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That dreaded dress code
Louder Sound reprints Ian Gillan’s 1973-84 out-of-Purple career retrospective that originally appeared in the Classic Rock magazine issue #92.
There has never been a dull moment in Ian Gillan’s career. From his 60s bands The Moonshiners, The Javelins and Episode Six to his three separate stints in Deep Purple, via an unlikely one-album service in Black Sabbath, he’s been a fixture of the British rock scene for decades.
But there’s one period of his long and sometimes chequered past that often gets overlooked: his solo years between 1976 and 1982, fronting The Ian Gillan Band and, subsequently, Gillan.
These days, with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore long out of the picture, Deep Purple feels like a happy family. That wasn’t always the case. In 1973, a pissed-off and disillusioned Gillan intended to quit both the band and the music industry 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.”
Continue reading in Louder Sound.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
The hotel with the nicely decadent guitar-shaped swimming pool? In its final phase of abandonment you could have filmed a compelling found footage low budget horror movie there …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0U3efqZsM0
Initially, the plan of the neighboring golf club to support and sustain it
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/10975989.deep-purple-hotel-close/
seemed to fail, but in the meantime it – SURPRISE !!! – actually has been redeveloped and refurbished – albeit sans the original swimming pool (which never looked all that Tudor to me anyway!).
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24410114.hotel-owned-deep-purple-legend-enjoys-refurbishment/
A new pool is now inside (or housed in a separate building perhaps were the old pool was), knowing the fickle & treacherous English weather a both prudent and smart choice …
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/resources/images/18235663/?type=responsive-gallery-fullscreen
September 3rd, 2024 at 03:28Gillan turns down invitations to come visit his old hotel cos they have a dress code..
September 3rd, 2024 at 14:32well Gillans own dress code in Purple in the late 80;s and way into the 90:s had a lot to wish for… he often looked rediculous..
nowdays he looks great in the clothes he wear.. blue or blackJeans, blue regular shirts and white jackets..looks almost like he did in the early 70:s.
Cheers!
Big Ian has had an incredible musical life and an incredible extra-musical life!
September 3rd, 2024 at 21:18I hope one day someone makes a great film about his rock life
I’d say fashionwise he was always his own man and accessorized & matched freely + (more importantly) intrepidly!
The “Black Sackath”-look
https://bravewords.com/medias-static/images/news/2018/5BF4AA5F-ian-gillan-reveals-how-he-joined-black-sabbath-we-got-drunk-together-one-night-image.jpg
and the “Nehru”-tribute (which had Roger despair 🤣)
https://ultimaterockpix.com/cdn/shop/products/dpianstevebw0411_720x.jpg?v=1543038009
were my sartorial faves, but the “Game of Thrones dress rehearsal” deserves honorary mention too:
http://easternpromotion.com/archive/projects/1990/Gillan_Tbilisi.jpg
Not to forget the “How can I aggravate Ritchie the most who doesn’t like me to wear a beard and a suit”-1973 three-piece look
https://64.media.tumblr.com/5b9c66c2ada23db6ff97e87962fe6728/tumblr_pycsd7jpvw1u2m44po1_1280.jpg
or the black variation of the “Nehru”-look, resurrected for choice ethno pop performances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_purxqH_Nk
Finally, the 1969 “Ritchie flattered me my by saying I look a bit like Jim Morrison, so I better start dressing like him too” USAAF bomber crew leather jacket & trousers full bad boy regalia!
https://www.needsomefun.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/7-Ian-Gillan-gillan.jpg
Fashion is fleeting, but true style is eternal & priceless.
https://www.gillan.com/images/casual-attire.jpg
September 3rd, 2024 at 23:59A couple of random comments from me.
1) Whether Ian feels like it was not ‘his’ kind of music, IGB played superb kind of jazz rock fusion. CAT in its Rockfield Mixes version is one of my all time favs. Recently, though, I’ve spinning the ‘Let It Slide’ track a lot at full blast, for no apparent reason, to the general satisfaction of my cat and my neighbours.
2) Ian is too creative to let the hard facts stand in the way of a good story. He puts his distinctive spin on the stories of the Shand Grenade name, IGB dissolution, the money issue etc. Let me make it absolutely clear, that I have heard other versions of those events.
3) In my humblest opinion, Gillan sounded heavier and more spacious with Steve Byrd than with Bernie. Just check the Japanese Album (the precursor of the Mr. Universe).
September 4th, 2024 at 12:26I tend to agree, Georgivs:
– Me waving the IGB flag here has been the brunt of jokes, but I doubt Ian would be as harsh in his judgement today had those albums sold well. They didn’t, not because the music was crap, but because it was the wrong time (Punk era) and Ian brought to much DP baggage with him image-wise. The people who would have liked what IGB did, never heard CAT because they wouldn’t touch an album with an “ex-Deep Purple Singer!” sticker with a pole. Maybe booking IGB for a Jazz Rock/PROG festival or as an opener for Weather Report or Return To Forever, rather than lovelessly lumping them together with heavy metal/hard rock acts would have made a difference. Japan at least was certainly enamored of the music.
– The IGB dissolution can be explained: They had lost their recording contract due to bad sales and the other band members did not want to dumb down their music, hence their derision at Colin Towns’ beautiful Fighting man composition. That left Ian no choice.
– The GILLAN split was unnecessarily messy and ugly, the finances of the band intransparent (and Ian and his manager less than forthcoming about them), Ian retiring from the road to recuperate his voice (he did indeed sound vocally shot on that last GILLAN tour) only to join Sabbath and mega-scream (brilliantly!) his way through as merciless a heavy metal album as Born Again a few months later … well, that would have made me think too. That said, I don’t believe that GILLAN would have eventually cracked the US and Continental European markets like post-Dio Rainbow and even pre-glam Whitesnake did, they definitely lagged behind and were pretty much an English phenomenon only. Sadly so because they were certainly the most original and unconventional of the three bands, but you know how hard rock fans are. Rainbow and Whitesnake were musically very conservative, but they pushed the right buttons with the DP crowd much as Big Ian was beloved as “the” DP singer.
– No argument: Steve Byrd was the more accomplished and original guitarist compared to the raucous and flamboyant, but hardly musically nuanced Bernie Tormé or the very Blackmoresque, but somewhat workmanlike Janick Gers. Byrd even had a bit of Andy Summers to him. But I believe he just didn’t see himself in a hard rock band (with more than a touch of heavy metal) going forward. He wasn’t pushed. And he never played in the hard rock genre again.
September 4th, 2024 at 17:05@ 6 – “Ian retiring from the road to recuperate his voice (he did indeed sound vocally shot on that last GILLAN tour) only to join Sabbath and mega-scream (brilliantly!) his way through as merciless a heavy metal album as Born Again a few months later” Ian Gillan had throat surgery (vocal cords) to rectify an ageing & stress related symptom. Then he went ballistic again, old habits die hard & at the time we loved it & still do listening to Born Again at times & of course the DP reunion concerts that followed. Cheers.
September 4th, 2024 at 22:02@6 – Good to have a friendly soul around, Uwe.)
September 5th, 2024 at 08:13Herr MacGregor @7, I’m not disputing any of that, but he could have just as well put GILLAN in a holding pattern and then returned to them. But he preferred making good (and guaranteed) money with the Brummies. I can understand that the rest of the GILLAN members were not cheering him on for that. And yes, I agree, what happened gave us the brilliant Born Again (not that GILLAN’s Magic was a bad album to go out on though I preferred the studio version of the preceding Double Trouble).
Related: We all know the story of Ian’s manager Phil Banfield calling him after the fateful night of inebriation and admonishing him “You just joined Black Sabbath last night, don’t you think you should speak to me first before committing to something like that?!”. But not Gillan’s hungover reply: “Did I really? Well, what do you think of the idea?” And Banfield goes: “It’s brilliant. Do it!” 😂
September 5th, 2024 at 16:46@4
September 8th, 2024 at 14:24As far as I’m told mr Gillan’s preferred outfits are a bit more airy 😉
Yes, Karin, proper ventilation does gain more importance with age.
September 11th, 2024 at 16:43@11
September 12th, 2024 at 09:42😅😂 good to know but it wasn’t exactly that I was thinking about.
Yet I’m too bashful to go deeper into the subject 🤭