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Ian Gillan: “The band had collapsed financially, I couldn’t pay the wages”
There has never been a dull moment in Ian Gillan’s epic career.
“It’s hardly surprising,” the veteran singer agrees. “My first bands were The Moonshiners and The Javelins back in 1962 – so it’s been 45 years since I started.”
In a four-page Classic Rock feature, it’s impossible explore every last facet of Gillan’s chequered past. Instead we’ve chosen to concentrate on a specific period: 1976 to 1982, the years of his solo ventures with The Ian Gillan Band and Gillan.
Ian Gillan made his name in Deep Purple, of course, a group he left on two separate occasions – in 1973 and 1989. Not surprisingly each of these departures was an unhappy, not to say traumatic, affair. But it was the initial bust-up in the early 70s that really jolted him to the core.
Of course, the pull of the Purps is irresistible. Gillan has regularly revisited the line-up of the group that gave him his break in 1969, and today they are as strong as they ever were.
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With his old jousting partner, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, well and truly out of the picture, Gillan – who rejoined Purple again in 1992 – now pulls the strings as their leader and figurehead. But back in 1973 it was a different story. When Purple’s classic Mk II line-up disintegrated for the first time, a pissed-off and disillusioned Gillan aimed to quit the music business for good.
“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” he recalls today. “I had more money than sense. Well, I didn’t actually have the money, it was held for me in various bank accounts. But all I had to do was ask for it.”
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