DEEP PURPLE Singer: 'I Was Terrific And RITCHIE BLACKMORE Was A Twat'

The Sun Online's "Something for the Weekend" recently conducted an interview with DEEP PURPLE frontman Ian Gillan and drummer Ian Paice. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Q: Ian G, how difficult was it leaving PURPLE in 1973 at the height of their powers, then seeing your band continue with David Coverdale?

Gillan: The leaving was sad, particularly as I wasn't really sure why I was doing it. I bought the records "Burn" and "Stormbringer" with David Coverdale on board — I still have them today — but I couldn't play them. At the last minute something told me that it would be like watching my ex making love to someone else.

Q: How difficult was it deciding to reform the classic MkII line-up with Ritchie in 1984, then rejoin in 1992 even though Ritchie had kicked you out?

Gillan: '84 was easy because there was still a spark of desire and an element of mutual respect, and that resulted in the record "Perfect Strangers". Rejoining in '92 was an entirely different matter though; we struggled for a while until Ritchie left a few months later.

Q: What were the main personality differences between you and Ritchie?

Gillan: Well, I have to be honest, the main personality difference between me and Ritchie was that I was terrific and he was a tw*t. Seriously, though, Ritchie was my room mate for the first year. He had a great sense of humor — very dark humor but, nevertheless, he made us laugh. There was no love/hate thing. But Ritchie did have dominant tendencies and I don't like being shoved around, so I guess it was inevitable that our relationship would not flourish in a positive way.

Q: The band seem very happy and stable now compared to the old days.

Gillan: Yes, it's part of growing up really. You can prepare for everything else during your formative years — how to be a musician, how to write songs even. But you can't ever be prepared for success and it takes a while to adjust to it particularly when you are in your mid-20s and you have money coming out of your ears. Then you drift apart and soon it’s separate hotel rooms. And all of a sudden you have big-time management coming in and you suddenly realise it's a different world, a brutal world. And you start building walls around yourself and becoming defensive and you can't do that as an artist. You preserve and pickle whatever it was that was good and try to go through life with that. And that's no good, it doesn't work. So things change. Things fall apart. The band broke up and when we came back (for the 1984 reunion) we weren't quite the same people.

Paice: If you don't take any crap on stage playing music is real easy. The trouble comes if you take the day's problems, whether it's business or personal or your breakfast wasn't right. If you take that s*** on stage with you don't play right. The audience know if someone's going though the motions the same as if they are giving 100 percent.

Q: The band seem to be working hard to make up for those times when PURPLE had problems. Is that a fair assessment?

Gillan: I think we always try to. When you've been near death you value every second of your life and DEEP PURPLE was approaching death in 1993. Audiences were falling off, we were playing 4,000-seaters with barely 1,200/1,500 people in them. That was definitely going to be last tour. Then, fortunately, Ritchie walked out, the sun shone again and we all said: "OK, we'll give it one more shot." So, yes, we are grateful for that chance.

Q: Do you find the record industry disheartening?

Gillan: It's short-sighted. They should have embraced the digital revolution. All the creative people I knew in the studios — managers, producers writers — were thrilled when this whole thing came along. We all had this vision of the great jukebox in the sky; how great it would be to download movies, anything, how great it would be. The industry itself saw this as a threat. Instead of embracing it, they fought it. There are a lot of people in this business I have a lot of time and respect for. But there are a lot of people who have no respect for music. There was a meeting at AOL Time-Warner, which a friend of mine was at. And the great Ahmet Ertegun from Atlantic Records — one of the great record company guys, what a history — was summoned because he hadn't spent his budget for the previous year. They were going to cut next year's budget and he was trying explain to them that sometimes he invested it, sometimes he saved it, so he could work on an artist he was nurturing. Anyway, he was told, just a buy a yacht just spend it. And there were these two blokes who had just joined the board and one said about Ertegun: "Who the f***'s that guy?" And the other said: "I don't know, some sort of content provider." That pretty much summed it up how much interest these mega corporations have. We started out as an underground group. But you get successful and you are expected to behave a certain way. To some extent you have to embrace change otherwise you die, which we have done internally. But the music business machine is very unforgiving.

Paice: We gave up trying to make videos years ago. If we spent £2million making the best video ever they wouldn't play it, so why waste £2million? There was a Kasabian single with an amazing video. The music was OK but I don't think people would have taken quite so much notice if the video hadn’t been so good. So we gave up being worried or concerned with MTV or any of the TV music stations 15 years ago. That's difficult because it's a great way to put your product in front of people. If you're not 18, or younger, or a rap artist, it's a waste of time, waste of money. When we started our success grew out of word of mouth and it's still that now.

Read the entire interview at The Sun Online.