[% META title = 'Ian Gillan, Interviews' %]

Hi, all, just going through my memorabilia and found this interview from the Montreal Gazette, November 8th,1972.

PURPLE IN THE DEEP END!

It's off on another American tour for Deep Purple, and a shorn Ian Gillan didn't seem to be relishing the prospect as he sat backstage here. "I feel really down in America," he sighed. Gillan who's cut quite a bit of his hair off, doesn't look quite as messianic anymore. He was rubbing his right hand tenderly.

" I played congas last night in Quebec City," he explained (the six- week tour had opened there the night before),"and it still hurts."

The band was hit by hepatitus last year, but this time the body hassles are centred around Gillan's right hand.

"I've broken it twice in about six places," he said. "I think i'm going to have it broken and reset after Christmas," Gillan said, wincing at the prospect.

Ritchie Blackmore had said earlier that playing in French-Canada didn't appeal to him because of the language barrier, but Gillan said "I'd never live in America, but Canad's not so bad."

"I just don't like the food in America - bloody syeaks everywhere," he said. (Food complaints are often heard of Americans in the UK)

Gillan said he'd spend the day after the show in Montreal "to get some good food before we hit the States." There are over 4000 resturants here of every description and taste.

"I like to sit down and take my time at a meal - 3 1/2 hours if I feel like it.

"I just hope people in America don't see this and get mad," the singer continued, "because I dig the audiences here. They're educated.

" The thing I dislike about America the most?" "The people are just plain rude. I think I know three people in all of America that aren't.(Two were friends, one was my Auntie Jane in Tacoma, Wa.)"

" English people are only arrogant when they're in America - check that, in Germany ,too.", Gillan said smiling.

Bassist Roger Glover and Blackmore were both looking forward to two nearly adjacent four-day breaks in the tour. "We're just going to lie in the sun in Miami," said Glover.

Gillan will head for the bone-dry flatlands of Texas wiht his lady during that break, "to do some horseback riding, like we do in England."

Deep Purple are touring with John Sebastian, an unlikely pairing that is obviously intended to draw a wide range of age groups. The predominantly young Purple audience here even booed the mellow Sebastian on occasion it its impatience to hear The Heavies.

"We'll play no more than four gigs a week- it's in the contract," said the grimmed-faced Blackmore.

None of the band's members seem too happy about the recent North American release of an album called "Purple Passages" which consists entirely of the pre-Gillan and Glover band.

"Don't think they'll release it in England," said Blackmore, who also isn't very optimistic about the making of any future group singles."When you put out a single," the guitarist says, "People put you down. And to make a hit single the music usually isn't very good."

An album of sessions in Italy and Frankfurt will probably be the next release here, followed by a live LP culled from Purple's three Japan gigs in August. That latter album is due out in the UK around December 1, Blackmore says, followed by the other one sometime later.

On the night that Purple and Sebastian were playing here, a little further south, Richard Nixon was being re-elected as President of the United States.

Both Sebastian and Purple members felt that the kids in America might be so down in the next few weeks that the bands will be seeing a lot of glum faces in the next few weeks.

"American politics offend me deeply," said Gillan.

"The less I know of them, the better."

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This by Bill Mann of the Montreal Gazette. Some heavy quotes there! I was at that show and it was awesome. Elf played there as well. We took a package bus tour from Ottawa for only $17.00 CDN. Returned at around 3am, broke, in the pouring rain and had to walk all the way home as no one would pick us up hitch-hiking, - about 8 miles! I remember it well. As for John Sebastian, the guy behind me smoke so much weed that poor old John put him to sleep, and he woke up when the lights came on, clapping, and asking for Purple....you had to be there.

Take care
Jim Corrigan