Terrifying and exciting at the same time
Ian Gillan spoke to The Portugal News on the occasion of a Purple show being confirmed in that part of the world a full year from now, in November 2022.
TPN: What was the inspiration behind “Turning to Crime” and producing the upcoming album?
IG: We normally sit and write and music just comes to us and when we have got enough, we make an album and that is pretty much how it has always worked. The problem is with the quarantine and the lockdowns, it is very difficult to get the band physically together. Steve our banjo player lives in America, Roger our bass player lives in Switzerland and the other guys live in England so it was a major military operation to have rehearsals and we need to be together to write and not necessarily to perform as we have discovered now, as everyone else has, you can do it digitally and remotely. It was our producer’s idea to do “Turning to Crime” and we have always done covers, the first three big hits for Deep Purple were in 1968/1969 which were Hush, Kentucky woman, River Deep, they were huge hits in America and we have performed them on stage but never produced an album of covers. The selection was a really important part of that process, we put up a long list with our producer, Bob Ezra, and talked about it and made a shortlist and ran through ideas and then we started working on them.
TPN: Is there is a particular track on “Turning to Crime” that stands out or one you are excited to perform live?
IG: Actually, there are 3 or 4 or 5… “7 and 7 is” has already been released and is the opening track and it is a song I love and used to perform in 60s in a band called Episode Six. I also love a track called “Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu” it just such fun and I am excited to sing that live. Another track is an Old Ray Charles track with a Quincey Jones arrangement, Don has turned it into a magical piece of blues jazz and it is so much fun which is called “Let The Good Times Roll” and those three tracks are ones I would select to perform on stage.
Continue reading in The Portugal News.
Thanks to Yvonne and Gary Poronovich for the info.
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