 July 2022, it was announced that Morse would be leaving permanently in order to focus on caring for his wife as she battles cancer. Later that September, McBride was made an official member of the band.


title: Deep Purple

text: In June 2022, Gillan announced that the band plans to work on their twenty-third studio album after the conclusion of the "Whoosh!" tour: "Deep Purple has got a writing session booked in March 2023, which I believe is to get started on thinking about our next record."


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple are cited as one of the pioneers of hard rock and heavy metal, along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The BBC states they “made up the ‘unholy trinity’ of British hard rock and heavy metal during the genre's 1970s golden age.” The group have influenced a number of rock and metal bands including Metallica, Judas Priest, Queen, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Alice in Chains, Pantera, Bon Jovi, Europe, Rush, Motörhead, and many new wave of British heavy metal bands such as Iron Maiden, and Def Leppard. Iron Maiden's bassist and primary songwriter, Steve Harris, states that his band's "heaviness" was inspired by "Black Sabbath and Deep Purple with a bit of Zeppelin thrown in." Van Halen founder Eddie Van Halen named “Burn” one of his favourite ever guitar riffs. Queen guitarist Brian May referred to Ritchie Blackmore as "a trail blazer and technically incredible — unpredictable in every possible way...you never knew what you were gonna see when you went to see Purple". Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich states, "When I was nine years old it was all about Deep Purple. My all time favourite [album] is still "Made in Japan"". The band's 1974 album "Stormbringer" was the first record owned by Till Lindemann, vocalist of German Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein.


title: Deep Purple

text: While firmly placed in the hard rock and heavy metal categories, Deep Purple's music frequently incorporated elements of progressive rock and blues rock, prompting Canadian journalist Martin Popoff to once call the band "a reference point of a genre in metal without categorisation."


title: Deep Purple

text: In 2000, Deep Purple were ranked number 22 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" programme. At the 2008 World Music Awards, the band received the Legend Award. In 2011, they received the Innovator Award at the 2011 "Classic Rock" Awards in London. A "Rolling Stone" readers' poll in 2012 ranked "Made in Japan" the sixth best live album of all time. As part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of "Machine Head" (1972), "" was released in 2012. This tribute album included Iron Maiden, Metallica, Steve Vai, Carlos Santana, The Flaming Lips, Black Label Society, Papa Roach vocalist Jacoby Shaddix, Chickenfoot (former Van Halen members Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, guitarist Joe Satriani and Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers) and the supergroup Kings of Chaos (Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott, Steve Stevens, and former Guns N' Roses members Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum).


title: Deep Purple

text: In 2007, Deep Purple were one of the featured artists in the fourth episode of the BBC/VH1 series "Seven Ages of Rock" – an episode focusing on heavy metal. In May 2019 the group received the Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.


title: Deep Purple

text: Before October 2012, Deep Purple had never been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (though they have been eligible since 1993), but were nominated for induction in 2012 and 2013. Despite ranking second in the public's vote on the Rock Hall fans' ballot, which had over half a million votes, they were not inducted by the Rock Hall committee. Kiss bassist Gene Simmons and Rush bassist Geddy Lee commented that Deep Purple should obviously be among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. There have been criticisms in the past over Deep Purple not having been inducted. Toto guitarist Steve Lukather commented, "they put Patti Smith in there but not Deep Purple? What's the first song every kid learns how to play? ["Smoke on the Water"] ... And they're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? ... the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has lost its cool because of the glaring omissions." Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash expressed his surprise and disagreement regarding the non-induction of Deep Purple: "The list of people who haven't even been nominated is mind-boggling ... [the] big one for me is Deep Purple. How could you not induct Deep Purple?". Metallica band members James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Kirk Hammett have also lobbied for the band's induction. In an interview with "Rolling Stone" in April 2014, Ulrich pleaded: "I'm not going to get into the politics or all that stuff, but I got two words to say: 'Deep Purple'. That's all I have to say: Deep Purple. Seriously, people, Deep Purple. Two simple words in the English language ... 'Deep Purple'! Did I say that already?" In 2015, Chris Jericho, professional wrestler and vocalist of rock band Fozzy, stated: "that Deep Purple are not in it [Hall of Fame]. It's bullshit. Obviously there's some politics against them from getting in there."


title: Deep Purple

text: In response to these, a Hall of Fame chief executive said, "The definition of 'rock and roll' means different things to different people, but as broad as the classifications may be, they all share a common love of the music." Roger Glover remained ambivalent about induction and got an inside word from the Hall, "One of the jurors said, 'You know, Deep Purple, they're just one-hit wonders.' How can you deal with that kind of Philistinism, you know?". Ian Gillan also commented, "I've fought all my life against being institutionalised and I think you have to actively search these things out, in other words mingle with the right people, and we don't get invited to those kind of things." On 16 October 2013 Deep Purple were again announced as nominees for inclusion to the Hall, and once again they were not inducted.


title: Deep Purple

text: In April 2015, Deep Purple topped the list in a "Rolling Stone" readers poll of acts that should be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2016. In October 2015, the band were nominated for induction for the third time. In December 2015, the band were announced as 2016 inductees into the Hall of Fame, with the Hall stating: "Deep Purple's non-inclusion in the Hall is a gaping hole which must now be filled", adding that along with fellow inductees Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, the band make up "the Holy Trinity of hard rock and metal bands." The band was officially inducted on 8 April 2016. The Hall of Fame announced that the following members were included as inductees: Ian Paice, Jon Lord, Ritchie Blackmore, Roger Glover, Ian Gillan, Rod Evans, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes. Excluded from induction were Nick Simper, Tommy Bolin, Joe Lynn Turner, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse and Don Airey.


title: Deep Purple

text: Prior to the induction ceremony, Ian Gillan announced that he was barring Hughes, Coverdale, Evans and Blackmore from playing with them onstage, as these members are not in the current "living, breathing" version of the band. Of the seven living inducted members, five showed up. Blackmore didn't attend; a posting on his Facebook page claimed he was honoured by the induction and had considered attending, until he received correspondence from Bruce Payne, manager from the current touring version of Deep Purple saying, "No!" In interviews at the Rock Hall, however, Gillan insisted he personally invited Blackmore to attend. In an interview later on, Gillan mentioned he invited Blackmore to play "Smoke on the Water" at the ceremony, but Blackmore believes he did not receive that invitation. Evans, who had disappeared from the music scene more than three decades prior, also didn't appear. Since Lord had died in 2012, his wife Vickie accepted his award on his behalf. The current members of the band played "Highway Star" for the opening performance. After a brief interlude playing the Booker T. & the M.G.'s song "Green Onions" while photos of the late Jon Lord flashed on the screen behind them, the current Deep Purple members played two more songs: "Hush" and their signature tune "Smoke on the Water". Although barred from playing with Deep Purple, both David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes (as well as Roger Glover) joined fellow inductees Cheap Trick and an all-star cast to perform a cover of the Fats Domino song "Ain't That a Shame".


title: Deep Purple

text: Deep Purple are considered to be one of the hardest touring bands in the world. They have toured the world since 1968 (with the exception of their 1976–1984 split). In 2007, the band received a special award for selling more than 150,000 tickets in France, with 40 dates in the country in 2007 alone. Also in 2007, Deep Purple's Rapture of the Deep tour was voted number 6 concert tour of the year (in all music genres) by Planet Rock listeners. The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang tour was voted number 5 and beat Purple's tour by only 1%. Deep Purple released a new live compilation DVD box, Around the World Live, in May 2008. In February 2008, the band made their first-ever appearance at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia at the personal request of Dmitry Medvedev who at the time was a chairman of the state owned Gazprom company, which sponsored the concert, and who was considered a shoo-in for the seat of the Presidency of Russia. Prior to that, Deep Purple has toured Russia several times starting as early as 1996 but has not been considered to have played such a significant venue previously. The band was part of the entertainment for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 2009 in Liberec, the Czech Republic.


title: John Major

text: Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon, formerly Huntingdonshire, from 1979 to 2001. Prior to becoming prime minister, he served as Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the third Thatcher government.


title: John Major

text: Having left school a day before turning sixteen, Major was elected to Lambeth London Borough Council in 1968, and a decade later to parliament, where he held several junior government positions, including Parliamentary Private Secretary and assistant whip. Following Margaret Thatcher's resignation in 1990, Major stood in the 1990 Conservative Party leadership election to replace her and emerged victorious, becoming prime minister. Two years into his premiership, Major went on to lead the Conservative Party to a fourth consecutive electoral victory, winning more than 14 million votes, which remains the highest number ever won by a political party in Britain.


title: John Major

text: As prime minister, Major created the Citizen's Charter, removed the Poll Tax and replaced it with the Council Tax, committed British troops to the Gulf War, took charge of the UK's negotiations over the Maastricht Treaty, led the country during the early 1990s economic crisis, withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (on Black Wednesday), promoted the socially conservative back to basics campaign, privatised the railways and coal industry, and played a pivotal role in creating peace in Northern Ireland.


title: John Major

text: In 1995, Major resigned as party leader, amid internal divisions over UK membership of the European Union, parliamentary scandals (widely known as "sleaze") and questions over his economic credibility. Despite being reelected as Conservative leader, his administration remained unpopular, and soon lost its parliamentary majority. He suffered a massive defeat in the 1997 election, when the Labour Party ended 18 years of Conservative rule, with the Tories losing 178 seats. Major immediately resigned as party leader and gave up his seat in 2001. He was succeeded as Conservative leader by William Hague.