Ian Gillan Details 'Outside Influences' That Split Deep Purple

Ian Gillan has offered some insight into his initial departure from Deep Purple.

It was the summer of 1973 when the singer abruptly quit the hard rock group. A heavy workload and the clashing of egos were regularly blamed for Gillan’s exit, but during a recent appearance on the Rockonteurs podcast, he revealed that the reasons were much more nuanced.

“You start off and there's like five guys in a van, and with your gear in the back, and then you expand a bit, and you buy a little truck to put your gear in, and you get two roadies, and things expand,” the singer explained. “But you're still a unit, and you're still twinning in rooms. I mean, I was Ritchie [Blackmore’s] roommate for a long time. We'd go on holiday together. We were very much five guys.”

“And then you get to a certain stage, and all of a sudden, your party's expanded by personal relationships, and then the outside influences don't gel quite as well as the guys do,” he continued. “And so they're drawn a little bit apart, and all of a sudden, one of the guys in the band is not staying in the same hotel, because, see, these people don't quite get on together, and they don't want to speak, and all that sort of thing. And that's the beginning of problems.”

Musical Differences Also Doomer Deep Purple's Mark II Lineup

Gillan conceded he was “as much to blame as anyone, probably more than anyone,” when it came to the split. He also noted that he and Blackmore had a difference of opinion regarding Deep Purple’s sound.

“One of the key factors was the slight shift in the difference of the mentality of the band,” Gillan explained. “Ritchie, I think, was going towards what became Rainbow in terms of song construction. I felt that was pretty much a lot of what was happening, and I felt a lot of the excitement and craziness was going a little bit.”

After more than a decade away from Deep Purple, Gillan rejoined the group in 1984 as part of the Mark II lineup reunion. “When we got back together, we were different people,” he recalled. “We'd all experienced a bit of outside life. We all had families.”

Despite the time off, Gillan noticed the band’s natural musical chemistry quickly returned.

“It was great. We sat down, and we did it secretly, because if it wasn't going to work, we didn't want to make a big deal out of it,” he recalled. “But we found a private place in Vermont, and we sat in the basement, and gradually a little jam started. Everyone's sitting around quietly, and I could see the smiles on faces picking up back in the groove. It was just like being at Hanwell in 1969. It was fantastic.”