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The best-dressed Leprechaun
In this new interview with The Chap Ian Gillan discusses the Hounslow Heath, Terry-Thomas‘ inheritance, dress codes, hairstyles, music styles, wireless apartheid, and skinny dipping, among other things.
Do you prefer the term heavy rock or hard rock for Deep Purple?
If you want to pick a genre, then I would prefer hard rock. Only because heavy rock was the next step into heavy metal. I’ve turned down awards for heavy metal, even though most of my friends are in it, like Black Sabbath and the guys in Metallica. We’re good mates but that isn’t really our bag. My rock ‘n’ roll was Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, and that’s just to start with. And if you took any of those into today’s music scene, they’d be instantly sliced up and put into separate genres and played on different radio stations. They would not be allowed to be all of the same genre.
Read more in The Chap.
Thanks to BraveWords for the heads-up.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Hooray, no ‘Heavy Metal’ listing for Deep Purple. The King or Emperor, he hath spoken. Nothing more needs to be said. I hear Uwe grumbling in the back ground, again. Which is unusual in a way, who would have thought that he would be such a staunch advocate for ‘eavy metl’. Well at least the ‘terminology’ of the wording or dare I say it, the ‘genre’, he he he. Oh well, such is life eh. Judas Priest now have a new bass guitarist, so a ‘lefty’ in the ranks of ‘metal’ might keep Uwe busy for a few nano seconds. Cheers.
October 11th, 2026 at 02:02One of the more obvious reason why Ian Gillan is drifting away from the heavy metal argument linked with DP is the fact that he wants DP to be sitting comfortably between Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as the holy trinity of rock emerged in the 70s
October 11th, 2026 at 12:28But listening to Bloodsucker from In Rock doesn’t really support his argument.
They have seeds of Heavy Metal in their roots so why deny it.
Also the stuff IG did with his band and Black Sabbath is a stain he can’t wipe off.
I rest my case.
Peace ✌️