Ian Gillan Quotes

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Ian Gillan

Profession : Musician

Birth : August 19, 1945

We have been called old rockers, rock pensioners, and dinosaurs.

Ian Gillan

I love extended solos. I used to like them in the old days a lot, because it used to give me time to go to the pub for a drink.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

I like walking and hiking, and many of the ideas for songs have germinated from this.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

The biggest income we make is from live performances, without any doubt. That's about a 4-to-1 ratio from anything else.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

We always used to describe ourselves as an instrumental band. Basically, the music was always instrumentally based, so the songs always came later.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

It's a fine line between self-assuredness and arrogance.

Ian Gillan

I have got a good imagination.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

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.

Ian Gillan

'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.

Ian Gillan

I think you function much better when you trust people and when you've got a sort of relationship where you can develop ideas within a framework.

Ian Gillan