Interview with Ian Gillan | From Fan to Deep Purple Singer

55 years ago, in 1969, Ian Gillan became the lead singer of one of his favorite bands, Deep Purple, visiting the Bell Centre this Tuesday. The English gentleman told The Press his admiration for his late comrade Jon Lord, his friendship with Luciano Pavarotti and his disdain for pre-recorded vocal tapes.

“Yes, yes, I had the first three and I still have them at home,” Ian Gillan says proudly on the phone about the trilogy of Deep Purple records released in the space of twelve months in 1967 and 1968, albums on which it is the voice of his predecessor Rod Evans that resounds.

This means that before carving the foundations of hard rock history into the rock with anthem war machines like Highway Star, Space Truckin’ and, above all, the unfading Smoke on the WaterIan Gillan revered the band of which he would become the iconic voice.

Ian Gillan has been living this dream for 55 years now – albeit with several interludes – Deep Purple being one of those bands that makes it possible Spinal Tap for a documentary. The group launched last July =1his 23^e album, and the first to feature guitarist Simon McBride, the youngest of the band at just 45 years old. His arrival marked the beginning of the Mark IX era, according to the salutary system used to designate the many line-ups of those who, with Led Zeppelin, provided hard rock with a good part of its syntax and vocabulary.

Ian Gillan for his part celebrated his 79th birthday.^e birthday on August 19 by popping a bottle of champagne aboard the plane carrying Deep Purple from Fort Worth, Texas, to Cincinnati, Ohio.

“But it was only a bottle shared between several people,” says with a laugh the man who has remained a bon vivant, although he has tempered the ardour of his youth. speed king. “We don’t have the parties we used to have. Our life is different today.”

What has also changed, inevitably, over the years? Ian Gillan’s voice, which has lost its breathtaking flexibility, but from which he manages to get the best, with great grace, on =1.

This guarantees a show free of any pre-recorded vocals. “Are you really asking me if I use them?” the gentleman exclaims, more astonished than offended. “But what are you talking about? My God! I know full well that many others do it, but the day I start this, that will be the day I retire.”

An unlikely friendship with Pavarotti

Ian Gillan had such a great voice that he was once invited to share the microphone with one of the most powerful tenors of the 20th century.^e century. “One Saturday morning, I received a call from Luciano Pavarotti who wanted to ask us to participate in a benefit show in Italy,” says the singer about this “big, lovely and warm gentleman.” “He would have liked us to do Child in Timeto which I quickly replied: “I wouldn’t think so, no.”

Taken from Deep Purple in Rock (1970), this hinged piece calls upon Gillan’s upper register, which is why it has not appeared in the group’s show programme for a long time. It is rather an excerpt from a Puccini opera, No sleepwhich the unlikely pair would eventually perform in 2001.

Luciano [Pavarotti] and I were supposed to record an album together, but his health deteriorated too quickly. He liked the freedom that rock allowed. He wanted to go back Smoke on the Water.

Ian Gillan

“He said to me, ‘Ian, I’ve heard you sing this song dozens of times and you always sing it differently.’ He regretted not being able to change even the slightest breath of an aria, at the risk of being crucified by the critics.”

Out of the ordinary

Pavarotti was an extraordinary man, as was Jon Lord, the organ wizard whose vibrations were as integral to Deep Purple’s identity as its explosive rhythm section of Roger Glover (bass) and Ian Paice (drums), both still in place.

Ian Gillan dedicates the song during the current tour Uncommon Man to Lord, one of the most visionary minds of English rock, taken by cancer in 2012.

Excerpt fromUncommon Manby Deep Purple

“Jon was this elegant, colourful character who had studied classical music and theatre,” his friend recalls, “and since I was a street kid, and a little younger than him, he guided me a lot in the way he behaved.”

Every day, Ian Gillan thinks of Jon Lord as he, on the coach or plane, completes his cryptic crossword puzzle, which they once did together.

“I was always the one holding the pencil and Jon used to get angry because of the way I wrote the letter. d. We laughed a lot about it, but I still ended up changing my d just for him. That’s what makes every time I write the letter dJon is here. He’s still traveling with us.”

Deep Purple, with Yes, at the Bell Centre this Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

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