Deep Purple: APPROACHING LAVENDER

Deep Purple: APPROACHING LAVENDER

FEATURES

Sal Treppiedi

Much to everyone's surprise, the reunion of Deep Purple’s Mark II lineup (vocalist Ian Gillan, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist/producer Roger Glover, keyboardist Jon Lord and drummer Ian Paice) has proven to be a durable one, producing two respectable studio LPs (Perfect Strangers and House of Blue Lights) and the new live double album Nobody's Perfect. The latter collection makes it clear that the trailblazing fivesome aren’t resting on their considerable laurels, and are still capable of producing vital music, even when rehashing their greatest hits. We spoke recently with the Purps’ dueling Ians, Gillan and Paice ....

Weren’t you against doing another live album?

Gillan: “I was. I hate live albums. I despise them and detest them. I never heard Made In Japan until recently. Roger forced me to sit down and listen to Made In Japan. I don’t mind live albums from other people, I just don’t like live albums that I am involved with. It seems so irrelevant to the feeling of the concert and the feeling of the show. I can’t see anything other than commercial value in it. I was totally against it. In fact, having said it so many times, our manager, Bruce, honed me and said, ‘What do you think about doing a live album? I said, ‘Do t you remember what I said a hundre thousand million billion times? Event ally, I had to write him a letter saying tha: I was not interested.”

Why did you change your mini

Gillan: ”1 had no say because I was completely outvoted. The idea e olved during the last tour. There was tape machine there, just to keep a re ord of the show. At the time it was considered unimportant that there was no one attending to it. The tape would run out and if the sound engineer saw that it run out, he would just put another reel in. Lot peopie were saying that it sounded real good, and then it became more and more serious. There were no overdubs, but there is a little trickery and some editing going on here and there.”

Paice: ‘‘You can’t release a song with the tape running out, so you have to do some splicing.”

Gillan: “There is actually one song that starts in Oslo and finishes in Phoenix. The rest of it is great it’s probably the most accurate idea of what a Deep Purple show was like on the last tour.”

Paice: “Made In Japan was done over three nights, and we were aware that we were there to make a live record. That changes the way you think about the way you play, and you do things a bit more safely. Everything was in the right tempo, everything was real proper. With this one, we eventually forgot that the tape was on. You knew if it wasn’t right this night that you were playing for the audience and that you would get it right five nights later, so it was much more of a live atmosphere.”

It was said that this album was going to feature a lot of post-reunion material.

Paice: “We really didn’t have enough new stuff to make a complete album. The idea in the end was to make it a document of the tour that we did last year. With the exception of ‘Hush,’ it is a copy of the stage act from last year, with all the old numbers that we had done before and live versions of the new numbers. The only reservation I had was that there was stuff on there that people had earlier live versions of. In the end, I realized that it was still fun and that they are different speeds and different emotions. It was just a document of last year’s tour. It’s probably the last time we will use that stage act.”

Gillan: “That was another justification. It’s very hard to drop ‘Highway Star’ or ‘Smoke On The Water,’ because if I was going to a show, I’d be really disappointed if an artist said that they were not going to play any old stuff and that they were only going to play stuff off the last two albums. That’s why the show has been getting longer—we’ve been doing two, two-and-a-half shows, because some of those songs are going to have to stay, I imagine that ‘Space Truckin’ is finished—people are going to always ask why we dropped that anyway. I think what we might do is introduce some more Deep Purple old numbers, perhaps ones we have not featured in the past—maybe ‘Flight Of The Rat’ or ‘Into The Fire.’ ” What made you decide to rework “Hush” as a studio jam on Nobody’s Perfect?

“/ hate live albums. I despise them and detest them.” —Gillan

Paice: “Ritchie had this thought in his head that it might make a good disco record—we spent a couple of days on the road trying out some new ideas for the song. Anyway, when Roger was listening to the concert tapes, he had some recording equipment set up in case we came up with an idea that we wanted to put down on tape. We got to jamming a little and we decided we would do a different version of ‘Hush.’ Jon and Roger worked some chord changes, started the tape and we did it. It sounded fun. It’s not meant to be taken seriously—anything that starts with a chicken cannot be taken too seriously. It’s just a little gift.’’

Has touring become a routine?

Paice: “Only for the road crew. T^ey j worked very hard, but everything is organized for them. Everything char, es for us—I defy anyone to go to two shows and hear the same show. The songs may always be the same, but what happe ns between the songs is never the sam ”

Gillan: “It is never the same. It is c ily because of Ian and Roger, the rhyt m section, that we can do this. About six months after Roger and I joined he group—which was a radical change jn style for the band—Ritchie, during a dr m solo, was bored and he came over to ne and said that he was going to blow me off stage. I told him to screw him elf because I was going to blow him off stage. That was the beginning of a rtain amount of interplay between ve; e, guitar and keyboards. I think there is this danger and challenge, as well as fun in spontaneity and improvisation, that keeps us on our toes. The last tour that we did was, for me, the best tour that I ever lid in my life. To be excited about that row is great.”

Paice: “You can’t fake it if you’re not enjoying yourself. You cannot fool ali the people all the time.”

A lot of water’s gone under he bridge between, say, Made In Jeran and Nobody’s Perfect. How has the band changed?

Gillan: “We’ve been apart for ten years. We’ve all played with different musicians. We get back together and the chemistry is still Deep Purple. For instance, ‘Woman From Tokyo’ is not on Made In Japan. I don’t think we ever did that live because I couldn’t sing it. But I’ve learned a bit more about singing since those days. It’s one hell of a song to sing. The thing that is absolutely vital to the whole thing now is to see ‘Perfect Strangers’ and ‘Knocking At Your Back Door’ there along with ‘Smoke On The Water’ and ‘Highway Star’ and see how good the band has come back in terms of originality and purpose. Those songs give me so much pleasure because they’re songs that we would not have recorded in 1969 or 1973. Those are songs of another era and yet they are compatible.”

Paice: “If anything, the energy level is higher. It is much less inhibited. The spirit of rock ’n’ roll is timeless. We never tried to be in on any trend. We never tried to be in fashion or out of fashion. It’s just rock and roll.”

Gillan: “We tried to do the best we could and enjoy ourselves at the same time. Screw trends or fashions. We had to make the judgements six months before the public did. Every now and then, what we did coincided with public taste and you get a hit record.”

“You can’t fake it if you’re not enjoying yourself.”

— Paice

Paice: “Take ‘Woman From Tokyo,’ for instance. To me, that is much more of an ’80s song than it is a ’70s song. Tempo and construction definitely means more now, when most rock ’n’ roll songs have a slower tempo. Therefore, you could say that that song was 10 or 12 years ahead of its time.

How have your audiences changed?

Gillan: “It depends on the country. In England and Germany, it’s just the same as it ever was. American music audiences tend to be wider in age. In England, when life starts getting serious and they get married or something, you don’t see them rockin’ and rollin’ anymore. They have responsibilities and with money so scarce, that is where it stops. What has happened is that it has increased on the younger end.”

When Deep Purple tours now, the band shares bills almost exclusively with other hard-rock and heavy metal bands. But that wasn’t always the case in the ’70s, was it?

Gillan: “We used to work with people with Buddy Miles, Fleetwood Mac and Small Faces. Every one of those tours was brilliant. Almost all of the tours had really substantial bands. We didn’t headline all those tours. We opened for Rod Stewart and the Small Faces—that was the tour that broke us.”

Paice: “Even when Billy Preston opened it was brilliant. In those days, we could always say, ‘What was the best thing available?’ It didn’t matter if it was the same sort of band. As long as they could deal with an auditorium situation and get the crowd ready for you, that was enough.”

Gillan: “I’ll tell you what a dream of mine is, that I would love to see—and this just plucking a name out of the air—Deep Purple and the Eurythmics together. They could headline, as far as I’m concerned. Something along those lines. I think the music would be very compatible.”

Tell me about the upcoming studio LP.

Gillan: “It’s coming along very slowly. After Roger was finished doing all the hard work on the live album, we had some gear set up so we would jam. A few ideas came up, but it’s still just the early stages. Nothing is stitched together, but the mood is definitely there. Coming off The House of Blue Light, I think we are going to go back to more of a straight ahead rock ’n’ roll album.”