“There used to be a time when people used to hold up cigarette lighters and candles at concerts, and the place was aglow to celebrate the end of the evening, or during a slow song, there was this congregational euphoria that used to exist. It still does, but now it’s a question of iPhones being held up.”
― Ian Gillan
“It means a lot to a lot of people, ‘Smoke On The Water.’”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve never listened to any of Purple Mk III’s records.”
― Ian Gillan
“The only advice I can give is to absorb as much as you can from as wide a spectrum as you can. If you’re in a rock band and only soak up Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple kind of beginnings, then you’re not going to have much leeway.”
― Ian Gillan
“In Poland, the whole saying is, ‘You’ve got one eye to Morocco and the other to the Caucasus.’ That’s the heart of the culture. In England, they say it less romantic: ‘You’ve got a wandering eye.’ The saying means my main stream in life must be Deep Purple. That’s my main job. Then every now, and I can wander off and have one eye to Morocco.”
― Ian Gillan
“Internet is a good and convenient device for us for easy communication. It has lots of value.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve been in music all my life.”
― Ian Gillan
“We were the first generation of rock & roll, but life goes on.”
― Ian Gillan
“’Smoke On The Water’ was ignored by everybody to begin with. We only did it in the shows because it was a filler track from ‘Machine Head.’ But then, one radio station picked up on it, and Warner Bros. edited it down to about three and a half minutes. It then started getting played by lots of different radio stations.”
― Ian Gillan
“I think there’s something about having a purpose in life and a sense of belonging that is more important than money for any human being.”
― Ian Gillan
“In the early Seventies, I bought a dilapidated hotel in north Stoke for about ã100,000 and spent the same amount again renovating it, putting in a guitar-shaped swimming pool, painting the bathrooms purple, and installing gold dolphin taps.”
― Ian Gillan
“We have been called old rockers, rock pensioners, and dinosaurs.”
― Ian Gillan
“I like walking and hiking, and many of the ideas for songs have germinated from this.”
― Ian Gillan
“I grew up moving from one council flat to another and finished up in a three-bedroom semi-detached on a council estate in Cranford, a suburb of Hounslow. This was in the days when there was still rationing, and we had to be thrifty.”
― Ian Gillan
“I sang ‘Nessun Dorma’ twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he’d heard ‘Smoke’ about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he’d be crucified. We have the freedom.”
― Ian Gillan
“I once wrote a song called ‘No Laughing in Heaven,’ which was about not wanting to go to Heaven due to the company I’d be keeping, and with a few exceptions, the Hall of Fame is pretty much the same thing.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’m completely irresponsible, I’m afraid. I’m ignorant about money as a commodity – I have never really understood it.”
― Ian Gillan
“Things evolve. People mature.”
― Ian Gillan
“When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about ã1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We’ve seen very little of that.”
― Ian Gillan
“I don’t think happiness comes with money, but if you are hungry, you can’t be as happy as if you aren’t hungry.”
― Ian Gillan
“I assume I must have a pension, but I don’t know for sure. I have heard of ISAs, but I can’t tell you if I have any.”
― Ian Gillan
“My father was a storekeeper at a factory in west London.”
― Ian Gillan
“I hate it in America where the protocol seems to be you are expected to tip regardless of the quality of service. I like to tip when it’s not being demanded of me, and if the service has been good, I tip quite generously.”
― Ian Gillan
“We’ve never gone into the studio with prepared material… we never have.”
― Ian Gillan
“When we arrive at the studio, we put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, say, ‘How’s the family? You still got that old car? Is that dog still alive?’ and then we start jamming. That’s how the songs get written.”
― Ian Gillan
“When I picked up my guitar, I spent the first day learning the chord E, the second day A, then B7, and all of a sudden, I could play the blues.”
― Ian Gillan
“Our partying was governed by licensing hours. When the pub or club shut, that would be it.”
― Ian Gillan
“What happens is we finish the show, have a couple of drinks, go back to the hotel, talk, and that’s it.”
― Ian Gillan
“My grandad was an opera singer, my uncle a jazz musician; I was a boy soprano in the church choir. But the first performance with Deep Purple was something I’ll never forget. All elements were working brilliantly.”
― Ian Gillan
“When I’m writing with Tony Iommi, for example, still it’s very easy. We go in, and I know exactly what his style is. It’s very distinctive, and you know exactly what he’s looking for, and we know exactly where we’re going from the first chord.”
― Ian Gillan
“Purple – I mean, the music and the influence and the subliminal touches range from orchestral conversation to jazz to blues and soul and God knows what. It’s a vast range of expressions.”
― Ian Gillan
“I love extended solos. I used to like them in the old days a lot, because it used to give me time to go to the pub for a drink.”
― Ian Gillan
“I do ironing not only for myself but for everyone at home, everyone in the studio if they want it, and if I run out of ironing to do, I put everything back in the washing machine and get it out again clean so I have some ironing to do.”
― Ian Gillan
“There’s a wonderful woodland, spiritual song I wrote in Undercliff in Lyme Regis, and I used to walk up there with my dog and always come back with an idea.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve played football with George Best, the greatest footballer that ever lived. That doesn’t make me a footballer. And I’ve sung a duet with Pavarotti. That doesn’t make me an opera singer. I can write and I have a story to tell, but I’m not going to make a career out of it.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’m not a writer; I’m not a novelist.”
― Ian Gillan
“Elvis’s voice was unique. Like so many others, he had natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery.”
― Ian Gillan
“I was an avid collector of Elvis’ early stuff; for a young singer, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It’s the same as being in school – you learn by copying the maestro.”
― Ian Gillan
“It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn’t write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers – all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.”
― Ian Gillan
“Although he appeared in some awful movies, Elvis could also be pretty damn good as an actor.”
― Ian Gillan
“I know in my heart of hearts that Ritchie Blackmore is one of the great guitar players of all time. He’s a fabulous technician, and he’s got incredible skills, and he was a great showman.”
― Ian Gillan
“The biggest income we make is from live performances, without any doubt. That’s about a 4-to-1 ratio from anything else.”
― Ian Gillan
“My first contract was in 1965. There were six of us in this band – my band before Deep Purple – six in the band plus management, and the entire royalty rate was three-fourths of 1 percent.”
― Ian Gillan
“’Classic rock’ is never a label that we’ve given ourselves – it’s one of the many labels that’s been imposed on us.”
― Ian Gillan
“We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based, so the songs always came later.”
― Ian Gillan
“Glenn Hughes is one of the most naturally talented musicians, but he’s still copying Steve Wonder to this day, so I can’t call him a bona fide member of Deep Purple.”
― Ian Gillan
“If you think of a solo artist, you normally know them by their name; you don’t normally describe their kind of music. You just say, ‘It’s so and so, or it’s so and so.’ But with bands, everyone feels an obligation to categorize them.”
― Ian Gillan
“It’s a fine line between self-assuredness and arrogance.”
― Ian Gillan
“No matter what I do, I’ve always recognized that Deep Purple is primarily an instrumental band. That’s where all the music comes from in rehearsals – it all stems from the music.”
― Ian Gillan
“I have got a good imagination.”
― Ian Gillan
“If you’ve got a wound, and it’s just about to heal up, and it’s got a nice scab on it, and you think in two or three days, that’s gonna be completely healed, then somebody comes along and pokes it with a stick, and it opens up again. And that’s what happens with the Ritchie-and-Deep Purple situation.”
― Ian Gillan
“I remember my uncle, who was a jazz pianist, when we did Deep Purple ‘In Rock,’ he ran from the room screaming, holding his ears: ‘I can’t hear anything. I can’t hear any instruments.’ And I was rubbing my hands going, ‘Great.’”
― Ian Gillan
“Deep Purple was sinking with Ritchie. We were playing to quarter houses in Europe, which is one of our strongest territories – in Germany. Smaller venues, and they weren’t even full. So had we continued that way, and had Ritchie not walked out, we would have finished; that would have been the end of it.”
― Ian Gillan
“I love Buffalo. The people here are wonderful, genuine; they look you straight in the eye.”
― Ian Gillan
“The thing to remember when you’re re-recording pieces from the past is that you have to have respect for the original performances, recordings, and arrangements.”
― Ian Gillan
“I write every day.”
― Ian Gillan
“One of my greatest pleasures is writing on my Web site.”
― Ian Gillan
“You can never criticize a monumental musician like Jon Lord or Richie Blackmore, or the part they played in the group, but life goes on.”
― Ian Gillan
“The people who come to Purple shows are there for the music.”
― Ian Gillan
“I think you function much better when you trust people and when you’ve got a sort of relationship where you can develop ideas within a framework.”
― Ian Gillan
“I know the guys in Metallica. I’m very honored that they were influenced by Deep Purple when they started, and they’ve always been very kind to us.”
― Ian Gillan
“I used to do interviews – I still do – interviews every day, all day. And you go from maybe doing a couple of professional interviews, where you can hear the sound right, to everyone else sounds like they’re at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
― Ian Gillan
“The reason ‘Fireball’ is my favorite album of that period is that without ‘Fireball,’ we would never have been able to make ‘Machine Head.’”
― Ian Gillan
“The band’s a really close-knit family. We’ve got fantastically good friendships and relationships that have developed after all these years.”
― Ian Gillan
“If there was such a thing as a typical English gentleman in rock music, then it was Jon Lord.”
― Ian Gillan
“To the general public in America, the lifespan of Deep Purple probably finished with our 1984 album, ‘Perfect Strangers.’”
― Ian Gillan
“The one thing nobody was taught was how to deal with success, and I think that happens to everyone who makes it at a young age.”
― Ian Gillan
“I have been touring since I got my first band in 1962, so there is no problem there. We are basically performing musicians, so that’s what we do.”
― Ian Gillan
“An album represents an artist or a band or a group of musicians at any given moment in time. You just produce the music that you feel good about and hope that the audience shows some interest in it.”
― Ian Gillan
“I have heard that my Wikipedia entry is completely incorrect, but then again, so is everyone else’s. I haven’t bothered about that.”
― Ian Gillan
“The Hall Of Fame thing, it’s an American thing. We don’t have that in England or Germany or Australia or Russia or anywhere in the world apart from America. And it’s an institution. What’s that got to do with rock and roll?”
― Ian Gillan
“I’m very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction – that’s nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It’s now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.”
― Ian Gillan
“Can you imagine doing ‘Nessa Dorma’ with Luciano Pavarotti the maestro? It’s unbelievable. He’s a very generous man.”
― Ian Gillan
“I have to think that ‘Nessa Dorma’ is the greatest rock ballad that’s never been recorded as such.”
― Ian Gillan
“I don’t think anyone likes to be pushed around.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve consciously avoided actually reading anything about Wikipedia.”
― Ian Gillan
“I realised that if I wanted to carry on with my musical dreams, I had to change, so I started meditating, and I changed my life entirely.”
― Ian Gillan
“For a rock band, I didn’t see the point in live albums. To my mind, you’ve got to be there.”
― Ian Gillan
“Singles – we hated it, going on ‘Top Of The Pops’ and all that rubbish.”
― Ian Gillan
“I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue – and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country – they had something new and very exciting.”
― Ian Gillan
“I don’t think we were anti-commercial. But we were anti-contrivance, and like Zeppelin, we found dignity through the music we were playing.”
― Ian Gillan
“It wasn’t slung together by a producer and a publisher. We decided we were going to take hold of our music and let it evolve organically.”
― Ian Gillan
“Rock music had its own constituency, its own steering wheel. It was beyond the control of the establishment, and we saw TV as the enemy.”
― Ian Gillan
“Infinity is almost impossible for an eight-year-old to grasp. It’s an inquiring age, and you’re beginning to shape your thoughts and questions about life in general at that stage.”
― Ian Gillan
“When I was in my formative years, I rejected Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin. I now realise they were all great artists, but at the time, as a young man, you have to clear the decks.”
― Ian Gillan
“We soaked up everything from Beethoven to Chopin to Jimi Hendrix to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve always been optimistic – I always expect the sun to come out.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve never been troubled by disappointment, and I get over it quickly. But I’m not good at making plans, and I don’t have any ambitions. I never did.”
― Ian Gillan
“When I was a kid, every street had a band, and we’d steal members from each other.”
― Ian Gillan
“If you start adapting to audiences, you’re really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.”
― Ian Gillan
“The thing about a band is, it’s not so much how good the musicians are – it’s the blend of personalities and characters. It’s the human chemistry that makes up a good team.”
― Ian Gillan
“Life’s not so rocky now. It was very volatile when you’re young: you’ve got no experience. Your sense of disappointment is far greater; your sense of success is overwhelming. And then you’ve got the emotional conflict within any group that you’re not mature enough to deal with until you get older. It levels out.”
― Ian Gillan
“There’s very little you can do these days about having any impact at a launch for a record unless you keep it very secret, because communications are so immediate, and YouTube and everything else kind of spoils the party.”
― Ian Gillan
“When you’re young, you’re immortal, or so you think, and you never think there will be problems ahead.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve tried to avoid the rock & roll highway and have taken the scenic route. I think all the guys have been more concerned with the music and the band’s legacy than with the commercial aspects of life.”
― Ian Gillan
“I’ve done a lot of research on science and theology to try and get a better understanding of what happens to the human soul or what potential it has.”
― Ian Gillan
“I feel very fortunate to have been able to do what I do for a living.”
― Ian Gillan
“I can’t do one thing at a time. If I’m writing song lyrics, I’ve got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I’m working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.”
― Ian Gillan
“I wake up every day looking forward to the concert that night. I don’t think you need much more inspiration than that.”
― Ian Gillan
“We’ve been touring ever since we were able to afford to buy a van, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop until something falls off or is irreparable.”
― Ian Gillan
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