Ian Gillan: The Autobiography of Deep Purple’s Singer Read online

  A gig in Amsterdam, at the Concertgebouw (I think), gave me the chance to do something different. We’d just driven from a show in Germany, and I had a severe bout of bronchitis, which I often used to get. I had a croaky voice, felt very unwell, and knew I’d be going into a fight with one arm tied behind my back (in a manner of speaking). So I decided to help sort out the illness in the backstage bar, and, while dealing with a couple of large Scotch and cokes in a beer glass, I became aware of ‘cue calls’. I was on notice that the band were cranking up ‘Highway Star’, and the next thing I knew was that Ian Hansford was shouting at me to ‘Get on stage, Ian, get on stage!’ Well, I guess I went into autopilot, and, in my finest Dick Turpin boots, I walked through the door to what I thought was the stage, except it was the entrance to the stage, and it was also at the top of a flight of carpeted stairs. Two balcony spots picked me out, and then brilliantly and professionally followed me, as I performed all kinds of mid-air manoeuvres, before landing flat on my back, and raising a full glass of my Scotch-and-coke to the cheering crowd! Not a drop was spilled, and the audience loved it. I don’t think I could have done a thing wrong after that, and, although I croaked my way through the show, nobody gave a toss!

  We were now locked in our own bubble, and nothing in the real world touched us as we went from one town to the next – although newsworthy, to me at least, were the facts that my Rolls-Royce had broken down, and that hot pants had arrived as the new design ‘shocker’, which fat and thin gals alike wore. Otherwise, apart from hearing Mick Jagger had been married in the South of France, and that Chelsea had won the European Cup against Real Madrid, life went on pretty much as usual, as we travelled to wherever John and Tony sent us.

  We made Fireball in our last recording project at De Lane Lea and the Olympic Studio, and it was also the last album we’d record for Warner Bros.

  As with most progressive hard-rock bands of that period, we avoided singles, but ‘Strange Kind of Woman’ (‘I’m Alone’ on the B side) was released in February, and the album was on the shelves in time for our next American tour of 1971.

  Opinions varied about Fireball, and I know Ritchie was quoted as saying, ‘It was nothing, really,’ going on to add that being on tour was no way to write an album, and that the only time we got to write in Deep Purple was when someone was ill. Well, given that, during the period in question, most of us had indeed been ill, including himself with appendicitis, I’m surprised he didn’t feel better about the project, while I thought we kept up our progressive standards with the album, and am proud of it: songs like ‘No No No’, ‘Demon’s Eye’, ‘The Mule’, ‘Fools’, ‘Anyone’s Daughter’ and ‘No One Came’, a lyric that simply echoes my fears then (and thereafter) about the ultimate horror of an empty hall. As for the track ‘Fireball’, well we found a new use for the central-heating system at the studio, so what you hear at the beginning – the whooshing sound – is simply the system being switched on!

  No one came from miles around

  And said, man your music’s really hot

  Oh, I knew what they meant…

  However, if I liked the album, I was definitely in the minority, because Jon, Roger and Ian Paice were also pretty negative about it, except to suggest it surely can’t have been that bad, because it went to the top of the UK charts in September, and made No. 32 in the States. And so another July arrived (1971), and we embarked on a major tour of Canada and America, playing huge arenas, football stadiums and halls, taking in places such as St Lawrence, Toronto, Buffalo, New York, Hamilton (Ontario). Further shows quickly followed that took us through the whole of August as well. We crossed America, passing through (stopping of course!) Philadelphia, Cleveland, Ohio, Milwaukee, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, Houston and Salt Lake City, to mention but a few, and now our fame was such that we began to travel in a personal jet, with Deep Purple slashed across it, and accompanied by Rod Stewart and the Faces, who were the real bad boys of rock ’n’ roll’! To be honest, Rod was a flash bastard (look who’s talking), but a great pro.

  Remember also that he and his band had been doing this sort of thing for years, so they knew every trick in the book! Of course, they were a great show, which in a way was surprising, because they were so into enjoying themselves that they were arseholed all the time! Ron Wood, Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones saw their job as one long party, so our hungry new band, out to impress, became a hard act for them to follow. Still they knew their business, but, my God, offstage they were something (even more than) else! For example, there was one gig at which Rod invited everyone back to his hotel, into which we were also booked. So what looked like a whole stadium of youngsters arrived in the lobby and other areas for what turned out to be one huge, long beach party, where all the straw shades were torched; a session upstairs involved Ritchie and Rod throwing food at everyone; and finally, when Russ Warner, from the label, came to calm things down, he was dumped in a bath. The hotel manager also came up to complain, and Ritchie bundled him up in a fire hose, which for some reason prompted me to start mooning, with a newspaper on fire and wedged up my bum! Sadly, the police arrived to spoil everything, but the record companies kindly picked up the bill for damage: $25, 000!

  And so the show would ‘up and off’ to the next venue, where the Faces would fall off the plane, be guided to the next concert hall, and entertain their fans, who’d just had forty-five minutes of Deep Purple! Noteworthy is the fact the transition from our large halls in the UK to America’s much bigger large halls, ice hockey arenas and football pitches called on new resources and reserves of energy and alcohol, a situation not helped by the fact we were touring with another band, who hardly set a great example when it came to moderation! I often found the whole thing daunting, and we’d all suffer in many ways. For example, at about lunchtime, I’d start to get superstitious, and would feel increasingly less inclined to chat to anybody. It was hard, and I’d go into my own little world, trying to focus on the night ahead. It wouldn’t be a question of worrying about the words – they’d vary anyway – and it wouldn’t be a question of how I might dance or move around, or what I’d say to the audience: it would be about fears – fears that someone might not be well, that the show might be less than perfect, constant fears, until we’d arrive at the next arena, where we’d hit the stage and fall into our wonderful groove!

  Even before we went out with the Faces, we’d become aware that our show might be getting a bit stale, and so we went to some lengths to look at it again, helped of course by the new material from Fireball, which helped stimulate the brain cells. Of course, our shared interest and ongoing willingness to improvise was at the heart of each performance, but, unlike with jazz, for example, we didn’t have to be intense or with furrowed brows, and we’d continue to see the lighter side of things being just as worthy to slot into a particular moment, if the mood felt right.

  My Aunt Nelly’s got a big fat belly

  And tits tied up with string

  She sits in the grass with her finger up her arse

  Singing, ‘Help, God save the King.’

  So our performances very seriously mattered to us, but that didn’t exclude moments of eccentricity such as ‘Aunt Nelly’ being permissible, or for Ritchie to borrow from ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, or for Jon to counterbalance things with imperious classical contributions, where he’d borrow from Bach fugues or the works of Tchaikovsky. None of what some might consider our off-the-wall moments were ever thought to diminish our claim to being ‘very serious’ people in our work; indeed, they have emerged and grown to enhance what we do.

  I was once reported as saying, ‘We play for whoever wants to hear us. If the hall’s full of heads smoking joints, that’s OK; but, if the next night it’s all schoolkids dancing about and yelling “Yeah … ‘Black Night’ … ‘Black Night’”, well that’s also perfectly OK by me.’ And that sums up my approach to rock ’n’ roll, in pursuit of which our guitarist started to give us an increasingly bad time with enc
ores, and we’d approach the end of some shows not knowing if he’d be coming back on stage with us. As mentioned earlier, we’d already been given the clue that this tendency might become more than an occasional whim, on which his final decision would usually be decided by whether he believed the fans were ‘deserving’ of an encore or not. However, whatever his decision might be, just the uncertainty as we approached closure was, shall we say, unhelpful!

  Frank Zappa once said that a musician can go crazy on tour – the hotel life, the concerts, the planes; and so perhaps our tour with the Faces had that kind of effect on us. Suddenly, it seemed important that we get back to the UK and rediscover our perspective and sanity, see whether we needed to change, and, if so, in what direction? Otherwise, so far as the management was concerned, rediscovering our perspective meant going straight back to work, and by 1 September we were back in Germany doing a TV special, followed by Vienna on the 4th, and eight more shows by the month end. One thing’s for sure: we could never say we were being neglected, and I’ll admit that, even when things were overwhelming, there were many occasions when the ‘job’ gave us moments to treasure, in a way that no other business could ever do. So our appearance at the Royal Albert Hall on 4 October was an example of that kind of respite and good feeling, as our families and friends were given use of the Royal Box. However, we learned soon after that rock concerts were banned for some time to come, because we’d chosen our visit to enter The Guinness Book of Records for being the loudest band in the world!

  Away from these mixed emotions and moments, Newman Street kept the ‘Purple project’ ever rolling, as arrangements were made for another American tour, and for us to record a new album, Machine Head, at Montreux in Switzerland. Of course, I know that, from the mere mention of Montreux, those who are familiar with us and our work will know what’s next, so here’s my account of the making of a song that would define the band for ever and a day. And of course I’m talking about ‘Smoke on the Water’!

  The town of Montreux is nestled at the foot of the mountains, along the shoreline of Lake Geneva, and the old Montreux Casino was its centrepiece – a building of great character and made entirely of wood. So it was here in the Casino that we planned the follow-up to Fireball, as we arrived the night before and checked into the Hotel Eden Palace au Lac nearby, leaving just enough time to catch the last show at the venue before it would be given over to our use.

  Now, it happens that I’d not long recovered from hepatitis, contracted during the tour of the States, so I was still a bit wobbly. However, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were on stage for that last night, and they had Flo and Eddie with them. So, on 6 December 1971, the prospect of watching this show cheered me up no end, and when we arrived everything was going great guns.

  Of course, in normal circumstances, it would never have been on our minds, or even of passing interest, that the Casino’s owner, Claude Nobs, was going to carry out some major improvements to the building during the ‘winter window’, when ‘everybody’ had gone skiing to Zermatt. And it would have been of even less interest to know that said works were to include some rewiring, as evident by the loose cables that ran along some of the cornices. None of this meant anything to me at the time, while, looking back, I realise we must have been in many buildings all over the world that were technically not 100 per cent. Therefore, what was about to happen in Montreux can only be spoken of with the benefit of hindsight – at least that’s how I see it.

  During the show, I have this vague recollection of a guy of Mediterranean appearance walking in, but I thought nothing of it until, the next thing I knew, there was a flash of light followed by the sharp crack of a flare gun – and then the troubles began. It later emerged that the person I’d seen arriving had apparently parked his Rolls-Royce outside, and come in to simply make a ‘happening’, I suppose! Apparently, no evil was intended, but never in his wildest imagination could he have expected his action to set off the tragic sequence of events that followed, as a spark from his flare must have touched some exposed wiring around the covings, and then it was whoosh, as the whole lot went up like a firework display, quickly turning the Casino into a raging inferno, as the woodwork instantaneously combusted like kindling.

  Zappa was brilliant, taking positive command of a situation that was rapidly turning to chaos around us. From his vantage point on stage, he directed and urged calm, as the audience began to leave, but there were corners of the Casino where the evacuation went badly wrong, including where some of the kids threw themselves through huge plate-glass windows. Many suffered cuts and other injuries, but Zappa stayed for as long as he possibly could, as the hall rapidly filled with acrid smoke – until even he had to leave, with us just ahead of him.

  Strange things happen in such situations, and they can cause surprising reactions, including questioning how priorities are shuffled in a crisis. For example, Zoe suddenly realised she’d left her coat behind, as if that were important in the surrounding chaos; but, despite this, I became no different to her in the sense of decision making, because I went back into the building through the front entrance to recover it!

  However, that illustration of how we rationalise and make choices, or don’t, isn’t why I mention the subject now, because what I came across inside the burning building was astonishing. Everyone was calling for Claude Nobs, because he was the man who knew all the answers, because he was in control, because he was … well, he was Montreux! Otherwise there was nothing to see: no exit signs, no stage, no kids! All that could be heard was the yelling and shrieking of frightened people, but with no sign of Claude, only smoke, and plenty of it, as people who saw me started shouting, ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ Others were still calling, ‘Where’s Claude?’

  And then I was outside again, and soon learned what had happened to him. It seems he’d gone to the kitchens, which were underground, realising that some of the kids must have gone through doors that could only have led them that way, until they became trapped in smoke-filled spaces, the whereabouts of which only he knew. One by one, or in small groups, Claude led the youngsters to safety, repeating the journey until he was satisfied that nobody remained, while outside, and to my surprise, I realised I still held Zoe’s coat.

  We all came out to Montreux

  On the Lake Geneva shoreline

  To make records with a mobile

  We didn’t have much time

  Frank Zappa and the Mothers

  Were at the best place around

  But some stupid with a flare gun

  Burned the place to the ground

  As for Claude, well, he’s the ‘Funky Claude… pulling kids out the ground’ in the song’s second verse.

  The emergency services don’t need spectators when they have their work to do, so we drifted back to the hotel, where we met up in the restaurant for a few drinks and a meal, and from there to watch the Casino burn, flames high in the sky, smoke billowing. Some thought the brightness and intensity was caused by the downdraught from the mountains, but, whatever the reasons might have been, the flames did lean majestically towards the lake, as the smoke drifted across quiet water.

  Two or three days later, Roger said he’d had a dream and had woken up sweating, saying the words, ‘Smoke on the water’. He’d written them down and suggested to me that we write a song about the disaster. It just so happened that another mind was working along similar lines, and Ritchie had already found the riff that would soon become the classic rock intro to how Roger and my lyric would recall how events at the Casino had unfolded. Twenty-one years later I travelled to Montreux to hand over a Harp Rock Plaque for fixing to the wall of either the Casino or the hotel where the song was written, and Claude was present for the occasion. Quite where it finally ends up, we shall see, but I gather Claude’s annual concerts are now held at a new venue called the Stravinsky Auditorium!

  With our recording venue suddenly taken from us, rapid action was necessary, and, taking time out from the mopping-up op
erations and his own problems, Claude managed to relocate us into the vacant Grand Hotel Suisse Majestic, along with the Rolling Stones’ mobile recording studio that we’d hired. The hotel was also being refurbished, but they said we could still use it, and Martin Birch arrived to set things up. He parked the mobile outside, and went in to convert a corridor, which had a T-shape layout, into a studio. He put the drums on the T itself; the guitars and organ were positioned at one end (facing into a cupboard filled with mattresses); and he then told us that, to get to the truck, we had to go through the kitchen, then through a bathroom, out onto a balcony (in the freezing cold), and return to the hotel via another bathroom, until we arrived at where we were parked up. The situation called upon a lot of creative management, but Martin was brilliant in this kind of work, and, one way or another, he adapted the place into something we could use. A little while later, ‘Smoke on the Water’ was ready to become the legendary story we all know about, while the album, Machine Head, was also completed, and would become a huge success.

  It was around this time that the management came up with the idea that we should set up our own record label, and so we convened for another of those chats where, once again, I didn’t like the idea. The concept was to set up ‘Purple Records’, and, a bit later, ‘Oyster’, about which Tony had already been in talks with Warner Bros. But during this time I also remembered one of Bill Reid’s little talks, which touched on the possibility of conflict of interest. Well, of course, I wasn’t the businessman in the organisation, but it annoyed me to see the gradual erosion by outsiders into what I saw as our interests as musicians. The management just seemed to want to do more and more things themselves, having started with the agency coming in-house, before the same happened with the promotion. Of course, they’d already had the publishing for some while, and now we were to become a record label? So I asked them how well and correctly they thought they could manage us when they had the whole thing sewn up like that. I mean, how do you negotiate the best deal for your artist, when you’re negotiating with yourself? It seemed so obvious, but the old divide-and-rule act went into top gear, and Purple Records was formed to deal with Machine Head in the UK. The album topped the charts for three weeks, helped by a major TV advertising campaign (April 1972), and later made No. 7 in America.