The rock singer is still yelling his way round the world, having weathered booze, hepatitis and hysterically embarrassing Spinal Tap moments. His secret? ‘Loyalty is overrated’
You might think Ian Gillan, at 75 years old, would be fed up with singing Smoke on the Water. After all, he’s had to sing it at pretty much every show he’s played since 1972, whether with Deep Purple, the Ian Gillan Band, or Gillan. It was even a slightly ill-fitting encore during his brief spell fronting Black Sabbath in the early 80s. He must have heard rock’s most famous riff – if he has averaged even 50 shows a year over the past 48 years – somewhere in the region of 2,500 times. But he doesn’t mind.
He recalls the plight of Luciano Pavarotti, with whom he sang a couple of times, and who one day expressed his jealousy of Gillan getting to sing Smoke on the Water. “He said, ‘I’ve heard you sing it six times, and every time it’s different. Sometimes you’re driving it on. Sometimes it’s laid-back. Sometimes the patterns change or the nuances are different, but it’s the same song.’ And he said, ‘If I did that with any of my famous arias, if I changed one scintilla of expression or interpretation, I would be crucified by the critics, and the fans, because we’re not allowed to do that in opera. We have to mimic our original interpretation.’” By contrast, Gillan says, he has never once had cause to feel jaded.
