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Then we started to get restless
Release of restored Gillan promo videos continues on what looks like a weekly schedule. This week, it is Restless:
[Update Feb 12]: Big Ian purportedly talks about the track, while actually talking about anything else, but:
On a slightly related note, here is a playlist of Bernie Tormé demonstrating how to play various Gillan tracks and the gear he used. These videos were released to his fans in November 2016, while making his Dublin Cowboy album.
Thanks to steve4422 for the heads-up on all counts, and to Boleslaw’s Deep Purple Family Fan Channel for posting Tormé clips.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
My favorite GILLAN song ever, love the intro where keyboards and guitar change chords but John McCoy holds the root note ostinato like forever, the then rhythmically robust verse before the chorus arrives with those classic John McCoy songwriting-style descending arpeggios (he does that a lot in his writing) – a beautiful song. When I first heard it, I thought this must be the number that finally breaks them …
Of course it didn‘t! 😑
February 8th, 2025 at 02:40Thanks for the Bernie guitar clip. Is that the most ‘used’ Fender Stratocaster I have ever noticed from a well known rock musician. Rory Gallagher’s is another one. Listed here for sale approximately 12 months ago. The Fender logo obviously touched up since Bernie had it. 30,000 pounds. Doesn’t look like it has sold as yet. Those two Irish guitarists eh? Seems they liked to keep things all natural as much as possible. Cheers.
https://reverb.com/uk/item/75203102-fender-stratocaster-1963-white-ex-ozzy-osbourne-gillan-bernie-torme
February 8th, 2025 at 03:39It’s a very nice song 🤩
So nice those songs are restored 😊
February 8th, 2025 at 06:23I always loved Janick Gers’ guitar playing in Gillan. But I also loved what Bernie Torme brought to the band. Had I wrongly assumed that this song is about Bernie – that “Jimmy” is Bernie??
February 8th, 2025 at 13:03I can remember this song entering the UK charts in about 1981 …then bombing straight out ….and then the following week re entering at no 20 …..and my dear old Mum shouting up the stairs at me to turn the radio on as they were just playing it ! …ah, the good old days !
As one good old chap on here posted, there does seem to be an excellent Gillan Box set imminently due with all the albums and B Sides and Rarities on it …and it seems terrific value at around 35 quid ( considering I’ve seen copies of Glory Road alone , going for 50 quid !)….so, that’s what all this Gillan revival and interest is about ….I for one will definitely be buying it and can’t wait to hear them all again
February 8th, 2025 at 13:09I liked Gers’ neo-Blackmoreisms of course and he had the neater technique on recordings, but Bernie had animal magnetism on stage and was more original. He of course didn‘t have the 80s guitar hero chops to replace someone like Randy Rhoads as he himself has admitted. Bernie was very much a 70s player, somewhere between Ariel Bender/Luther Grosvenor (Spooky Tooth/Mott the Hoople/Widowmaker), Rory Gallagher and Steve Jones (Sex Pistols).
https://youtu.be/zvFpX98EOPo
February 8th, 2025 at 17:13Great song, one of their best even if Bluesy blue sea is my favourite.
February 8th, 2025 at 17:50Coronarias, I doubt that Bernie Tormé is addressed in Restless: As his career post-GILLAN showed, he was anything BUT the ruthless social climber
(otherwise he would have hardly left the US hastily after his sojourn with Ozzy, but rather bought a ticket for the Sunset Strip, bands there would have gobbled someone like him – Brit, punky-romantic good-looking and a great showman with flashy guitar playing – up in a second!)
who is criticized in the song. I see the song more as a diatribe against people who have forgotten where they came from, something that has always rubbed IG the wrong way.
If anything, the song might be about James ‘Jim’ Callaghan, the Brit Prime Minister from 1976-79 who came from a working class background but was by the end of his tenure perceived as someone largely out of touch with the problems of his former constituency (he expected wage restraint from trade unions during the UK’s “Winter of Discontent” and Supertramp’s album title “Crisis? What Crisis?!” is falsely attributed to him) –> enter Margaret Thatcher in 1979 as the new Prime Minister (though she never reached Callaghan’s personal popularity in polls – we all know how Maggie was a difficult person to really be endeared by).
February 8th, 2025 at 19:38More examples of John’s songwriting style with (often arpeggiated) moving chords over an ostinato root note bass line, it really became his recipe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC-QisiYFSY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEGIWEZSsiQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G30Bjn3_c_8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MMXQgMz4l4
‘Because You Lied’ was of course written immediately after the GILLAN breakup and its lyrics are full of bitterness (“but you must have hated me”) and even despair. It’s easy to smirk about that now, but I believe at the time the hurt and rejection felt by John was real, his looks belie the sensitive core of the man.
Never knew that McCoy (the band) featured a female singer in one of the line-ups! Her name was apparently Nikki Brooks and she had a nice (contr)alto voice (think Grace Slick, but not as steely), rather unusual for a female singer in a metal outfit in fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMeU5PliaQ&t=60s
February 8th, 2025 at 22:29Anybody remember the GILLAN live boxed set ‘Back In The Game – Live 1978-82’ that was grandly announced in the summer of 2023?
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/news/2023/07/28/unchain-your-brain-before-listening/
To this day it hasn’t come out anywhere and my hunch is that it was probably deferred to not interfere with this now upcoming box of the studio CDs.
If the studio releases box does some brisk business now, we will probably see the live box released some time later. For the completists among us – they do exist one hears.
February 8th, 2025 at 22:42A Gillan interview from the GILLAN era, published by Kerrang! in August 1982, I found it on the pages of some obscure online fanzine dealing with, wait for it, Deep Purple:
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/interviews/gillan/ig19820812_1.html
https://www.thehighwaystar.com/interviews/gillan/ig19820812_2.html
Ian is all over the place in the interview and you get a distinct feeling that things weren’t organized and managed properly in the GILLAN camp (also that Ian was pretty much resistant to good advice) and that the ship was sinking at the time (as it was). Interestingly, he derides the production of Double Trouble by Bob Marley-, Robert Palmer- + Supertramp-producer Steve Smith …
https://www.discogs.com/artist/252098-Steve-Smith-3
(Ian’s accusation that Steve didn’t know how to produce hard rock is nonsense, the man – a house producer for Island Records – had produced albums by Trapeze, Rough Diamond, Back Street Crawler and Detective before he twiddled knobs for GILLAN)
… yet these days he says it’s the best one of all GILLAN albums! (But then DC didn’t like the Keith Olsen remix of Slide It In either before he radically changed his mind after hearing it on US radio.)
Karin will no doubt be … looking for a word here … RELIEVED to discover the trigger to Ian’s creative process:
“I go and have a dump and ideas usually come.”
He then elucidates
“… I start with noises, percussive sounds; I start singing gibberish. Then, when I’ve got some kind of phrase structure and the meter of the verse worked out, I do a lot of notation and start on the subject matter. When that’s decided I just write about a page of a story to get the ideas out, the color and the pictures, then go back to my notes on the meter and the phrasing and start looking for musical words because you can’t take poetry and short stories and put them to music. It doesn’t work.”
February 9th, 2025 at 01:44@11
February 9th, 2025 at 09:44Dearest Uwe, excuse me for asking, but who is Lucy now?!
‘Restless.'” excellent song as well as the studio version of the album “Double Trouble”. Good production by student Martin Birch, Paula Watkins studio tracks engineer, mixing at Abbey Road Studios and producer Steve Smith
But on the studio album, I miss guitars, more guitars ..in some songs, especially those written by Colin Towns, instrumentalized as if there were none (Life Goes On, Born to Kill, Nightmare). I hear Janick Gers more in “Sunbeam” which is the closing track of the first side, excellent riff, beautiful melodic solo perfect for the song. I simply miss Bernie and his dirty sound of “punk Hendrix” to muddy the instrumental idyll of Mick, Colin and John …
The second part “Double Trouble, live from Reading 1981 is my big disappointment. I expected Ian to respond adequately with a concert album to his friends and competitors, Ritchie (On Stage) and Whitesnake (Live…in the Heart of the City) expecting a living monument to Gillan … the set list turned out to be invalid (without Gillan classics “Unchain Your Brain”, Mr. Universe”, “On The Rocks”, “Vengeance”, “Dead of Night”, “Sleeping On The Job”, Smoke On The Water) the production is disastrous … the intro field of the opening Second Sight, the lost killer open song “Unchain Your Brain”, inserted No Laughing in Heaven !!!?..unbelievable !!!!
And there is no Bernie who left (only in B2 blues If You Believe Me which was recorded at the Rainbow Theatre)
I know box live sets came out later…but at the right moment in 1981 they didn’t
1979 -1982 the time of great live albums – Judas Priest Unleashed in the East, Saxon The Eagle Has Landed, UFO” Strangers in the Night”, Motorhead “No Sleep ’til Hammersmith”, Wishbone Ash “Live Dates 2”, The Kinks “One for the Road”, Ian Hunter “Welcome to the Club “..unfortunately Gillan didn’t have such a live album…and they were a hell of a garage band
This is real Gillan in concert .. always so exciting live and so flat production and missing the dirty raw sound of Bernie Torme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ZAeTvrBlU
Does this beginning resemble …………
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzc0MhZXXzg&list=RDDfjIOL5MxLY&index=6
Unchain Your Brain”, from Reading 1980 ?
February 9th, 2025 at 10:39Uwe!
Are you sure?? Read the lyrics again in the context of IG getting fed up with someone who he “found”, arguing about money and “dragging their feet”, and therefore IG getting restless and wanting to move on with someone else?
“Hid your pain as you smiled in the rain”….didn’t Bernie cause himself a serious and painful eye injury smashing a Strat? I don’t think the Pirate Patch was a fashion accesory…
Or maybe “Smooth Dancer” was about Ted Heath. Maybe!!
February 9th, 2025 at 19:00Kerrang magazine, now there is memory or three. My ‘lifeblood’ to the outside rock world in the UK and Europe, all the way to out here even if it was weeks old by the time I could read it, it was vital news. Well some of it was vital it seemed at the time. Not surprised if Ian Gillan is all over the place, he looks smashed on many of these ‘promo’ videos. Not just booze either me thinks. Saint Ian we should re name him perhaps. NOT. Cheers.
February 9th, 2025 at 21:27Coronarias, I’ll be your confidante of course and can’t rule out your interpretation, especially with Ian’s lyrics often working in more ways than one. What I don’t see is GILLAN opening Bernie a new world (as we all know by now, GILLAN struggled as a commercial entity throughout its existence), that would have been Ozzy Osbourne more like, but Bernie wasn’t the right guitarist and did not have the US stadium/arena experience to employ that opportunity to its fullest.
Ivica, I get the excitement and raw energy of the GILLAN live sound in the Bernie years, but for US FM radio that was as unplayable as Motörhead – and about as popular too.
February 9th, 2025 at 22:13It sure is great to read some of the comments on here, really brings back some great memories and I cant wait to get the boxed set and hear classics like Born to Kill , Sunbeam , life on Mars , Are you Sure , Nervous…I could be hear all night !
Ivica, totally agree with everything you say …its a pity we didn’t get a proper Gillan live album with the classics on it …Dead of Night was always a concert classic for me .
The Bernie v Janick thing ?…I just think we were so lucky he had 2 fantastic guitarists !
I think some of his lyrics and double entendres come from his love of the Telegraph cryptic crossword ( apparently he does it every day …and believe me , it’s tough …but very rewarding)
I’m sure there will be a clip of Gillan soon , talking about what Restless is about …I personally, have no idea !
February 9th, 2025 at 22:31I can’t fault Steve Smith’s previous productions:
https://youtu.be/liu2berUnL4
https://youtu.be/WsB3KKCD9z4
https://youtu.be/RL9iZceY-9I
https://youtu.be/B2665MFFbdY
A bit more US FM radio compatibility would have done GILLAN band finances no harm if I may say so!
February 10th, 2025 at 00:58@13
February 10th, 2025 at 11:35So true, Ivica! When I heard the live set of Double Trouble for the first time I thought I had a bad pressing copy and thought about returning it… until I found out my mate’s copy didn’t sound any better. It’s a real shame and I wonder who suggested to release that …
@10 Uwe, if you recall the previous thread about the live box set all the individual cds had been previously released so sticking them all in a box makes little sense- which is probably why it didn’t appear.
February 10th, 2025 at 21:20I remember GILLAN concerts not having the most pristine hifi sounds either – I mean they weren’t exactly the Dire Straits or Pink Floyd live! 😁
They were always a bit rough and ragtag on stage and there are limits to how much you can polish a performance like that sonically.
David, wasn’t the Live Boxed Set to be remastered? Most boxed sets don’t contain too much new stuff, especially not stuff you will listen to more than once. What will be new in the new Studio Box everyone seems to be wetting their panties about?
February 11th, 2025 at 00:16@21. How can I put this delicately? I don’t think quality is high on Angel Air’s priority list! So remastered probably wouldn’t amount to much. And it’s hard to see what remastering the Marquee gig of 1978 would do since it’s an audience bootleg. I can’t remember if Live in Tokyo 1978 is audience as well. The promised six bonus tracks were also audience recordings.
The studio box set includes the hyper rare “Spanish Guitar” which was only previously available as a free give away flexi disk from the UK music paper, Sounds in about 1980. And I have a copy! happy to accept any reasonable offers!!
February 11th, 2025 at 15:4721
Herr Uwe
I see your point,Gillan didn’t have a clear sound like Straits or Floyd. But live at Reading 81 is a disaster.
Here, in my opinion, is the best recording and playing
Album “On The Rocks”. Concert from Aachen, Germany 17th June 1981 produced by John Mc Coy released in 2002
Excellent production and playing .And set list duration 01:06:53..missing opening duo songs Second Sight /Unchain Your Brain. and the centerpiece of the concrte MAD and ‘Sleeping on the Job’..with those songs it would last 1-20 to 1-22 ideally for a vinyl double live album..but even without those songs this live recording is excellent
On this album, he hears why Colin Towns was declared the second keyboardist in Sounds in the eighties, right after Jon Lord (No Easy Way, On The Rocks, If you Believe Me), Bernie Torme in his best version, the addition “Tormes Last Stand” violent SOTW, and the final two old rockers (New Orleans and Lucille.. again Colin in solo as Jerry Lee Lewis). big Ian at the vocal peak with incredible vocal acrobatics (the end of “If you Believe Me” or Troublea scream like “Black Night” Made in Japan 1972 or “24 Carat Purple ) and of course, the energetic rhythm section of John and Mick ..That’s a real Gillan concert
February 11th, 2025 at 19:13I can’t regret that they didn’t release an official LIVE album in 1981 adequate to their reputation as an excellent live band and …maybe by selling the live album they would have made money and reached American radio stations!?
“How can I put this delicately? I don’t think quality is high on Angel Air’s priority list!”
😂🤣😎 David, your wording epitomizes lingual empathy!
GILLAN were very British, warts and all. I liked them for exactly that, but then I never got to decide US FM radio playlists in the early 80s. And among Foreigner, Journey, Toto, Styx and Kansas songs, GILLAN’s abrasive sonics would have sure stood out like a sore thumb.
And GILLAN didn’t want to Americanize their sound either, that sets them apart from Rainbow and Whitesnake who first evened out the edges to accomodate prevailing US tastes to then both end up 3/5 American (!) in their final line-ups. Ian could have gone the same way, but he didn’t want to, I mean just listen to the man:
QUOTE
“All the power was missing from it,” Gillan continues, setting down his glass, “I just hated it. The sound was more acceptable for American audiences, I suppose, but I don’t really give a monkey’s toss about American audiences or any audience when it comes to writing the songs. Which isn’t to say I don’t care about the fans, just that, ultimately, you have to make your own judgement on music, you’ve got to be proud of what you do because you’re the one who has to live with it, be it a success or a failure.”
“As far as I’m concerned the public can take me or leave me and what I do. No compromise at any stage at all. I’m not interested in it. I left Deep Purple for that reason, because suddenly we were beginning to do what the audience expected. Even if ‘Double Trouble’ had been multi-platinum…well, I haven’t played it since.”
UNQUOTE
We’re all builders (or wrecking balls) of our own destiny I guess. 😑
February 11th, 2025 at 23:35@23 I agree about Aachen being the best of the Angel Air live releases but the two RPM Live at the BBC releases have great sound and If You Believe Me from Double Trouble sounds great (unlike the Reading tracks). Sadly when the Triple Trouble set was released with it and the rest of the gig the mix/mastering didn’t match the original quality. It’s a shame that IG doesn’t like live albums because had they released a 1981 live album I think it would have boosted them (and matched Rainbow’s On Stage & Whitesnake’s Live in the heart as definitive live albums)
February 12th, 2025 at 08:01Has anybody ever released a live recording from the Readinmg Festival that sounded good? I can’t think of one. The way festivals work, you’re never going to achieve the sound of a more controlled environment single performance. It was an idiot idea to take that as source material, but Ian probably wanted something that represented the new line-up with Gers.
May I write something contentious, it’s been a while? 😈 I thought Rainbow’s On Stage sucked the big one (so did Cozy Powell btw – and Dio didn’t like it either, Blackmore has always viewed it as a contractual obligation), totally lackluster, undramatic and undynamic, a pale shadow of the Bain/Carey line-up. Cheapo packaging, bad editing, weird song and performance choices. The only redeeming thing about it is a nice performance of Litte Wing (or however they called that Jimi Hendrix song with Rainbow) on side 2.
The 1977 Munich recording creams On Stage into the ground several times over in ferocity, danger, enthusiasm and sound. Daisley was also a better, more controlled and authoritative bass player than Bain – and you can hear that on this recording especially well.
WS’ Live In The Heart Of The City was much better, but even on that there was a drop in quality between the wonderful earlier Hammersmith performance of the Duck Dowle-line-up (where are the rest of the tapes of that gig?) and the gig with Paicey where David’s voice was already showing some wear and tear. Dowle wasn’t Paice, he had a different style, but I never subscribed to the idea that his drumming was in any way inferior for Whitesnake. When I first saw Whitesnake, it was with him (and Jon had only recently joined) – it was the best WS gig I ever witnessed, an utterly vibrant performance, though a few later ones were still great as well. That said, my last fully satifying WS gig was on the Come An’ Get It Tour (which has been a while! 😂). The dozen or so other WS gigs I have seen since then all fall into the “You used to be better, David.”-category.
February 12th, 2025 at 14:55Uwe, I concur somewhat about On Stage. It’s not as good as it should have been. No Stargazer and the eternal shame that LITB wasn’t included and now appears lost being the real annoyances. That said it’s still good stuff – best version of KTK and the Blues is fantastic and the Live In Germany release show what it could have been if it was a triple album! I like Munich ’77 the ferocity in no small part due to RB being locked up the night before but I think Carey was more prominent than Stone who was the first of the characterless side men that RB employed (and which fatally undermined the return to rock set up in 2016)
The bootleg version of “live in the heart of the city” shows just how much of the vocals was re-recorded and how the live Coverdale then differed from the released version. It was quite a shock to me when I got the bootleg. But viewed with the benefit of hindsight it does cook IMO and the stuff left off was the typical padding that existed then and until the end in a typical Whitesnake set.
February 12th, 2025 at 15:32Here is Ian talking about Restless …or not !
February 12th, 2025 at 18:05https://youtu.be/djknMEa7zpk?si=2VB_qL3_04cYcgBG
And Now!!!
Here’s the man himself to answer all the questions and explain just what “Restless” is about!!
Over to you Ian! (Drum Roll……)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djknMEa7zpk
No….hang on a minute….did somebody put the wrong label on this clip?!
February 12th, 2025 at 18:10So now we know.
Not. 😑
David, true, Carey had more raunch than David Stone and was also more of a stage persona. David always looked bemused by what he was doing with Rainbow, a true Proggie he found the music underwhelming on a technical level. He’s said in interviews that he was bored most of the time. But he didn’t play badly as such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO9Z7S6Go6Y
Stone was a lot more classical and jazzier too than the self-taught Carey.
But among all the Rainbow keyboarders, there was no Colin Towns and certainly no Jon Lord (he had an invite at one point which he declined). Even Don Airey was still relatively formative when he played with Rainbow. Or not really allowed to extend himself, it might have been that. The keyboard position with Rainbow was the hottest seat of all, five of them in the course of seven records, drummers and bassists (at least those who recorded) were only four apiece and singers only a scant 😁 three. Colin Towns otoh recorded a whopping eight studio albums with Ian (two with IGB, six with GILLAN) from 1977-82. With the exception of Ritchie, no Rainbow member ever played/sang on more than four (Roger) of the seven studio albums of the band, with Dio, Cozy and Joe chalking up a respectable three each.
February 12th, 2025 at 22:18