A Quote by Ian Gillan
My grandad was an opera singer, my uncle a jazz musician; I was a boy soprano in the church choir. But the first performance with Deep Purple was something I'll never forget. All elements were working brilliantly.
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Opera was an enormous part of my childhood. My parents were both opera buffs, and they met in the box seat of an opera performance. And I also was a boy soprano, so before puberty hit, I was onstage playing a wide variety of orphans and urchins in all sorts of operas, and the sheer melodrama of their stories was just always appealing to me.
My interest in women's voices started when I was in the boys' choir and we were singing in opera choruses. That was my first close-up experience with the female soprano voice. I was amazed at how it could be within the same scale but so different in quality.
I'm the only person in my family who can't sing. My grandmother was an opera singer and all of her kids were in church five days a week - or between church and vocal lessons at Carnegie Hall. But my mom had her first studio experience recording on my album. She's used to having to fill the room, so she had to adjust to the microphone and not sing opera.
I went to, you know, a church in Chicago, and my mom, of course, was in the choir because my mom was a singer; she used to sing. I wanted to be in the choir as well, and I was like, 'Mom, please, you know, I want to sing in the choir with you guys.' I kept on asking her, and finally I was, you know, in the choir.
I remember my uncle, who was a jazz pianist, when we did Deep Purple 'In Rock,' he ran from the room screaming, holding his ears: 'I can't hear anything. I can't hear any instruments.' And I was rubbing my hands going, 'Great.'
I had been in a professional boys' choir, and as a boy soprano, you're aware that your voice has an expiration date.
I had grown up with music influence of my grandad, uncle, dad. So, professionally I first assisted others to do something different, to get an edge.
I was going to be a singer. If I hadn't been in my profession, I was going to be an Opera singer. That's from a young kid. I had all these records from all those famous Opera singers. I wanted to be an Opera singer - that was my whole thing and physical fitness got in the way, thank God.
In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket.
My father had played cornet, although I never saw him play it. I found his mouthpiece when I was a kid. I used to buzz it. And my mother played piano and sang in the church choir for different functions. So there was always music in the house, jazz, gospel, or whatever. Especially jazz records.
I began by listening to my mother's collection of Amelita Galli-Curci and Lily Pons records, and then was taken (at age eight) to hear Pons at a Met performance of Lakme. It was at that moment that I decided to become an opera star. Not just an opera singer, but an opera star!
I sang in the glee club and church choir, but I never sang a solo. I never thought of myself as a singer, and that might have crossed your mind, too.
I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician.
I wasn't the best in my class at the Royal Academy. There was a really good soprano and baritone who were technically better and are doing really well in opera now. But I was definitely the best mezzo-soprano in my class, because I was the only one of those!
People make their life really hard. It was as simple as this: My parents went to church. My grandfather was a bishop. My mom sang in the choir, my dad played the keyboard, and my uncle played the drums. I was into playing the drums, so I played the drums a lot for my uncle, and it got to the point where I was pretty nice at playing the drums. And he let me play every Sunday so, to me, going to church was fun.
When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.
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