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Trimming the self-indulgence
Classic Rock magazine reviews Gillan’s Future Shock for their Album of the Week Club.
Fondly regarded in their day, mainly because of their proximity to the classic Mk II Deep Purple sound, it wasn’t until the release of Future Shock in 1981 that Gillan really came into their own. Preceded by the success of singles like the covers of Trouble and New Orleans, it also contained some of the best material vocalist Ian Gillan had leant his name to since his Purple heyday, not least the witty No Laughing In Heaven.
“It was really the start of me being publicly irreverent,” Gillan told us. “It harked back to when I was 13 years old, asking questions at Sunday school like, ‘Father, what was the immaculate conception?’, and getting answers like, ‘You have to have faith in God, my son. Faith will guide you’.
“And I began to realise that I didn’t believe in religion, and that God didn’t create Man, it was the other way round. The idea of going to heaven was anathema to me. The last thing I want to do is be stuck in heaven with the sort of people I’d like to avoid! That’s where this song comes from.”
Read more in Louder Sound
Thanks to Georgius Novicianus for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
“And I began to realise that I didn’t believe in religion, and that God didn’t create Man, it was the other way round. The idea of going to heaven was anathema to me. The last thing I want to do is be stuck in heaven with the sort of people I’d like to avoid! ” Ha ha ha ha, good on you Ian, well said. What I did notice with fans reviews in this article was that not one of them mentioned the sound quality or lack of it, at all. Not that that surprises me as most music buffs I have known don’t care for any of that, it is just the music for them. Good to see a few mention If I Sing Softly. Cheers.
June 17th, 2025 at 02:41That‘s just because once you start discussing sound quality issues with GILLAN albums, you don‘t know where to start or stop, Herr MacGregor! 😂 Not one of those albums sounded ever actually good, Ian was great in sustaining an unaldulterated demo sound throughout, always best to pave the way to international success as we have witnessed.
I have of course overread your snide insinuation that I’m so superficial that I put production values over content. And if I hadn’t, I would mention something along the lines that the cultural conquest of pop and rock music was always contingent on how well it is sonically projected – everyone would still be playing acoustic double bass if not. Unless, of course, your preferred method of sound creation is – a primate tradition – banging on something and then waiting for sound waves to appear. 🤣
But in the modern day spirit of all views being inherently equal, Bob Ezrin is a crap producer and the GILlAN works sound just fine.
June 17th, 2025 at 09:14