‘Humans may go Splat!…but there’s still hope,’ says Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan ahead of the band’s 24th studio album
THE word “splat” has been on Ian Gillan’s mind for a few years now.
To him, it is a word to conjure with, one to fuel his wild flights of imagination.
To most of us, it summons visions of insects hitting windscreens or ripe tomatoes falling to the floor.
As you will discover, however, the Deep Purple singer and lyricist — he of the legendary full-throated holler — has given “splat” a much deeper meaning.
What if it represents the end of humanity as we know it?
Then, as he suggests with an “optimistic” spin on the notion, “What if we morph into something else that’s metaphysical?”
When Gillan first considered Splat! as an album title, he thought it sounded “too terminal”.
He says: “I knew how the interviews would go — ‘So this is your last record, right?’ ”
It soon becomes clear from talking to the hard rock survivor that Deep Purple, the last band standing in a so-called “unholy trinity” alongside Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, are very much alive and kicking.
When it came to writing themed lyrics for Purple’s 24th studio LP, Splat! screamed out from the pages of the notebook Gillan keeps to record his ideas.
Now, in tall, spidery type, it adorns an album cover housing some of the band’s heaviest, most riff-driven, yet most concise music in years.
As Gillan attests, Splat! summons the devil-may-care spirit of iconic early albums Deep Purple In Rock and Machine Head — and songs like Child In Time, Smoke On The Water and Black Night.
“What I’m hearing now is the band as it was in ’69,” he says.
There’s no doubting that the current line-up of Gillan, founder member Ian Paice (drums), another stalwart in Roger Glover (bass), Don Airey (keyboard player since 2001) and recent recruit Simon McBride (guitar) has hit a purple patch.
“You can give all kinds of reasons, but, quite simply, I think it’s human chemistry,” says Gillan, who lives in Portugal and turned 80 last August.
“The songs are coming easy.
The band is cranking live.
When all the elements work well, they feed off each other.”
He salutes Northern Irish guitarist McBride, who replaced Steve Morse in time for previous album =1, for adding a dynamic gut-punch to proceedings.
He agrees with me that the songs on Splat! don’t “outstay their welcome”, crediting legendary Canadian producer Bob Ezrin (Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Kiss) for “keeping the arrangements snappy”.
Gillan recalls how it used to be: “With the band having no leader — we never have really — it was often a case of sitting there and one of us would say, ‘Let’s make this bit longer, let’s put another section in there’.
“We might spend weeks arguing or debating an arrangement.
But Bob just comes in and says, ‘I’m not liking that’, and cuts it out.”
Gillan considers Purple to be “an instrumental band”, with the music always getting written first.
Then it’s time for him to step in with the lyrics and those still mighty vocals, delivered with all the theatricality you might expect from someone who took the part of Jesus on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album.
It’s fair to say that Splat!, also the name of the album’s emphatic closing track, represents one of Gillan’s most ambitious concepts, so let’s return to his thought process.
“For some time now, I’ve been trying to make an album sound as if all the songs belong,” he says.
“There’s one exception on this record and I’m not happy about it,” he announces by way of a slight digression.
When I suggest that the track in question might be Third Call, which seems more to do with sex than metaphysics, Gillan replies: “Oh, how did you guess?
It should have been called Sore Thumb.
“I’ve done my own little album on my computer, replacing it with a song destined to be a B-side or bonus track called Hoot ’n’ Slither, which does fit.”
So, let’s hear about his mind-boggling concept, so big that it almost hurts the brain.
“I’ll probably find myself in pseud’s corner again,” he mutters with a smile, before launching into his explanation.
“I’ve been fascinated by the word eternity since I was eight.
I couldn’t understand how things could go on forever.
As a child, it didn’t seem possible to me.
“One summer night, I started thinking about the end of the road, the end of the country, beaches, the sea, the sky, the stars.
“I started panicking, so I built a brick wall around my universe, as many kids have, I’m sure.
“That was it, I was safe.
And then, a horrible thought occurred to me: ‘What’s behind the bricks?’ ”
Gillan says that “later in life”, Edwin Abbott’s classic novella Flatland, a satirical study of a two- dimensional world written in 1884, got him thinking about other dimensions, the afterlife and spiritual worlds.
Then he considered that the population of Earth had “virtually tripled” during his lifetime.
He continues: “For some years, this explosion has seemed unsustainable to me and that the only way to escape is not by flying through the solar system in tin cans.
“It has to be metaphysical.
I’m hopeful.
Perhaps we might become some sort of intelligent energy.”
Gillan draws my attention to the song The Only Horse In Town, one of the last recorded for Splat! and driven by Airey’s fulsome keys and McBride’s shimmering riffs.
It was inspired by a real-life encounter with someone close to death near Noble Street Studios in Toronto where Purple were doing a recording session.
“The snow came down and we saw there were these vagrants living under a blue tarp,” he says.
“The place looked like a rubbish dump.
“We offered them some hot food when we went out to get our takeaway for lunch — and they didn’t want it.
They just wanted dollars for crack.
“I thought of this one guy who probably had days to live.
I imagined his final hit.
“Then (in my mind) I stepped into his shoes and started walking across America until I got to the high plains of New Mexico and found this derelict film set.
“Along with a clapped-out old horse, this guy finds solace, a haven.
It fits very nicely with the overall pattern of the album.”
Next, we take a dive into more of the Splat! songs, starting with the three-minute opening blast, Arrogant Boy, about a bloke called Billy.
“The attitude in the music screamed frustration to me,” says Gillan.
“I had this idea of an ordinary guy down the pub who doesn’t give a monkey’s toss about what goes on at the higher levels of society.
He’s sick of the political pendulum.
“Everyone knows that nothing’s happened in the last fifty, sixty years.
We’ve built nothing.
We’ve done nothing.
We’ve gone backwards in almost everything.
The great institutions are useless piles of rubble.
“So Billy is sticking his head up out of a hole and saying, ‘Get on with it!’”
This brings us to the wild Diablo, recorded in Nashville and featuring guitar solos from none other than country rock star Keith Urban, whose studio the band were occupying.
Here, Gillan truly lets his imagination run riot.
“Diablo is a place where young people go for their rite of passage.
It’s dangerous and many don’t come back,” he says.
“This is the story of Dra-ma.
She pickles her knuckles and has 20 fights before beating up Guts McKenzie in the final.
She celebrates with a bucket of wine and falls into the glitter pool.
It’s all a bit surreal.”
You may think Gillan’s gone off on one but this ceaselessly entertaining character is also partial to a bit of humour.
The Rider is not about someone on a horse, but more about the notorious demands of rock stars when they go on tour.
He says: “I’m not going to mention his name, but he’s a very famous musician in a very famous band.
I was sitting having a beer with him and he said, ‘Someone got a fear of flying so we hired a psychologist.
The next week, there were four psychologists on the plane, one for each member of the band.
Then someone got a bad back so we got a physiotherapist.
The next week, there were four of them.’’
So what about his band’s riders?
“Deep Purple have never been extravagant,” he answers.
“When I was with Black Sabbath, it was a slightly different story, more funny than extravagant.
“I remember Geezer [Butler] complaining that the ham was round and the bread was square, that his sandwich was an incongruous mess which didn’t look right.
“My rider has always been very simple.
It’s bread and cheese, some tea bags — it has to be PG Tips — and a kettle.”
Elsewhere on Splat!, Jessica’s Bra has got to be one of the most eye-catching song titles of the year.
It was supposed to be Bar but, as Gillan admits: “I can’t see too well and make loads of typos these days.
“It’s a sort of Irish pub song.
I grew up in pubs with a beer in one hand, a fag in the other, and in fantastic company.
“My pals were drinking pals — I didn’t smoke a joint until I was 38.
We were pub guys who got locked in, behaved outrageously, but it stayed within the walls.
No harm done.”
Guilt Trippin’, with its gorgeous piano intro and outro and screaming vocals, is about “God and Charlie Darwin having a pint”.
Gillan says: “God is saying, ‘We’ve got to get the numbers right next time,’ but Darwin just goes, ‘Humpty, humpty’.
He doesn’t want to interfere!”
The Lunatic, inspired by the plight of George Orwell’s 1984 protagonist Winston Smith, summons a bout of indignation from Gillan.
“I can’t believe the prescient nature of that book, which was published in 1949,” he says.
“More recently, the NHS proscribed the word lunatic.
I take great offence at that.
Most of my friends are lunatics and always have been — and I happily follow the moon around.”
Through the song Scriblin’ Gib’rish, Gillan vents his spleen at those online matrixes where you have to identify motorbikes or traffic lights, “proving that I am a human being to a f***ing robot”.
Of note here is that he’s heading to UK theatres next spring for his Talking Gib’rish spoken-word tour, a departure from the arena-sized norm.
It’s an opportunity for him to regale audiences with stories from more than six decades in the business.
On a personal level, it’s clear that Gillan is pressing on despite the rigours of live performance and, as he reports, “failing eyesight”.
“Over the past few days, I’ve been taking a deep breath and looking at the future,” he says.
“A few years ago I was doing a talk and the theme was positive ageing.
I realised that when people retire, they stop making long-term plans — even if it’s small things to do with the house or garden.
“But I keep thinking some years ahead with projects, and don’t worry whether I complete them.
“That’s a self-creating energy, like nuclear energy.
It’s incredible.
So, I’m making long-term plans and to hell with it!”
If that’s the template for his mind, what about his body?
Alluding to his younger self — that skinny figure in tight flared jeans with a shaggy mane — he says: “Obviously, I used to be quite athletic when I was young, but I can’t pole vault anymore!
“Well into my sixties, I used to run upstairs two at a time, and now I run down ten at a time.
“So, you’ve got to have a laugh.
Otherwise, you’d sit down and cry.”
One thing is for certain, Ian Gillan and Deep Purple are NOT about to go Splat!
