A biography for Ian Gillanhasn’t been written yet.
“I feel very fortunate to have been able to do what I do for a living.”
“If you've got a wound, and it's just about to heal up, and it's got a nice scab on it, and you think in two or three days, that's gonna be completely healed, then somebody comes along and pokes it with a stick, and it opens up again. And that's what happens with the Ritchie-and-Deep Purple situation.”
“I'm very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction - that's nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It's now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.”
“I used to do interviews - I still do - interviews every day, all day. And you go from maybe doing a couple of professional interviews, where you can hear the sound right, to everyone else sounds like they're at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“When you're young, you're immortal, or so you think, and you never think there will be problems ahead.”
“'Classic rock' is never a label that we've given ourselves - it's one of the many labels that's been imposed on us.”
“It wasn't slung together by a producer and a publisher. We decided we were going to take hold of our music and let it evolve organically.”
“It means a lot to a lot of people, 'Smoke On The Water.'”
“I assume I must have a pension, but I don't know for sure. I have heard of ISAs, but I can't tell you if I have any.”
“In Poland, the whole saying is, 'You've got one eye to Morocco and the other to the Caucasus.' That's the heart of the culture. In England, they say it less romantic: 'You've got a wandering eye.' The saying means my main stream in life must be Deep Purple. That's my main job. Then every now, and I can wander off and have one eye to Morocco.”
“Things evolve. People mature.”
“The band's a really close-knit family. We've got fantastically good friendships and relationships that have developed after all these years.”
“When I picked up my guitar, I spent the first day learning the chord E, the second day A, then B7, and all of a sudden, I could play the blues.”
“I've done a lot of research on science and theology to try and get a better understanding of what happens to the human soul or what potential it has.”
“When I was in my formative years, I rejected Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin. I now realise they were all great artists, but at the time, as a young man, you have to clear the decks.”
“Deep Purple was sinking with Ritchie. We were playing to quarter houses in Europe, which is one of our strongest territories - in Germany. Smaller venues, and they weren't even full. So had we continued that way, and had Ritchie not walked out, we would have finished; that would have been the end of it.”
“We have been called old rockers, rock pensioners, and dinosaurs.”
“In the early Seventies, I bought a dilapidated hotel in north Stoke for about £100,000 and spent the same amount again renovating it, putting in a guitar-shaped swimming pool, painting the bathrooms purple, and installing gold dolphin taps.”
“We were the first generation of rock & roll, but life goes on.”
“I love Buffalo. The people here are wonderful, genuine; they look you straight in the eye.”