Tag Archive: dubai bands

Ian Gillan, Deep Purple’s current vocalist from ’69 to 73, ’84 to ’89 and from 1992 to present has an incredible vocal range, which, according to him, he discovered purely by accident. Gillan tells Metality UAE the story

“I discovered most of my vocal talent by accident; I came from a very musical family and grew up with a lot of music, so my mind was not limited by pop music when I first heard it on the radio. My grandfather was an opera singer, my uncle was a jazz pianist and I was a boy soprano in the church choir when I was a kid and so music was second nature to me to a certain extent and I used to be in a band before Deep Purple called Episode 6 where there were six vocalists. It was not very good instrumentally, vocally a very strong band and at times I had to go and sit at the keyboards and do backing vocals, while the singer was at the front doing lead vocals. The only part in the harmony spectrum that was available to me was right up there very high and so I learnt a lot of voice shaping from that time, and then of course with Purple it was just, well we moved into territory that was unexplored. We were kind of pioneers in that sense and it [my voice] just kept on getting higher. It was four octaves and a bit and it is just kind of natural really. I think the key to it is to do a lot of it and you have to be working regularly to keep that kind of shape,” Gillan explains.

EPISODE 6:

While many local UAE bands struggle with nerves before they hit the stage, many musicians will be interested to find out that Gillan also experiences a version of stage fright, over 40 years into his career.

“I have never thought of it as stage fright. I have always thought about it as nervous excitement, I do get butterflies in my tummy for sure, and I do get excited, it is rather like a kid jumping up and down when going on a holiday or going to the fair or something like that. So yes I get very excited and that is why I spend my time in a room separate from the rest of the band, because in there you can hear the conversation level rising and the jokes getting worse as show time approaches, where as I prefer to meditate and keep all my adrenaline as low as possible,” says Gillan.

Gillan says that he like to hit the stage running, but other members of the band practice up to six hours a day, so that they can play freely and with the improvisation that a Deep Purple band member needs to have.

There have been recent rumblings in the jazz community in the UAE about how a rock band like Deep Purple is playing at the Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival this year. We put the question to Gillan;

Gillan: “We played at Monteux Jazz Festival, an annual event in Switzerland and we have headlined that two or three times – and if you wanted to put a label on Deep Purple you could just as easily call it a jazz band as a rock band. Who is complaining about us being at a jazz fest?”

Metality UAE: Die hard jazz fans who believe they should keep their genre pure.

Gillan: “Oh really, ok, so ludidtes in Jazz, well there is a contradiction in terms. Keeping it pure hey? I think that is the stupidest thing I have heard in my life, most of the jazz players, I am leaving myself out of this as a vocalist, but most of the jazz players I have seen could not live with the musicians in Deep Purple.”

Smoke on the Water LIVE at Montreux Jazz Festival

Buy your tickets to catch Deep Purple, Three Doors Down, The Script and OneRepublic, plus many jazz greats at the Emirates Airline Dubai Jazz Festival 2013 between February 14th and 22nd. Click on the logos below to nab your tickets.

Foe more information and the full line up please go to www.dubaijazzfest.com