Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based, so the songs always came later.
When you think about it, we sold about 120 million records, which relates to about £1.2 billion in the U.K. economy. We've seen very little of that.
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.
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.
Elvis's voice was unique. Like so many others, he had natural, technical ability, but there was something in the humanity of his voice, and his delivery.
There's a wonderful woodland, spiritual song I wrote in Undercliff in Lyme Regis, and I used to walk up there with my dog and always come back with an idea.
The thing to remember when you're re-recording pieces from the past is that you have to have respect for the original performances, recordings, and arrangements.
Glenn Hughes is one of the most naturally talented musicians, but he's still copying Steve Wonder to this day, so I can't call him a bona fide member of Deep Purple.
The thing about a band is, it's not so much how good the musicians are - it's the blend of personalities and characters. It's the human chemistry that makes up a good team.
No matter what I do, I've always recognized that Deep Purple is primarily an instrumental band. That's where all the music comes from in rehearsals - it all stems from the music.
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 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.
Purple - I mean, the music and the influence and the subliminal touches range from orchestral conversation to jazz to blues and soul and God knows what. It's a vast range of expressions.
I know in my heart of hearts that Ritchie Blackmore is one of the great guitar players of all time. He's a fabulous technician, and he's got incredible skills, and he was a great showman.
My first contract was in 1965. There were six of us in this band - my band before Deep Purple - six in the band plus management, and the entire royalty rate was three-fourths of 1 percent.
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.
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.
I once wrote a song called 'No Laughing in Heaven,' which was about not wanting to go to Heaven due to the company I'd be keeping, and with a few exceptions, the Hall of Fame is pretty much the same thing.
When we arrive at the studio, we put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, say, 'How's the family? You still got that old car? Is that dog still alive?' and then we start jamming. That's how the songs get written.
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.
I was an avid collector of Elvis' early stuff; for a young singer, he was an absolute inspiration. I soaked up what he did like blotting paper. It's the same as being in school - you learn by copying the maestro.
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.
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.
I hate it in America where the protocol seems to be you are expected to tip regardless of the quality of service. I like to tip when it's not being demanded of me, and if the service has been good, I tip quite generously.
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?
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 grew up moving from one council flat to another and finished up in a three-bedroom semi-detached on a council estate in Cranford, a suburb of Hounslow. This was in the days when there was still rationing, and we had to be thrifty.
If you think of a solo artist, you normally know them by their name; you don't normally describe their kind of music. You just say, 'It's so and so, or it's so and so.' But with bands, everyone feels an obligation to categorize them.
I do ironing not only for myself but for everyone at home, everyone in the studio if they want it, and if I run out of ironing to do, I put everything back in the washing machine and get it out again clean so I have some ironing to do.
In the early Seventies, I bought a dilapidated hotel in north Stoke for about £100,000 and spent the same amount again renovating it, putting in a guitar-shaped swimming pool, painting the bathrooms purple, and installing gold dolphin taps.
When I'm writing with Tony Iommi, for example, still it's very easy. We go in, and I know exactly what his style is. It's very distinctive, and you know exactly what he's looking for, and we know exactly where we're going from the first chord.
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 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.
It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn't write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers - all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.
I'm very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction - that's nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It's now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.
I've played football with George Best, the greatest footballer that ever lived. That doesn't make me a footballer. And I've sung a duet with Pavarotti. That doesn't make me an opera singer. I can write and I have a story to tell, but I'm not going to make a career out of it.
I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.
If you've got a wound, and it's just about to heal up, and it's got a nice scab on it, and you think in two or three days, that's gonna be completely healed, then somebody comes along and pokes it with a stick, and it opens up again. And that's what happens with the Ritchie-and-Deep Purple situation.
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.
Deep Purple was sinking with Ritchie. We were playing to quarter houses in Europe, which is one of our strongest territories - in Germany. Smaller venues, and they weren't even full. So had we continued that way, and had Ritchie not walked out, we would have finished; that would have been the end of it.
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.
I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue - and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country - they had something new and very exciting.
'Smoke On The Water' was ignored by everybody to begin with. We only did it in the shows because it was a filler track from 'Machine Head.' But then, one radio station picked up on it, and Warner Bros. edited it down to about three and a half minutes. It then started getting played by lots of different radio stations.
In Poland, the whole saying is, 'You've got one eye to Morocco and the other to the Caucasus.' That's the heart of the culture. In England, they say it less romantic: 'You've got a wandering eye.' The saying means my main stream in life must be Deep Purple. That's my main job. Then every now, and I can wander off and have one eye to Morocco.
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.
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.
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.