The junior pole vaulter-turnedvocal acrobat in Deep Purple on the dreams and the screams, rucks with Ritchie Blackmore, ‘being’ Jesus, the farcical Sabbath stint, and… what’s this? Something you might mistake for wisdom? “We were stumbling idiots,” admits Ian Gillan.
IAN GILLAN KEEPS A RECORD PLAYER AT HIS HOME studio in the historic seaside town of Lyme Regis, Dorset. “It’s a top-class turntable,” divulges Deep Purple’s lead vocalist. “I find the act of putting a record on very tactile.”
When the mood strikes, Gillan’s man cave reverberates to the analogue sound of his favourite Elvis Presley and Louis Armstrong LPs. But the deck is also hooked up to a device which can convert Hound Dog and What A Wonderful World into MP3s.
“And there’s a CD player, a mini-disc player, everything,” he adds.
Today, Deep Purple – the group he still fronts – are a similar blend of vintage and modern, having just acquired a new guitarist, Simon McBride, for their 23rd studio set, =1. On Gillan’s watch, Deep Purple Mark II recorded the benchmark ’70s rock albums, Deep Purple In Rock and Machine Head. But there was more to the group and its frontman than brute force. Purple’s love of improvisation meant Gillan’s job often involved “riding the pony, and hanging on for dear life.”
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In the years that followed, mimicking his voice as heard on Highway Star, Black Night and Smoke On The Water became the holy grail for heavy metal vocalists, not least his biggest disciple, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson. Many aspired to Gillan’s paint-stripping scream and many more adopted his hippy caveman image, but few matched the raw power and sensitivity he displayed on Child In Time from Purple’s benchmark live album Made In Japan.
Creative friction between Gillan and Deep Purple’s mercurial guitarist Ritchie Blackmore turned into open warfare during 1973, and the two went their separate ways. Away from Purple, Gillan formed two namesake bands, the second of which scored Top 10 hits and headlined arenas.
Gillan and his nemesis were reconciled when Deep Purple Mark II re-formed in 1983. But the singer’s restless urge to “shake the tree” versus former session ace Blackmore’s desire for hits would see the vocalist leave and rejoin again, before Blackmore quit Purple for good.
For all his singlemindedness and bravado, Gillan is a reluctant bandleader, and seems happiest in Deep Purple, whose multiple Indian Summers have seen them carve out a successful post-Blackmore career since the mid-1990s. =1 follows an unbroken run of four UK Top 30 studio albums recorded with seasoned producer Bob Ezrin.
Twenty years ago, Ian Gillan was asked how many songs he’d written. His PA totted them up and came back with 520. “But I was watching
