Ian Gillan: The Autobiography of Deep Purple’s Singer

by Ian Gillan

  Dear Tony,

  Thank you for your telegram. Perhaps in my letter to you the word ‘affiliation’ misled you. I must now make clear that my doubts be in the direction of my own desires to perform as an artist. I am so depressed with my occupation at the moment, as well as the circumstances and attitudes I have to work with that I felt it necessary to put on record my intentions to leave the group on 30th June 1973. This decision is not impulsive, but made after at least six months of thought. I am certainly not thinking of moving to any other companies for management etc. It is simply that if, after three months’ complete break, I decide to continue in the business, I shall find a new way of expressing my ideas, or at least a more varied way. I suppose I could sum up by saying that I think DP has become a stagnant, boring machine far removed from the fresh, innovative group it once was. I think this was inevitable and that we should quit while we are ahead. Another advantage to deciding upon a date at least six months in advance, is that nobody will be able to take unfair advantage of the situation. You must admit that this is almost a probability were matters to follow an unguided course. I have almost formulated a basic pattern for the future and I shall obviously make you aware of my intentions when I reach London.

  Yours sincerely

  Ian

  So, when I met John and Tony, they said, ‘Well, are you really leaving, then?’ And, when I started to explain that I couldn’t take any more, that I needed a break, John asked, ‘How long can you stay?’ So I told him I wasn’t going to just walk out on them, that I’d stay long enough to see commitments honoured, and so on. They said they had just had the tour to Japan confirmed, and could I stay for that? I said, ‘OK,’ and that was it.

  Not once was it suggested, ‘Do you want to reconsider when you’ve had a rest?’ or ‘Is there some way we can approach this differently?’ My God, I must have been an obnoxious, unapproachable creature for the end to come about like this. OK, so I know I’d been capable of arrogance, and the word ‘supercilious’ had been used from time to time, but it was only my way of looking after myself. That I had the confidence to speak my mind didn’t surely mean I was a loathsome prima donna. Could these people not see that not only had I lost respect for them, but that I’d also lost respect for myself? Could they not see that I’d spent months willing them to accept that this great band was in a decline of its own making? I mean, for heaven’s sake, each member of the band had learned from his own experience about facing up to moments when it’s time to call a halt, when the magic fades. I’d faced that situation with the Moonshiners, the Javelins, Episode Six and Wainwright’s Gentlemen, but here there was no reflection, no self-analysis, just ‘How long can you stay?’

  I admit now that I did not want to leave Deep Purple. I just didn’t like the way things were going, and it was as simple as that. I didn’t like the way the guys were worried about their futures, their lack of confidence, or the way they were looking retrogressively at the music we’d made two to three years before. Above all else, I didn’t know what I was looking for, and nobody had asked me. I was dying of frustration and nobody cared.

  It doesn’t matter how famous or successful you are, each one of us needs an arm around us sometimes. It’s something I needed, and I didn’t receive it in any form. My relationship with Zoe was unsuccessful, and I was faced with finishing Who Do We Think We Are plus a long period of touring, in isolation. We no longer seemed to be mates, and it all conspired to cause the album to be deferred.

  The atmosphere in Rome was very bad, with the guitarist deciding not to be around the house when we were there – or should when I say when I was there? – and it must have cost the record company a fortune. We gave them ‘Rat Bat Blues’, ‘Place in Line’, ‘Our Lady’, ‘Mary Long’, ‘Super Trouper’, ‘Woman from Tokyo’ and ‘Smooth Dancer’, where I admit taking my anger out on Ritchie in particular, and doing so in the only way I knew best: hidden in the lyric, and with references to black suede, which is his favourite clothing. Unfortunately, I don’t think he saw the subtlety, which made me even more angry!

  So, as we struggled to produce that piece of vinyl, I know I wasn’t the only one with thoughts of change in mind, and I believe Ritchie was cooking something up with Paicey and Phil Lynott. Paul Rodger’s name was also thought to be in the frame somewhere, but, as Deep Purple, we struggled through another hefty programme, which was of such intensity that it’s hard to believe things were ending.

  Now it was only place names: Southampton on 13 September; Leicester the next night; Brighton after that; and on through to November, where we criss-crossed America and Canada into December, before starting all over in the New Year!

  Who Do We Think We Are was released in the States at the end of 1972, and came out in the UK in March 1973. It reached Nos. 15 and 4 respectively in the charts, which situation must have posed the cruellest of dilemmas for the management in Newman Street, because the irony of all that was happening meant that while ‘the greatest band in the world’ was falling apart at the seams, its cashflow potential was bigger than ever!

  Despite efforts to keep the fact that I was leaving under wraps, the media and fans picked up on what was going on, and we toured to a bad press and increasing hostility. Some of it was justified, but other situations were plain ridiculous, such as when we refused to go on an outdoors stage and play during a thunderstorm in New York. That event (with ZZ Top) caused fans to wreck our gear, so we couldn’t play Atlanta the next night, and one journal said of that farce, ‘Deep Purple unwilling to die in order to sing a song!’

  We arrived for the closing Japanese tour in August 1972, and played Hiroshima, Nagoya and two shows at Osaka. The concerts were recorded live for the Made in Japan (double) album, which would be another huge success, and included ‘Highway Star’, ‘Child in Time’, ‘Smoke on the Water’, ‘The Mule’, ‘Strange Kind of Woman’, ‘Lazy’ and ‘Space Truckin’’. Made in Japan reached No. 16 in the UK in January 1973 and No. 6 in America during April, reinforcing our world standing, and with Who Do We Think We Are selling at the same time.

  As most fans know, I’ve never personally been happy about live albums, and would prefer to leave that side of things to the bootleggers. The thrill of the moment, and all it implies, means you have to physically be at the show to catch the ‘live vibe’, but I know and accept I’m in a minority on this one.

  I was leaving Deep Purple voluntarily, and Roger was also about to go, although he didn’t yet know it! However, when the final concert was over, I kept my farewell to a simple ‘Goodnight’, and allowed myself to be swamped with relief as I flew home – without a cloud on the horizon!

  CHAPTER 6

  Unlike most jobs when you’re leaving for something new, it’s not quite the same with a situation like Deep Purple. Of course, I’d left the band; it was of my choosing, and so that’s fine. However – unlike moving on from a regular company, such as Auto Ice, where I’d worked all those years before, and where you exchange bits of signed paperwork before you shake hands and go (P45s and so forth) – when it comes to leaving a business like HEC, and the different companies within or alongside it, there’s much more to such a change than meets the eye, as I came to realise that, although I’d left, I’d not completely gone! So, to rationalise whether I’d left but not gone, the situation was that I had money tied up in royalties and intellectual properties, plus my stakes in all sorts of deals the managers had put in place, such as the ongoing release of albums and compilations, which of course had my name on them, and would continue to sell for many years to come – for instance the Last Concert in Japan, Powerhouse, The Best of Deep Purple, 24 Carat Purple, When We Rock, We Rock, and When We Roll, We Roll, The Mark II Purple Singles and Deepest Purple: The Very Best of Deep Purple.

  However, in the early post-leaving period, although I’d get to see how our music had been packaged and sold, the trouble was that I had no idea what it all meant, specifically in terms of knowing how much money I’d have to take into my ne
w future. And, when I asked about the situation, nobody at the office seemed to know the answers! Over the months and years, it would emerge that the whole thing was locked up inside the mercurial brain of Bill Reid, and he’d take all of that knowledge with him when he sadly died a few years later.

  Still, although there were these questions outstanding following my departure, it continued to make sense that Bill should remain as my financial adviser and mentor. We’d not fallen out and I continued to trust him, so I brought him into looking after the business side of a couple of whacky ventures I’d been thinking about in recent months. Unfortunately – and as with Barry Dass of submarine and rocket-ships past – Bill and I would also end up disappointed; but, for much of the time, he gave his wholehearted support, while I had my hair cut quite short, dressed in a more conventional manner, and prepared for a different kind of life outside of the music business.

  For my first project, Zoe and I went in search of a building I could convert into the finest country hotel in the world. Having seen just about every hotel possible with Deep Purple, I figured I should now have one myself, and so we toured the southeastern Home Counties in the Roller, looking for the right opportunity. Unfortunately, despite my more restrained manner and new appearance, my reputation travelled before me, so you could literally hear the fearful whispers when I started visiting and revisiting those properties that might have been suitable. ‘Oh, my God! We’re going to have drugs and orgies in our village,’ whispered the country folk, as curtains were pulled tight and they locked themselves into their homes, to prepare for their lives being thrown into chaos. In truth, they needn’t have worried, because all they were seeing was a demoralised, lost and quite hungry person in search of his own bar.

  Eventually, our travels took us to North Stoke, near Oxford, where we found The Springs. It was a dilapidated building that had been used as a nursing home, and, after talking to Bill about it, we bought it for around £100, 000 in cash. I then set about having a great time ripping the place to pieces, stripping it back to its original fabric, including finding some incredible oak panelling, fireplaces and so forth. There was also a terrace overlooking fields and a fantastic lake, but the building and its outhouse were unsafe and needed a lot of work doing to them, as I set about designing the ultimate residential escape and business centre.

  Within a few weeks, the outhouse had been done up, and was running as a bar; and it quickly began to do good business, as all my mates turned up, as well as some brave and curious locals! Needless to say, I kept the bar open all day, and as late into the night as the last customer wanted to relax and enjoy a chat. As for the main building – the hotel – well, that started to cost a lot more money, as we found out just how insecure the structure was. Still, all I had to do was call Bill, and he’d phone the bank, and I’d withdraw another chunk of cash. OK, so that was the easy bit, because on site it was gruelling work, into which I put my heart and soul, as well as offering employment to all sorts of people who turned up saying they knew what they were doing, or just wanting to help the former singer of Deep Purple!

  However, as time went by, many of these characters came and left, having screwed things up, or having robbed me blind, while I was looking after my guests at the bar.

  I then learned about things such as needing a licence for the sale of alcohol and planning permission to use the building as a hotel, as people started to arrive from all sorts of official departments, to point at things I’d done. One of the best was this guy from the Forestry Commission – or something like that. He arrived at an area where we were laying a fantastic driveway and car park, and shouted, ‘Stop!’ before going on to tell me that what I was doing was building a car park in a space where a few trees stood.

  ‘That,’ he said, pointing across the way, ‘is a mulberry bush,’ to which I replied, ‘Really? And very nice it is, too.’ He pondered its beauty for a while, before announcing it would have to stay, to which invasion of my privacy I replied that it was right in the middle of my car park, and would be going! I think he’d rather expected this, and so, when he repeated that it would very definitely be staying, he also warned that they had something like the death penalty for even shouting at a tree or shrubs in North Stoke.

  Anyway, I said I’d leave it alone, at which point he went on to demand iron railings around the trees, in case one of the workmen should accidentally drive into one (I was thinking ‘the lot’) with a JCB, or something similar. Well now, I’d just conceded on the mulberry bush, so now he was beginning to annoy me some, as I explained that what I was doing, and was going to do, was born out of the experience of somebody who cared, and who’d seen good and bad taste in every corner of the globe. In fact I was tempted to ask if he’d ever been outside the Oxfordshire county line, but decided against, as he must have also decided to give up on me – at least until the next time! Another feature I designed, and about which nobody objected, was the guitar-shaped swimming pool, with a fretboard as the steps into it, and an acoustic ring set in tiles beneath the clear water.

  Otherwise, we made the interior of the building palatially elegant, with every visitor’s whim anticipated. Each en suite bedroom had its own safe in the wall, and guests were asked not to steal things, such as the onyx lighters, but to simply take them. And so we reached the stage where the hotel was short by just one en suite room: the Pool Suite, at which moment Bill spoke of concerns at the local branch of Lloyds Bank, where the management were worried the hotel wasn’t ‘doing the business’. So an announcement was made to the effect that everything was progressing exactly as planned, and this proactive holding strategy succeeded in keeping the bank at bay for the next little while!

  The Solarium at The Springs is now open. The Solarium, overlooking a beautiful spring-fed lake, is the dining room of The Springs, a country house being England moved graciously into this century. The menu is extensive, the food superb. With adequate notice, the chef will prepare any dish of your choice. The fine wines are a matter of course and the Solarium is also open for lunch seven days a week.

  A little further on, and the restaurant and bars were also doing brilliantly, but the running costs were higher than expected. I was also – and obviously – a lousy manager but, then, my mind had become preoccupied by the fact the local authority had said we didn’t have permission to use the place as a country club. We were £300, 000 into the venture, and here they were telling me I couldn’t trade.

  When challenged, they said it wasn’t for them to worry about whether the venture succeeded or not, and the same was the case when I said quite a few people would have to lose their jobs. Not their problem! Finally, when it was mentioned that the odds on my getting the necessary planning consent were pretty slim, it was time to adopt the old ‘thinking position’ again, and, from that contemplation, I decided to throw an official opening party for the entire village on Saturday, 30 November 1974.

  We went to the electoral register to find the name and address of every single person in North Stoke, including the vicar, and our formal printed invitation referred to the occasion as a ‘small cocktail party’, lasting between 6. 15 p.m. and 8 p.m. Well, of course, the whole village turned up and became paralytically drunk over a sustained period. As they gradually fell out in the early hours, Zoe stood at the door, asking if they’d had a good time, before inviting them to sign a petition, which they most certainly couldn’t read! So the village of North Stoke got behind the venture, and that sorted out at least one department in Oxford.

  In the meantime, Bill wanted to keep a stricter eye on the business, because more things were going missing. So he took on a fella called Jim Allen, and told him to report in every day on income and expenditure. We were just beginning to look as if we could make the project profitable, but there were still some fairly large amounts owing, and one or two traders were beginning to put stories about. Still, all I kept saying to Bill was, ‘Can we afford it?’ and he would say, ‘Yes.’

  A second venture I became inv
olved in was the Mantis Motorcycles project, which was something I started as a bit of fun, but then became totally wrapped up in. It began the day Zoe introduced me to a friend of hers, Mike Egglington, who was a really nice guy and used to own a small garage in Aylesbury, where he fixed cars to pay for his hobby: motorcycle racing. We had The Springs almost up and running when I went to see him race at Thruxton one day, and it was unbelievable. There he was on this beaten-up old Norton, with no spares, and wearing ultra-cool, weathered black leathers. So, when the flag went up (or whatever they did to start the race), he disappeared off round the first bend, but seconds later we heard this crash, soon to be followed by the ambulance racing across, as we began to fear the worst. However, when we arrived at the scene of the crash, it turned out that another rider had broken his legs in collision with Mike, who was busy taking usable parts from the unfortunate competitor’s bike, and tying them around his machine (and himself) for (immediate) future use.

  He explained that he wasn’t stealing the gear, because the other bloke knew he’d be out of the game for some time and said Mike should help himself. This, then, was the spirit and camaraderie of bikers, and I was hooked!

  Mike somehow managed to carry out hurried repairs and improvements to his machine, using the new bits and pieces from the other bike, before going out again, a couple of races down the card. This time he came in third, but against riders on much better machines, including Yamahas, which were beginning to come into the market in a big way.

  By the time we’d headed off for home, I’d fallen head over heels in love with the sport, and decided to help finance my new pal’s obsession. It was a fantastic period of my life, and we’d take our tents and camping gear to places like Snetterton and Brands Hatch, where we’d set things up in all kinds of weather – but usually horrendous! Motor Cycle News picked up on it all when it wrote on 3 September 1975, POP STAR QUITS FOR BIKES, AND BACKS A NEW BRITISH ENGINE! It also went on to say: