1/6/2024 0 Comments Deep purpleWe got thoroughly pissed one night and my manager called me the next morning and said, ‘If you’re going to make career decisions, don’t you think we should talk it through first?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, Apparently you agreed to join Black Sabbath last night.’ I couldn’t remember any of it.” “I was having a drink with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler. But we do pass messages, and the atmosphere is quite good.”īut he’s been perfectly capable of making bizarre decisions on his own, often in the past with the aid of alcohol. “Ritchie has nothing electronic in his house – no computers, no telephones, nothing like that. “We were both arseholes,” Gillan says, adding that the pair communicate these days albeit with difficulty. Certain things have a natural lifetime, and unless they’re refreshed by a change in personnel or circumstances, they become tired, and I don’t want any part of that.” In his various spells with Purple, change has often been wrought by the caprices of their former guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who eventually left the band to become a medieval minstrel. “I’ve seen many musicians who have stayed with a sinking ship when their time has gone. A few years here, then on to something else. Not least because he continues to front Deep Purple, who have just released Whoosh!, their 21st album, to some of the best reviews they have had in ages, from some of the unlikeliest publications: even NME called it “ludicrously flamboyant”.įor much of his career, Gillan didn’t hang around. Which is unfortunate, because almost everyone who knows his work would describe Gillan as a hard-rock singer. The birth of headbanging … Gillan with Deep Purple in 1973. We have to mimic our original interpretation.’” By contrast, Gillan says, he has never once had cause to feel jaded. Sometimes the patterns change or the nuances are different, but it’s the same song.’ And he said, ‘If I did that with any of my famous arias, if I changed one scintilla of expression or interpretation, I would be crucified by the critics, and the fans, because we’re not allowed to do that in opera. “He said, ‘I’ve heard you sing it six times, and every time it’s different. He recalls the plight of Luciano Pavarotti, with whom he sang a couple of times, and who one day expressed his jealousy of Gillan getting to sing Smoke on the Water. He must have heard rock’s most famous riff – if he has averaged even 50 shows a year over the past 48 years – somewhere in the region of 2,500 times. It was even a slightly ill-fitting encore during his brief spell fronting Black Sabbath in the early 80s. After all, he’s had to sing it at pretty much every show he’s played since 1972, whether with Deep Purple, the Ian Gillan Band, or Gillan. Y ou might think Ian Gillan, at 75 years old, would be fed up with singing Smoke on the Water.
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