Ian Gillan (Deep Purple): Classic Rock Radio is Death Sentence to Old Bands

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I just saw this on the Heavy Metal Tabloid Blabbermouth, and Gillan really is speaking my mind here:

Deep Purple visits the Maricopa County Events Center on Aug. 17, but it isn't a nostalgia tour. The group is wrapping up a two-year tour of 48 countries in support of its 2005 album Rapture of the Deep. But American fans probably don't know that.

"You have this thing called classic rock radio over here," says singer Ian Gillan in a recent phone call. "It's been a death sentence for all sorts of older bands. They don't play anything of ours other than Smoke on the Water and Highway Star. "

Gillan even addresses the problem with a song on Rapture of the Deep, called MTV. The song was inspired by a real-life incident in Buffalo, N.Y.




"I heard (Purple bassist) Roger Glover doing a radio interview, trying desperately to talk about a record we did in 2003 called Bananas. I was listening to it and my jaw just dropped, as this deejay ranted on about 1973. She wasn't the slightest bit interested in what he had to say, or anything that had happened in the last 30 years," he says.

Which is a pity. With three albums under its belt and poised to celebrate its 40th anniversary next year, the current lineup of Purple has been on a creative and critical revival for the past decade.

Gillan credits the band's current success to the infusion of new blood - guitar wizard Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs) replaced longtime Purple axman Richie Blackmore in 1997, and journeyman keyboardist Don Airey joined the group in 2002, replacing the retiring Jon Lord.

"They brought enthusiasm back to the band," says Gillan of his new bandmates. "We went through some pretty dark periods where the family atmosphere wasn't good - really deep troughs. We got out of that when Richie left and Steve joined. But it took us a few years to rediscover the joy of playing again. We were going through the motions just to survive before they joined."

"Steve and Don brought joy back into the band."
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Source

I saw Deep Purple twice, in 2003 and 2006, and both times, I was really amazed by the energy of the band. People always identify Purple with the Mk. II lineup and Blackmore, but I am going to be sacrilegous and say that I actually like Steve Morse (who has been in the band for over ten years now, after all!) better. The whole atmosphere is just so positive, and you can really feel how the band enjoys playing their new material... but sadly, during those tracks, only the first few rows echo that. The rest of them just stand there with folded arms until they rip out some worn-out classic like Smoke On The Water. Why? Didn't they even listen to the recent albums? Ever noticed what an incredibly groovy and rocking album Bananas is? How hard and heavy Rapture Of The Deep comes along?

It's the same with any other band. I have seen The Rolling Stones on the Bigger Bang tour, and honestly, A Bigger Bang is a great album... but who knows that? The audience only wanted to hear Honky Tonk Women and Satisfaction. When I saw Bob Dylan back in '02, many people only wanted to hear his old 60s folk classics... they weren't expecting to hear some serious hard rock. You read correctly: Bob Dylan, the messiah with acoustic guitar and harmonica, was playing hard rock. Even some of his classics were played that way.

Unfortunately, there are too many bands who follow what the media dictates them and go onstage as a nostalgia cabaret *cough*Black*cough*Sabbath*cough*. If some bands do this kind of way, and the progress of others simply doesn't get noticed, they cease to become an active influence on the music scene, and it is no wonder that many hard rock fans get labelled as conservative and narrow-minded, and this dumb "True Metal War" keeps being fought.

Allow me to step up front and say: I am a Deep Purple Fan. My favourite album is Rapture Of The Deep.
 
I wonder if this some sort of nostalgic thing and as folk grow old, their record buying days stop (not so much in my case, mind). I'm afraid I am one who has not heard anything by Purple since they split up for the first time and evolved into Whitesnake, but I have been recommended on many an occasion to listen to Bananas (and even Perfect Strangers) but have just never got around to it. But Purple have plugged away and left the old fans in their wake.

I can contradict myself so many times as I am one who bangs on about Maiden now to people who only want to hear stuff from the first 4 albums - and here I sit and admit to being one who's last Purple purchase was a few years back - and even that was a re-release of some of their seventies stuff.
 
I experience the same with Maiden (not necessarily on this forum).

When Maiden play a lot of old stuff, people say it's nostalgia cabaret (we're gonna hear that next year) and when Maiden play a lot of new stuff, people scream for more classics (AMOLAD-tour). Even this summer metal mag reviewers complained about the first part of the set of the 2006-tour. It contained boring new songs only.

Sabbath is a weird matter, I'm afraid. Ozzy refuses to play anything, besides the 70's material. Iommi got so sick of it that he enjoys to play other material with Dio. The fans are very happy with this variety in the setlist! :)

Their biggest problem is (besides ignoring the Tony Martin-era): They didn't write anything new since their last studio album Forbidden (1995)!

Purple continues to write and, thank God, Maiden, Priest, Rush and so many others as well!
 
Albie said:
I wonder if this some sort of nostalgic thing and as folk grow old, their record buying days stop (not so much in my case, mind).
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A lot of people don't care as much about music as, say, the people on this forum. They grew up listening to "classic" Purple but then lost interest in discovering new (rock) music, and now they want to re-experience their glory days to the highest degree possible. It's regrettable but, I believe, inevitable. Few if any bands with Purple's fame and longevity don't suffer from this phenomenon and classic rock radio is a result of it. What could change the situation substantially would be if Purple had a new hit record that attracted a new generation of fans (who wouldn't have found the band through their old stuff, as I believe most new Purple fans do nowadays), but it's damn near impossible to convince people who are not open to it to give the new albums a fair chance.

This leads me to a question: is there a significant amount of younger fans among the ones who only cares for the old stuff? If so, it would be more distressing in my opinion.

Forostar said:
When Maiden play a lot of old stuff, people say it's nostalgia cabaret (we're gonna hear that next year) and when Maiden play a lot of new stuff, people scream for more classics (AMOLAD-tour). Even this summer metal mag reviewers complained about the first part of the set of the 2006-tour. It contained boring new songs only.
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I didn't experience much negativity in Sweden, but then that's basically Maiden-land. There were some people shouting "Run to the Hills" behind me when I saw the band last November, but reception was generally very good.
 
I agree with Ian Gillan!  How many times do I have to hear "smoke on the water"  I would rather hear their new material.  Radio is dead, as far as I am concerned!  Boring, repetitive and commerical is what American Radio has become.  Although if your are an up and coming rap/hip-hop musician then your chanes are *good* at getting your new stuff on the radio.  Talk about discrimination!  I protest! 

Deep Purple is coming to my neck of the woods and it is a shame that their new stuff Is not being played. :(
 
There's a nice article on The Highway Star about the same topic:

Let’s not talk about MTV...
August 12th, 2007

The business model of the so-called “classic rock” FM radio is well known — milk fans of the older bands for everything they can by putting them on a nostalgia trip. This results in predictable playlists that are put together by marketing people of a big faceless corporation. Play greatest hits and nothing else. In Purple terms this translates into Smoke on the Water, Hush, and occasionally, Woman From Tokyo, Space Truckin’, Lazy, and maybe, if you’re lucky, Perfect Strangers or Knocking at Your Backdoor.

Music radio (from the listener’s point of view) shouldn’t be like that. It’s not just a medium for playing a handful of 30 year old hits over and over and over again. It should be a medium that expands horizons, introduces people to new and old, but long forgotten, music.

How about a radio playlist that includes MTV, ‘69, Listen Learn Read On, Money Talks, Junkyard Blues, Hey Joe, Razzle Dazzle, Wrong Man, A200, Lazy (from Made in Japan), When A Blind Man Cries, Never Before, Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming, You Fool No One, Hey Cisco, Call Of The Wild, Bad Attitude, Pictures Of Innocence, Fools, Gypsy’s Kiss, Before Time Began, Clearly Quite Absurd, Prelude: Happiness, One More Rainy Day, Speed King, Flight Of The Rat, Help, Living Wreck, Into The Fire, Bloodsucker, Lady Luck, Purpendicular Waltz, Cascades, Somebody Stole My Guitar, River Deep Mountain High, Dealer, A Twist In The Tail, Drifter, Rapture Of The Deep, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, A Castle Full Of Rascals, This Time Around, We Can Work It Out, Sail Away, Mitzi Dupree?

And that’s not the complete playlist yet. And most important, it’s not imaginary.

Satellite radio will kill FM. I say, good riddance.

Nick Soveiko
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Well, let's not talk about italian radios.... :censored:
 
See this is the reason I stopped listening to radio...this and they never play anything from Maiden.
 
Wait...what?

I didn't even know Deep Purple was still together, less so for this long.  I mean, seriously...that's how much "classic rock" influences our culture over here.  Honest to god, I swore they broke up in the 80s, and that was that...

I better check out Rapture of the Deep.
 
I don't even have Rapture Of the Deep, I just have their Greatest Hits, Fireball, and Perfect Strangers...what year was Rapture Of the Deep released?
 
Wow, that recent? I know Jon Lord left the band in 2002 or whenever it was...he "retired," but then the guys are in their 60s...they've been playing music for 30+ years...Ian Gillan's birthday is on Sunday!

I saw Purple in 2002 w/Dio and Scorpions, they sounded good minus Lord. The new guy did pretty well (forget his name)
 
Powergirl81 said:
The new guy did pretty well (forget his name)
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Don Airey! He's at least as legendary as Lord, having been part of the classic Rainbow lineup (Blackmore/Dio/Powell/Daisley/Airey) back in the mid-seventies, as well as having played with Black Sabbath and, well, simply being the Hard Rock keyboardist par excellence (much more than Lord, in fact).
 
Apologies... I just checked, and Airey was in fact in Rainbow after the lineup I mentioned (Tony Carey and David Stone were the keyboardists in those days). He later went to join Ozzy Osbourne and Gary Moore, but I know that he played with Sabbath at some point.
 
Perun said:
Apologies... I just checked, and Airey was in fact in Rainbow after the lineup I mentioned (Tony Carey and David Stone were the keyboardists in those days). He later went to join Ozzy Osbourne and Gary Moore, but I know that he played with Sabbath at some point.
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It was in last Ozzy album with Sabbath, Never Say Die. He also played keyboards in Priest's Painkiller album!
 
Perun said:
Don Airey!
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He also worked with Bruce on the b-side "Darkness be my friend" (1990), where he plays the panflute sounding keyboard. :)

The Black Sabbath album he played on was "Never Say Die" (1978). Wikipedia states that he also played on Judas Priest's Painkiller and Demolition! Interesting, didn't know that.
 
"Don Airey (ex-Alaska (UK), ex-Anthem (Jpn), Crossbones (Guest), ex-Black Sabbath, ex-Divlje Jagode, Empire (Ger), ex-Iommi, ex-Glenn Tipton, ex-Judas Priest, ex-Ozzy Osbourne, ex-Sinner (Ger), The Cage, Deep Purple)"

From Metal-Archive.com's Rainbow page (therefore, Rainbow is obviously missing from that list). He really is one prolific musician.
 
LooseCannon said:
Remember when we used to be happy we got a mention on Blabbermouth?
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We did...?

As Perun said to me a while ago while discussing something of a similar nature, the one saving grace we have in Maiden is that they don't conform.  Queensryche, Slayer and Metallica all played their 'classic' albums in their entirety, so Maiden play a new one.  Ozzy insists on playing the 'classics' Iron Man/War Pigs/Paranoid/Black Sabbath ad infinitum, and when Maiden play The Early Days, we get Drifter, Another Life, Charlotte the Harlot (well...a bit), Where Eagles Dare etc.
 
Raven said:
We did...?
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I think that was before your time. Back when news posting was still done in the forums, The Saint and I sometimes acknowledged when other news sites (such as Bravewords and Blabbermouth) credited Maidenfans in their news reports.
 
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