Ian Gillan: The Autobiography of Deep Purple’s Singer

by Ian Gillan

  Soon into the new project, Roger and I spent some time together, putting ideas down, before we went to Bass Lodge in North Vermont to rehearse. It was a great location, owned (I’m told) by the Von Trapp family, and it came with a house (including personal chef), plus separate accommodation for the band and crew and of course the necessary studio. Set in many acres of mountain landscape, it was beautiful, except that we quickly discovered that scenic bliss has its limitations, and that we’d arrived to work in a very lonely and isolated spot, with nowhere close enough to go and find a few beers with people, other than ourselves – let alone to find a party! So that was disappointing, but then, I suppose it was Ritchie who indirectly forced the change, when he came up with the idea that we should have the speakers out in the natural environment, and play the sound back through Le Mobile (our studio on wheels). Well needless to say, the state authorities didn’t think it was such a great idea, and so we needed to find an alternative location and facility ASAP!

  Very early on, we discovered The Pub in Stowe (Vermont), and, more importantly, its owner, an Englishman called Richard Hughes, who was a larger-than-life character, and a future friend. The situation with Richard is that everything is possible, and so he soon found us a place called Horizons, where we set things up, and put a call through to a fella called Guy Charbonneau, who owned Le Mobile, which he brought over from Montreal.

  Once settled in, we started jamming in the basement, although in the early days it wasn’t so much me, because I didn’t do anything much except listen to the guys putting ideas down. And it all sounded so good that it actually brought a smile to my face! Engineered by Nick Blagona, the whole album came together quite easily in a mood of good vibes and a lot of momentum with very few problems – so much so, that we were there for only about a month, from July 1984, which isn’t long for a Deep Purple album. Ritchie and Roger then went to Tennessee Tonstudio, in Hamburg (Germany) for the mix, and it was finally mastered by Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound in New York. It was so great to be together again!

  Can you remember, remember my name

  As I flow through your life

  A thousand oceans I have flown

  And cold spirits of ice

  All of my life

  I am an echo of your past

  Talking of the past, I’m suddenly realising that, although I’ve mentioned my love of ‘the beautiful game’, football, and how I’ve also played in goal for the local police team, so I’ve crucially failed to mention Ritchie’s similar love for the game. Well, I see it as more of an obsession than love, really, and having learned how he approaches a game – from the moment I first joined Purple to the 1983–4 reunion – I could see that nothing had changed, including his competitive approach to winning. The lengths Ritchie will go to for the right result are incredible, as the process will always begin with the accepted and well-tried rules applied, which means that, when both sides take to the field, they will each have their own players lining up in their correct teams. In our case the squad is mostly (if not entirely) members of the band, our engineers, roadies and so forth; while our opponents can be from a variety of people and backgrounds: factory workers, perhaps a lawyer, someone from the post office, a person who’s jobless – whoever fancies a game against Deep Purple, I suppose!

  However, once the whistle’s been blown and the game’s underway, it’s quite probable that Ritchie will spot a player on the opposing team who looks a bit useful, and so he’ll say to our tour manager, Colin Hart, ‘I want that player over there, in our team,’ and Colin would somehow arrange for a swap, using Ian Paice, maybe me, or perhaps Roger, depending on which of us Ritchie thought was playing below his absolute best. Not only that, but he’d then tell the opposing captain where he wanted the player he’d just transferred across to be positioned. After that, the game would resume, and go on, and on, and on, until the right side won – preferably with our guitar player scoring the winning goal! I can’t tell you just how serious a game of soccer, ‘Ritchie style’, can be, but the teams we’ve played against have always taken what was necessary in good heart, and I suppose it gave them something to talk about in the pub!

  So Ritchie’s a very competitive person, and it shows a lot in the music as well. There was a time when he approached me at a rehearsal, and said something like, ‘If you start putting on a good show, really doing well, then I’m going to try and blow you off stage, and that’ll make you do better, and it’ll make me do better!’ So, despite the ever-present and underlying tension between us, there was still the potential for a wonderfully creative collaboration, and I think it came out on Perfect Strangers, with songs like ‘Knocking at Your Back Door’, ‘Under the Gun’, ‘A Gypsy’s Kiss’ and the title track itself.

  At the close of 1984, Perfect Strangers had climbed to No. 5 in the UK charts with Polydor, and it went to No. 17 in the States on the Mercury label. In February 1985, the title track was released as a single (No. 48 in the UK), and ‘Knocking at Your Back Door’ made No. 61 in America.

  It was during the Perfect Strangers project that Roger introduced me to his friend Chet King, and over a period of time we became great mates. As you’ll by now appreciate, downtime between tours and recording is so precious, and Chet introduced me to serious scuba diving as a sport and a means of relaxation, away from the business. I’d already done a little of it and had the bug, but Chet showed me the more demanding skills of ‘going over the side’, with a dive on the Carrie Lee, a sunken vessel that was perched on the edge of a reef about two hundred feet down; and thought to be ready to topple into the depths of the Caribbean. Just before we set off, Chet asked if I’d ever ‘narked out’, which brought my enthusiasm to a temporary halt. I said, ‘Do you mean, nitrogen narcosis?’

  ‘Yes’, he said, adding, ‘Well, you’re going to get it when we go down tomorrow!’

  He explained that we’d be dealing with some fearsome currents, and to make it to the vessel we’d be dropping down like the clappers on an anchor line, with the air supply turned off in order to decompress on the way up. To be honest, I don’t remember the full detail of what it all really entailed, but it’s sufficient to say that we didn’t drink or smoke the night before, and, come the morning, my excitement was tinged with a little concern. At the start of the dive, four of us bombed down, and reached a hundred feet in seconds. After that, we continued on a ‘buddy basis’ to reach the boat, and then to drift through its cabins. The sight and experience was fantastic, with bicycles still lashed to the deck, and, when we reached the stern section, I looped a Deep Purple pendant around the rail in a symbolic gesture. The dive was inspirational, and is featured in my music, when Roger and I recorded Accidentally on Purpose for the Virgin label in 1988 (the track is ‘Cayman Island’). Otherwise, I didn’t nark out, because it was decided that people who drink on a regular basis are unlikely to do it!

  Go diving on a coral reef

  One eye open for the girls on the beach

  Chet and Bob on the quabbin’ boat

  Oh life afloat

  Save money you can live tax free

  While I go down on the Carrie Lee

  Running out of air like I knew I would

  Oh life is good

  Chet is one of those people who have a special quality that is impossible to describe, but people like him (my buddy Mike Curle in England is another) exude a calm nature, which touches me deeply.

  Meanwhile, back at Vermont, there was a lot of ballooning done, and plenty of wining and dining, which we’re all pretty good at. As ever, we’d all find our favourite restaurant and generally enjoy drifting around together, having a good time. I suppose they soon realised that I’d not changed that much, which was confirmed (I suspect) the night I emptied my trousers of various things, including a candelabra! There was also quite a lot of ‘afterburning’ going on, and seeing how quickly you could get a girl to take her clothes off and do a swap. It’s just something I like to do from time to time, and I think the fastest I managed
at Stowe was twenty seconds!

  On one occasion, Bruce brought his girlfriend to the restaurant we were in, and at that stage she’d not met any of the band. He’d left me at the table to go and collect her, and, by the time they’d returned, I’d moved to another spot. So they came in, and she was saying, ‘What does he look like!?’ which had Bruce looking around the bar, eventually to find me sitting in the corner, wearing a blue dress, high heels and long black hair! He turned to his girlfriend and said, ‘You see that girl over there in the blue dress? Well, he looks remarkably like that!’

  Those sorts of things happened quite a lot, and the band took it all in good spirit. In fact, the reunion was working, and Polydor Records were pleased with what was going on. (Did I once say I’d never make another album with them?) It seemed to me that we’d captured the chemistry of what Roger once referred to as an ‘old love affair’, where ‘love can be very close to hate’. Well, that chemistry was in Perfect Strangers – it felt wrapped up in warmth, care and love, which was how our best work always happened; and the album went gold in the UK and Germany and Platinum in Canada and the USA, while Kerrang! rated it ‘Top album of 1984’.

  Can you remember, remember my name

  As I flow through your life

  A thousand oceans I have flown

  And cold spirits of ice

  All my life

  I am the echo of your past

  We rehearsed for the world tour in England at the Attico Room in Bedford, and worked on a set that included our old material such as ‘Lazy’, ‘Space Truckin’’, ‘Child in Time’ and ‘Woman from Tokyo’, while of course the new stuff from the album was also there. Tommy Vance was an early interview for the BBC, and so was Phil Easton from Radio City. In fact, the media willingly picked up on most of the project, and the whole world seemed delighted we’d got together again.

  We kicked off the Perfect Strangers tour in New Zealand and Australia, travelling via Los Angeles, where we rehearsed again for a few days. After that, the gear was shipped out, and we took a more leisurely flight, stopping off in Tahiti. Here, then, was a chance to further enhance my knowledge of different cultures, as I contemplated the old colonies and found myself concluding that we British and the French were raving expansionists, at least in those early days, and here in Tahiti was just another territory touched by the two great countries. I mentally ran through the list of ‘fortunates’: America, Guadeloupe, India, Algeria, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, Lebanon – and so it goes on. Who ended up where and why is beyond me, but it surely couldn’t have been because of the food!

  On which matter, well, I’ve always enjoyed French cuisine. I ate it all the time during my year in Paris, but I also suspect its reputation travels somewhat better than its substance, and I’ll illustrate this by recounting a time when we went to a certain French restaurant in Tahiti. Well, first of all, the ‘starter’ we ordered was most surely made up of bits the cooks usually throw away. It looked, smelled and then tasted appalling, with fish heads and all sorts of rubbish swimming around in the soup like swill. In fact, it brought back memories of my swim in the River Orwell, but instead of ‘swill’, this concoction was called ‘bouillabaisse’. So, while we spent time discussing the merits – or not – of French food, Bruce Payne, who was next to me, said, ‘Well, what did you order for the main course?’

  ‘Duck,’ I said, and, unfortunately, he didn’t, so he got my hand round the back of his head, about which he was not amused. In fact, he was furious, shouting, ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’

  ‘Well, I said “duck”, didn’t I?’

  And so the band continued on its happy way to Australia.

  I’ll say one thing for Purple: they do a lot of things in style, and, on long-haul trips, it would usually be first class. Apart from the fact that it’s a great way to travel – extravagant, of course, but comfortable – it does help keep you in shape, which is important when you’re hauling yourself out of bed in the early morning to get to another city, and doing that routine day in and day out. The peace and quiet of first-class airport lounges helps to make these downsides of rock ’n’ roll seem worthwhile.

  Our road manager Colin Hart, who’s been with the organisation since we nicked him from Rod Stewart’s crew, always looked after these details (he still does!) and he’ll pick up on the smallest of details, including where it concerns something like, ‘You spent a long time on the phone last night, Ian?’

  ‘I know, Colin,’ I’d say. ‘I was talking to B.’

  ‘Yes,’ he’d say, ‘I recognised the number!’

  Or, after we’d checked out of a hotel, he’d say something like, ‘The bar bill was a bit high this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ I’d say, ‘had a bit of a bender last night, Colin!’

  He’d never query the figure, but you knew that, if you tried to fool him by pretending you hadn’t used the minibar, or whatever, he’d have quietly checked it out and would then make known that he was certain!

  Despite the constant talk about the millions of dollars we supposedly had sloshing around, it’s never quite that way, and managers need to keep some sort of grip on budgets, however famous and successful their band might be. Looking through the logistics of touring with Deep Purple, it might interest some readers to get a feel for just what goes on behind the scenes of a show; and I’ll borrow from a later schedule to illustrate the point, using the 1988 Japan leg of the Purpendicular World Tour.

  Setting aside the management cost of Bruce Payne and Phil Banfield’s offices, a world tour has a ‘cast of thousands’. So there’s Colin Hart (tour manager), Charlie Lewis (production manager), Rick Taylor (tour accountant), technicians such as Mickey Lee Soule (keyboard – former Ian Gillan Band), Scott ‘Porno’ Porterfield (drums tech), Warren Lyndon (guitars), Michael Ager (bass), Moray McMillan (house sound technician), plus Xavier Theys and Ton Maesen. Then there’s Steve Arch, Andrew Mills and Craig McDonald on lighting, John Dall (rigger), Patricia Tervit (wardrobe), Sally Hogg, Mary Caird and Graeme Morrison (catering), and, last, but by no means least, people like Ron Tasker (band bus driver), Steve Howson and Ken Atkinson (crew drivers) and Steve Elsey, Les Martin and Nigel Hudson, all truck drivers.

  Many others are variously involved, and that’s before budgeting for the cost of studios, where you can pay a fortune, while they have to be right for the project. It’s often talked of in terms of ‘vibe’, and I think I mentioned one earlier on as being ‘funky’! Anyway, I’ve worked in the best and, at the other extreme, the most basic, but both can work for you, although hiring a preferred choice can also depend on the record advance available, and the commitment in general from the label behind a particular album. So, when the millions of pounds are spoken of, I hope these notes help put things into some kind of perspective.

  The Perfect Strangers tour in Australia was one long party, with sellout shows and great audience reactions everywhere we went. The spirit within the band was also fine and, in Brisbane, I had a surprise call from B.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m at the Townhouse,’ she said, which struck me as strange, because the Townhouse is a studio in London, and I couldn’t figure out why she should be there. So, when I queried it, she said, ‘No, the Sebel Townhouse Hotel in Sydney,’ which was where we were heading for our next show!

  Well, of course, there are long separations in this business, so it was a great call, and we had a good time. The Sebel Townhouse was one of those party hotels (it closed in 2000 and is now private apartments), and did we party! There was one member on the tour who was feeling very horny when we arrived at the hotel, so I fixed him up, telling the girl to pretend she was my friend, before I gave her the money. ‘Just give him a good time,’ I said, and a bit later my ‘girlfriend’ returned, followed soon after by a grinning colleague, who gave me a very quizzical look. He’ll know who he is and will, at last, have his suspicions confirmed!

  Another of the highlights of that tour was the arriva
l at the Sydney Entertainment Centre of a friend of Jon and Ian Paice: George Harrison, who came on stage to do a version of ‘Lucille’ with us. Now, as fans know, I’ve recorded ‘Lucille’ many times, so, when it was suggested we do it, Ritchie said, ‘What key?’to which I replied, ‘No problem, any key you like, ’cause I can yell that song any way you want!’ What I wasn’t expecting was the Everly Brothers’ version, which, as you’ll probably know, is done in ‘slow time’, and I was then given the worst possible key of all! I introduced George as ‘Arnold from Liverpool’ and, of course, as quickly as the crowd recognised who was on stage, they went potty! A prized possession is the photo with Phil Banfield, Jon Lord, George Harrison and me after the show. I was in the shower when the idea of a pic came up, so, when they told me to put something on, I went and found a sock!

  The Australian leg brought back memories of a Purple tour down under some years before, when we went out with Manfred Mann and Free in what was a very strong package, promoted by Sammy Lee. We’d arrived in Perth at about five on the morning of the show, and were playing the Olympic Pool that night. So I took myself off to my room, where I quickly dozed off, only to be woken by a spider creeping across my eye and down the bridge of my nose. I gently closed my mouth and, as the spider got to it, I blew it across the room. I then took a close look at it, and noticed it had a very bright orange spot on the middle of its back. Fancying a cold beer, I went down to the desk to organise one, and, when asked if I was having a problem sleeping, I told the porter, ‘Just a few,’ and mentioned the spider on my face. After I’d described it, he identified the species as a kind that had killed three or four people quite recently; which caused me to ponder on the wisdom of travelling to such far-flung places! However, while I’d just escaped danger with a spider, I had yet to meet our promoter, Sammy Lee, who instantly came across as an amazing but formidable character with a penchant for big sweaters and oozing a confidence that must be easy to feel, if you have a minder like Jake alongside, and in whose attaché I’d learn he carried guns!