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Grit, edge, and balls
Louder Sound teases Gillan’s interview appearing in the current (#337) issue of the Classic Rock magazine. The interview largely deals with Gillan the band years, and the teaser is the story that most of us have heard before — of Blackmore trying to recruit Gillan to sing for Rainbow.
The reason I had left Deep Purple was that they were moving into a kind of territory [later filled by Rainbow]. I didn’t want that. I wanted a group with grit, excitement and edge. Also one that had balls. That’s no reflection on Ritchie, who was a fantastic, amazing guitar player – in fact I said: ‘You can come and play in my band if you want’ – but Ritchie has firm ideas about how things should be, and there were things that we disagreed on.
Read more in Louder Sound.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
At least it seems they weren’t enemies:
“That’s no reflection on Ritchie, who was a fantastic, amazing guitar player – in fact I said: ‘You can come and play in my band if you want’“
like someone liked them to be! They were actually grownups 😉
February 10th, 2025 at 06:56The whole idea of them working together in 1979 is pie in the skies: IG wouldn‘t have sung something like Since You’ve Been Gone or I Surrender, Blackmore‘s whole AOR concept would have floundered. Nor could he have contained Ian, and Rainbow was at all times a dictatorship. By the same token, Blackmore wouldn’t have played in anybody else‘s band much less together with a bassist who was overweight and bald.
And Ian joining Rainbow in 1979 would have meant Ritchie, Roger and Ian being back together – basically the songwriting team of Mk II – how long could that band have lasted before morphing into a complete Mk II reunion? Public, media, record company and managerial pressure for that to happen would have been inescapable. There would have been no Rainbow with Ian and no GILLAN with Ritchie, only a DP reunion a couple of years earlier, but would have 1979 been the right time for such a reunion to last and be as (or even more) successful than the 1984 one? NWOBHM hadn‘t even happened yet, would a 1979 reunified DP been the right band to set it off as returning heroes from the past?
February 10th, 2025 at 10:33Glad Ian didn’t join Rainbow that would be strange and i don’t think that would last long.
February 10th, 2025 at 13:08That’s Gillan’s recollection of a conversation in 1978! I think it’s safe to say that the relationship deteriorated somewhat after that!
February 10th, 2025 at 15:42Yeah..grownups that lasted an evening… but hey.. thats better than nothing LOL!!
February 10th, 2025 at 16:32the story goes they got pretty drunk that night at Gillans house..maybe they should always stay drunk when they meet each other..
@5
😄😄
Well grownups drinking, never seen that before…
February 10th, 2025 at 18:34A least if the so called myth of 1979 had occurred, rocking Rod wouldn’t have been able to do the 1980 scam. One way of looking at the total hodge hodge of a 1979 DP ‘reunion. Cheers.
February 10th, 2025 at 21:17I believe the core issue between Ritchie and Ian is that they have simply long ago lost any patience with each other – like an estranged marriage. Anything the other guy does, inadvertently or not, is always weighed down with this huge package of history they share with all perceived injustices and injuries they have inflicted on each other. With two people just waiting to be set off by the other guy like that, it becomes impossible to survive the touring routine.
A lot of the more eccentric GILLAN stuff, Blackmore would have flat-out refused to play. And it would have taken one comment from him in the studio along the lines of “Can’t you sing this a bit like Lou Gramm would, Ian?” for Gillan to pack up his bags and go.
I mean just look where their music was going: Ritchie’s next album was Down To Earth with Graham Bonnet, Ian’s on the other hand Mr Universe (which didn’t sound quite as outlandish as the Japanese Album recorded with Steve Byrd in the summer of 78, but still outlandish enough).
Frankly, I think that in 1978/79 a reunion between Ritchie and DC (had they been able to forget about their silly physical altercation) would have promised more longevity than one between Blackers and IG. David’s concepts for WS weren’t that different to Ritchie’s for Rainbow, especially with their view to the all-important American market (which IG preferred to ignore – it cost him dearly). And they both share(d) conservative music tastes while Ian likes to work off the beaten path. If in 1983 you had played Rainbow’s Bent Out Of Shape, Whitesnake’s Slide It In and Black Sabbath’s Born Again to any rock fan, which one would (s)he have qualified as “strange & surprising” and which ones as “more or less the expected”? 😂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqUx84-ljPE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu_PNCZ2gwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL_svZmiGWw
February 10th, 2025 at 21:52@8 Slide It In would be the most backward of the three. Slow lazy rock pretending to be heavy and pretending to be blues. But when it comes to the other two, Born Again definitely wins in the ‘strange’ department, but BOOS holds its own quite well in the ‘surprising’ department. Compared to its no-frills commercial hard rock predecessor, it definitely sounds quite artistic and exploratory, at least for Blackmore.
February 11th, 2025 at 07:34