That Deep Purple are living one of the most significant moments of their recent career is now beyond question. The partnership with Bob Ezrin began more than ten years ago with Now What?! brought them back into the UK top 30 on a regular basis, producing perhaps the best run of albums by any band born in the 60s still active (Stones included). Something unthinkable at the start of the new millennium, when Ian Gillan and co were considered dinosaurs who only entered the studio for the excuse to get back on stage and play the old classics.
It is an even more exceptional result if we consider that the Mark, the formations with which we are used to representing them, with the farewell of Steve Morse and the entry of Simon McBride have even reached nine: a real unicum in the history of rock. Who would have thought that the new album =1 would have suffered from the absence of the American guitarist, he was very wrong and Gillan, who is decidedly excited about the new release, explains why.
I think becoming the guitarist of Deep Purple is one of the most thankless tasks on earth for a musician. Even Joe Satriani and Steve Morse were told “yeah good, but you're not Blackmore”. How does Simon experience all this?
I think it's a little easier for Simon, precisely because most of the work has been done for him by others (laughs). Ritchie is the one who created most of the guitar parts that we play every night and so it's natural to have to go through this thing. It's like a tax. Simon entered on tiptoe and this helped everyone: us who suddenly found ourselves having to give up Steve because of his family problems and the audience who had known him for thirty years. However, he also knows perfectly well that he didn't escape it, now that he has also played on an album he will have his fair share of weight to support.
Also because I believe that the difference with Morse is quite marked, at least from the point of view of feeling, of the approach to the instrument.
Absolutely. Steve was American, so he had a different background than ours. He came from southern rock, progressive and jazz and that forced us to review many of the styles that we now considered our own. Satriani said that it would be more difficult to replace him than Blackmore and in a way he was right. Steve is the one who allowed us to get to this point, precisely because he broke some patterns that seemed immutable, he brought us back to life just when Ritchie's umpteenth farewell seemed to condemn us to oblivion. Having said that, I admit that returning to a less complex type of songwriting helped me in the writing phase. I'm not talking about musical complexity, technique or things like that, but about how music reaches people. I think =1 be more direct, a little more similar to certain things we used to compose.
Yes, you can feel the difference, although the paradox of Deep Purple is that as soon as the first chord starts, whatever the instrument that produces it, the doubts about which band is playing vanish. How is this possible? Does the soul of a band really exist?
It exists by force. Think also of Black Sabbath (which Gillan was the singer for the album Born Agained.). They've changed lineups a thousand times, but then if a song comes on the radio you can't have any doubts. And no one who's been through Deep Purple has ever aped his predecessor, which adds value to the theory of the soul. It's like a football team that has a great tradition in European cups: you can be sure that maybe it will go through a few lean years, but then that DNA will come back out. And no one can go on with the same lineup for decades.
Ok, but how does it work then? Are you a democratic band? Where does it all start?
An unwritten rule is not to talk about certain things, especially politics and religion. A good rule borrowed from every self-respecting pub. We stay far away from each other when we get off tour, we are all very different and we have never forced it. The only thing that has never changed is our way of composing: we continue to meet in the studio and start jamming. No one ever arrives with a piece ready to propose to the others and those who joined over time immediately understood how things worked and behaved accordingly. We jam for days and record everything, then when we find something intriguing we isolate it and start again from there. This is the result of being a band of pure musicians. I simply ride the pony.
So the texts are never born separately?
No, absolutely not. I've always loved writing stories, since I was a boy, but I can't compose songs alone, much less without knowing I have a project in my hands. I prefer to sleep in my free time (laughs). Of course what I write today is relevant to the life of a seventy year old, which is not to talk about the decline of eyesight or health problems, but it is clear that songs about sports cars and beautiful women today I find ridiculous. When I was at the height of self-indulgence rock 'n' roll seemed the best. It is simply evolution, it is not denying, it is just moving forward and not being ridiculous.
One thing that doesn’t change is your use of puns, rhetorical figures and allegories that have always characterized your writing style. When did your passion for a certain use of language begin?
I think it was born with me, because I've always been told about my propensity to use less conventional terms and structures. I've always liked the comic side of things, the grotesque one if you like. It's not just a matter of stylistic exercises or tricks to make people laugh, but of telling things from another angle. They've always talked about me as a gifted singer and for a long time they didn't look at how I wrote. Of course, as I said before, maybe the topics of some songs were absolutely negligible, but even there I tried to express basic concepts with a different style. Over time I've refined this aspect, maybe some double meanings have disappeared, and I've often used it for album titles too: sometimes it worked, other times it didn't, like for Bananas (laughs). However, I have always been convinced that you can write and laugh about anything.
You have also become famous for your improvisations. Today that aspect is less marked, but there is always some space to show your skills. So much so that it is still difficult to hear a piece played the same way live twice. Is it a whim or what?
I had the fortune of knowing Luciano Pavarotti for many years and of talking to him at length. This thing you are talking about left him astonished. He said to me: «How can you play six times Smoke On The Water and never make it sound like the original or like the performance a few days before? ” For him it was fascinating and inconceivable at the same time, because in his field the challenge was to get as close to perfection as possible. He said that they would have crucified him if he had taken certain liberties. You know, it all depends on the evenings. There were some even in the 70s where we totally sucked, that's fine. There you're not varying on the theme, you just suck (laughs), but rock'n'roll allows you to do that. In fact, sometimes people find that exceptional too. If you think that in Made in Japan Ritchie gets the riff wrong Smoke On The Water and then makes you believe you did it on purpose…
The title of the album makes me think of something sarcastic.
In a certain sense, yes. The title came to me suddenly while I was sitting in traffic and started looking around at what was around me and it all seemed completely senseless. First of all, what I was doing. We were all headed towards the same place, with the same means and all probably convinced that we were doing it better than everyone else. I felt as stupid as everyone else around me and I thought that only in stupidity are we truly equal. This general flattening, where the peculiarities of others can no longer emerge, where we are uniform and dependent on everything except things that have value, made me a little sad, but it also gave me the inspiration from which many of the lyrics on the album start. Well, Deep Purple are a bit of an antidote for me, because I often have the opportunity to step aside and listen to them play, each with their own musical origins, often opposed to each other. The title is a bit the opposite of what Deep Purple represent for me.
Your solo albums were hard to find for a long time, before a massive re-release in the early 2000s. Today we are more or less at the same point. Are you writing something new or do you still intend to make them available again?
The biggest problem is related to the different labels that published them, so a homogeneous work will be very difficult to achieve, but I've been trying for a long time to put together as many as possible to give meaning to a recovery work. I'm taking care of it personally because I want it to have a logic and not be just a financial operation, so I'll take the time I need. No, I haven't written anything for myself anymore, precisely because, as I was telling you, I can't work alone, without a band and a defined project. But I don't miss making records under my own name.
Since you mentioned money, when people think of bands like you or the Stones, the more cynical ones say that you keep going mostly for economic reasons.
The most cynical probably know that everyone does it for money. Even when we were young we did it for money. Who doesn't do a job for money? Who does it hoping to earn as little as possible? The real problem is not doing it for money, but being careful not to lose your integrity. When you lose that, then you can really say you're only doing it for profit. There are bands that haven't had any fun for years and carry on, just as there are politicians who don't give a shit about their country and still get paid. For a long time we played in places other than the O2 Arena, our records didn't even seem to interest the old fans anymore. If things are different now I think it's only because we never adapted to anything. And we've maintained the integrity I was talking about earlier.
Your first big success when you joined Deep Purple was with the role in Jesus Christ Superstar. Do you have a spiritual side?
Yes, of course I do, but it has nothing to do with dogmas or anything like that. My religion is based on nature, which is the most complex and evolved system that has ever existed on earth, and my prophet is Charles Darwin. We think that soon we will no longer be able to go back, arriving at destroying the world because of our wicked behavior. But we have not understood anything. It will always be nature that screws us, that takes back the spaces. This is enough to put me back at peace with the world.