A biography for Ian Gillanhasn’t been written yet.
“I wake up every day looking forward to the concert that night. I don't think you need much more inspiration than that.”
“Internet is a good and convenient device for us for easy communication. It has lots of value.”
“I'm not a writer; I'm not a novelist.”
“What happens is we finish the show, have a couple of drinks, go back to the hotel, talk, and that's it.”
“Although he appeared in some awful movies, Elvis could also be pretty damn good as an actor.”
“'Smoke On The Water' was ignored by everybody to begin with. We only did it in the shows because it was a filler track from 'Machine Head.' But then, one radio station picked up on it, and Warner Bros. edited it down to about three and a half minutes. It then started getting played by lots of different radio stations.”
“I can't do one thing at a time. If I'm writing song lyrics, I've got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I'm working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.”
“I don't think happiness comes with money, but if you are hungry, you can't be as happy as if you aren't hungry.”
“My grandad was an opera singer, my uncle a jazz musician; I was a boy soprano in the church choir. But the first performance with Deep Purple was something I'll never forget. All elements were working brilliantly.”
“I know the guys in Metallica. I'm very honored that they were influenced by Deep Purple when they started, and they've always been very kind to us.”
“I do ironing not only for myself but for everyone at home, everyone in the studio if they want it, and if I run out of ironing to do, I put everything back in the washing machine and get it out again clean so I have some ironing to do.”
“I hate it in America where the protocol seems to be you are expected to tip regardless of the quality of service. I like to tip when it's not being demanded of me, and if the service has been good, I tip quite generously.”
“Infinity is almost impossible for an eight-year-old to grasp. It's an inquiring age, and you're beginning to shape your thoughts and questions about life in general at that stage.”
“I have been touring since I got my first band in 1962, so there is no problem there. We are basically performing musicians, so that's what we do.”
“No matter what I do, I've always recognized that Deep Purple is primarily an instrumental band. That's where all the music comes from in rehearsals - it all stems from the music.”
“The reason 'Fireball' is my favorite album of that period is that without 'Fireball,' we would never have been able to make 'Machine Head.'”
“The biggest income we make is from live performances, without any doubt. That's about a 4-to-1 ratio from anything else.”
“I realised that if I wanted to carry on with my musical dreams, I had to change, so I started meditating, and I changed my life entirely.”
“It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn't write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers - all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.”
“The only advice I can give is to absorb as much as you can from as wide a spectrum as you can. If you're in a rock band and only soak up Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple kind of beginnings, then you're not going to have much leeway.”