Ian Gillan… pure genius!! His solo album, One Eye To Morocco is a vocal work of art.

There has never been a singer who has such creativity and variety.

Listening to Bologna is can safely say he still has the strenght to come back with a vengeance…..

But the TOTAL SUM still saddens because he s working with the wrong man…….

Bring back together MK 2 and they will still blow your socks off, Im sure…..

Now, what about that petition to change that stubborns man mind?

My health certainly got worse but in general I m the same.

Ofcourse a lot happened, insights improved, got deeper or changed…….
The CORE is the same

RB ofcourse changed outwards although I think he did a lot to slow that down.
I dont think he s a lesser player at all.

He spits the old fashioned fire while doing a fart……

Hehehehe

I meant to say ofcourse he is still able to deliver if he WANTED to.

In the meantime we have to tolerate a lot of nonsense and patiently(….)and eagerly await the magic moments inbetween…..

And from what I hear that ex-purple guitarist aint the same he was 20 years ago…….

Hands up who hasnt changed in the last 20 years…

Anyone…?

Anyone…?

Sure Ian is not the same singer he was 20 years ago. But can you tell me what musician has THE hardest role to hold and measure up to over a very extended period? The rock singer - that’s who.

Ian’s voice has CHANGED, NOT deteriorated and I for one will still go and see him any day, any time, any where I can afford to simply because IG and the rest of the band are SIMPLY THE BEST.

I’ll ignore the slightly missed notes because when I look at the whole package it is COMPLETE.

Cheers all.

Cheers !!

Absolutely right!!

Cheers and bottoms up to you all
( Ger, Assen, Netherlands, maybe the greatest Ian Gillan-fan in the universe ) (gillanrocks.com)

way behind, they say…just kidding, keep on rocking &

let’s drink some more Cheers

Nice lingo: Pushing the envelope…
I don’t think Ian did that too much in the Mark II a era. I used to be a rnr singer when I was young. As a low baritone I could sing most of the stuff of the classic records, some with problems, but it was possible (I didn’t have to go on tour with them after all). For Ian’s range those songs must have been quite comfortable (apart from the screaming bits that is).
The MK II b songs however, were often completely out of my reach which would mean they were at the upper end of Ian’s range, something which is very hard to maintain on a night after night basis. Obviously there was a feeling in the reunion Purple to prove that despite their age they could still cut it - and as extremely high pitched vocals were the fashion of the day, the competition with the younger bands had to be met in the vocal department as well.

One mustn’t forget either that in the early Purple days Ian usually sang between 7 and 9 songs per concert (with lots of breathing space in between), which is much less strain on the voicebox than belting out 14, 16 or 20 numbers every night which became inevitable when the long soloing came out of fashion.

All in all: IG we love you - wouldn’t want ANYbody else in your place!!!! But take a good look at yourself and decide which sungs are for singable at your age……..

Excellent analogy. Gillan may not be throwing 100 mph fast balls, but he still can toss the heat.

Re: #11, #12

More excellent observations. Great analysis, guys.

Great way to put it regarding Mr. Gillan. Though I’d have to differ with your percentage numbers….I’d rate him at least 10% higher than you did. Since he has ALWAYS had a varying degree of trouble with consistency, even back in the 70’s, I’d say that just goes with the territory of making your name by pushing the envelope to the major extreme, thereby putting the critics in a perfect position to criticize when you don’t quite hit the high mark of your better days. Had he given any thought at the beginning about the slight possibility that he would still be in Purple 40 years later on, he probably would have planned for the long haul and minimized the screaming and centered more on singing with his natural voice. Now it is too late, due to the fact that he Hard Cores only grade him on the extremes and not the overall. He has a wonderful voice and Many Purple songs don’t require the SCREAMING. So, I say, pull from the songs that can be sung well and bang them out. Do a new album with songs sung in his range and bang them out. They and He still have plenty of Umpff and should be credited, not criticized.

Cheers

Just checked some of the Bologna broadcast - nothing really new for me there.
In some songs, he’s surprisingly good (Wasted Sunsets, TBRO), in others (Fireball, ROTD) the familiar problems appear: he sounds thin and creaky in places or just misses the cue.
The overall impression is still fairly good under conditions of constant touring and a live concert and I must admit that it is rather a pain to look at him struggling than to listen to what he actually delivers.
A am just talking about his singing here - his high pitched screams may be his trademark, but I find them dispensable in most of the songs.

I have the feeling that his occasional problems are not in the first place voice problems - his voice as such (what is left of it) is kept in pretty good shape these days (in contrast to many recordings of the 80s where he was often hoarse, ill or had no voice at all) - it’s rather a problem of running out of air halfway through a song. You can often hear that he sings the verses after a solo, when he had a chance to catch his breath, better than the second verse. He can still deliver the extremely high bridge in “Perfect Strangers” (I am the echo of your past etc.) , but when he has to sing an agressive song like “Fireball” which requires a fairly high pitch for a quite long time, he often struggles.
The Bologna concert shows him having trouble with the verses in “Mary Long” but the ad-libbing in the end, where can just let his voice float along without too much pressure, is just great.
I think the fact that they play many songs slower than in the past can also be interpreted as an attempt to adapt to Ian’s breathing problems (40 years of smoking taking their toll) .

That said it is something of a miracle that he is still going - nothing to be expected by the rate his voice deteriorated in the 80s.

The way I see it:
By the time they recorded “Perfect Strangers” he may have had about 90 % left of what he had in 1972 (cf “Highway Stars” from Australia 1984).
In the following years he ruined much of that. He had to sing songs way out of his range night after night (Gypsy’s Kiss, Hard Lovin Woman) and his offstage behaviour certainly wasn’t helpful either. Many live recordings of that period are just atrocious (cf “Hungary Days” 1987, OMG!!)
After leaving Purple he seems to have recovered a fair bit until the 1993 reunion - the shows I know from the tour (Stuttgart, Birmingham, Stockholm) are all quite good.
He seems to have reached another peak - maybe about 75% of 1972 - in the mid Nineties. He sounds quite good on LATO, excellent in Montreux 96 and the show in Fort Lauderdale (”Purple Sunshine” 1995) must be one of his best performances post 1984.
The downward path must have set in with the Abandon tour - when I saw them in February 1998 he was in top form, but the recordings I know from the months to follow (Total Abandon, Concerto, Made in Japan 2000, Montreux 2000)present Ian in various degrees of struggling, and his voice is definitely worse than Mid Nineties.
Since then he seems to have found ways to sing in a less consuming way and despite his aging maintain a certain level above sheer mediocrity - including the occasional highlight and the occasional lowpoint (Montreux 2006). Overall I would say he has still got 60% left of his Made In Japan days, and that truly IS amazing, because even that percentag still places him in the Champions League.

But we mustn’t fool ourselves. Every year, every tour will take its toll on Ian, he won’t get better, that’s for sure and the tour after the next album may well be the last hurrah.

Every time I hear you sing
It’s my heart that takes a swing
Your songs give me so much joy
Lyrics and music are of the best alloy

The voice that makes me cry
The voice that makes me shy
I know that many people beg to differ
But it’s your voice that makes me shiver

Cheers

If we don’t mention those 2 songs HS and ST, on the current Italian tour Gillan sang 10 times better than he used to sing in the late 80’s (check out HOBL tour footages on youtube) and early 90’s (check out TBRO Tour footages).
I repeat: NOT TO MENTION HS and ST…

What about brilliant singing, please listen to the Wasted Sunsets from Bologna again

Ok, that’s another point.
Highway Star and Space Trucking - here’re the two songs which require extremely high-pitched screaming and Gillan has difficulties on it… BUT let’s forgive those 2 songs while 65yrs old man sings another 18 songs brilliantly and the band gives us 2 HOURS OF REAL ROCK CONCERT!

I’d only dream if I was even alive when I become 65, hehe…

I agree with your comments, but I think you didn’t exactly get the point about my review. I talked about objective problems on that particular night, and I NEVER wrote or even suggested IG was a bad singer. In fact, he’s my absolute favourite, so let me put it straight if this wasn’t clear: Ian Gillan was FANTASTIC in London and in Toulouse AND he has problems with the high ones on some of the songs (especially in Toulouse).

Ian worked it out alright in Bologna, but you exaggerate about the ‘depth’ factor, many times throughout the show he was very thin and out of key, I just think the band helped hide it with their massively energetic performance. Admit it, he was far from ‘perfect’ but still worked it out overall. There is a significant difference.

CHEERS and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!