Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Ian Gillan - Page 2

For a rock band, I didn't see the point in live albums. To my mind, you've got to be there.

Internet is a good and convenient device for us for easy communication. It has lots of value.

I feel very fortunate to have been able to do what I do for a living.

I've consciously avoided actually reading anything about Wikipedia.

I have heard that my Wikipedia entry is completely incorrect, but then again, so is everyone else's. I haven't bothered about that.

Singles - we hated it, going on 'Top Of The Pops' and all that rubbish.

I wake up every day looking forward to the concert that night. I don't think you need much more inspiration than that.

I have been touring since I got my first band in 1962, so there is no problem there. We are basically performing musicians, so that's what we do.

I've tried to avoid the rock & roll highway and have taken the scenic route. I think all the guys have been more concerned with the music and the band's legacy than with the commercial aspects of life.

There used to be a time when people used to hold up cigarette lighters and candles at concerts, and the place was aglow to celebrate the end of the evening, or during a slow song, there was this congregational euphoria that used to exist. It still does, but now it's a question of iPhones being held up.

I realised that if I wanted to carry on with my musical dreams, I had to change, so I started meditating, and I changed my life entirely.

I can't do one thing at a time. If I'm writing song lyrics, I've got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I'm working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.

An album represents an artist or a band or a group of musicians at any given moment in time. You just produce the music that you feel good about and hope that the audience shows some interest in it.

The band's a really close-knit family. We've got fantastically good friendships and relationships that have developed after all these years.

Can you imagine doing 'Nessa Dorma' with Luciano Pavarotti the maestro? It's unbelievable. He's a very generous man.

I don't think anyone likes to be pushed around.

If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.

We soaked up everything from Beethoven to Chopin to Jimi Hendrix to Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

I used to do interviews - I still do - interviews every day, all day. And you go from maybe doing a couple of professional interviews, where you can hear the sound right, to everyone else sounds like they're at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

To the general public in America, the lifespan of Deep Purple probably finished with our 1984 album, 'Perfect Strangers.'

I've always been optimistic - I always expect the sun to come out.

Things evolve. People mature.

The only advice I can give is to absorb as much as you can from as wide a spectrum as you can. If you're in a rock band and only soak up Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple kind of beginnings, then you're not going to have much leeway.

I have to think that 'Nessa Dorma' is the greatest rock ballad that's never been recorded as such.

The Hall Of Fame thing, it's an American thing. We don't have that in England or Germany or Australia or Russia or anywhere in the world apart from America. And it's an institution. What's that got to do with rock and roll?

The one thing nobody was taught was how to deal with success, and I think that happens to everyone who makes it at a young age.

We've been touring ever since we were able to afford to buy a van, and I don't think we'll ever stop until something falls off or is irreparable.

I've never been troubled by disappointment, and I get over it quickly. But I'm not good at making plans, and I don't have any ambitions. I never did.

It wasn't slung together by a producer and a publisher. We decided we were going to take hold of our music and let it evolve organically.

I don't think we were anti-commercial. But we were anti-contrivance, and like Zeppelin, we found dignity through the music we were playing.

When I was in my formative years, I rejected Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, and Dean Martin. I now realise they were all great artists, but at the time, as a young man, you have to clear the decks.

Rock music had its own constituency, its own steering wheel. It was beyond the control of the establishment, and we saw TV as the enemy.

I've done a lot of research on science and theology to try and get a better understanding of what happens to the human soul or what potential it has.

Infinity is almost impossible for an eight-year-old to grasp. It's an inquiring age, and you're beginning to shape your thoughts and questions about life in general at that stage.

I know the guys in Metallica. I'm very honored that they were influenced by Deep Purple when they started, and they've always been very kind to us.

If there was such a thing as a typical English gentleman in rock music, then it was Jon Lord.

There's very little you can do these days about having any impact at a launch for a record unless you keep it very secret, because communications are so immediate, and YouTube and everything else kind of spoils the party.

Life's not so rocky now. It was very volatile when you're young: you've got no experience. Your sense of disappointment is far greater; your sense of success is overwhelming. And then you've got the emotional conflict within any group that you're not mature enough to deal with until you get older. It levels out.

When I was a kid, every street had a band, and we'd steal members from each other.

I totally ignore people who criticize me for coming to Israel, including whats-his-name [Roger Waters]. If he were to contact me, I would tell him to tell it where the sun don't shine.

Buy real records in real shops, or I'll come round your house and scream at your mother.

I haven't ever had any ambition in my life. I just drift from day to day with a stupid grin on my face.

Heavy metal drives me bonkers, it makes me want to vomit, heavy metal really is a pile of puke.

After my early days of being a passionate young Elvis fan, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. I got interested in Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald. Then I got turned on to the blues. I realized how important it was to our music in England at the time. Everyone was into the blues. Then you start looking at the different kinds of blues, and you follow the journey backwards from Chicago to earlier times back down to the Delta to the Memphis Blues.

We spent a long time learning the craft of songwriting, Roger Glover and I, for a few years before we joined Deep Purple. You learn about the percussive value of words, and you learn about rhyme and meter. You learn that you can't transform a poem into a song lyric, mostly because the spoken shape of words is different than the sung shape of words. You wouldn't use the vowel 'U' or the vowel sound 'ooo' for a high note for example, its very difficult.

How could I resist? Look, I love that record and have nothing but great, great memories of my time with BLACK SABBATH . Tony was really busy but got his solos to me at the last minute as he promised and they are just fantastic. I think BLACK SABBATH fans will be over the moon when they hear what he's done. As for Roger and Ian , well, they just sound great on this song so it really did become 'Black Purple'. Personally, I love the irony of it all.