“Sabbath were more important than Deep Purple and Zeppelin”

The frontman of the Deep Purple Ian Gillan in an interview with the British newspaper The Sun released to promote the new album of the English band “=1” (read the review here) said who, in his opinion, considers them to be the most important of the “unholy trinity” of British rock groups, a term which, he explains, was coined by the press.

Gillan observes in his meeting with the paper: “Just like ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’, the ‘unholy trinity’ was created entirely by our good friends the music journalists.

We knew them, we drank with them, and they put into words what everyone else did: something distinctive and identifiable.”

Taking into consideration the trio of bands comprising Deep Purple, Black Sabbath And Led Zeppelin and their impact on music as a whole, Ian Gillan he elaborates: “In a way, Sabbath were the most important because without them there would have been no Seattle, no grunge scene, no heavy metal. What Tony[Iommi, Black Sabbath guitarist, ed.]was offering in those early days was just amazing. It was really powerful.”

Although Gillan may consider the Black Sabbath as the most culturally significant, he believes the three bands “did something that had never been done before and were realizing all the things that had been building up over the previous ten years.”

In another part of the interview with The Sun, the now 78-year-old British musician talked about how the famous “Smoke On The Water”the song included in the 1972 album “Machine Head”almost certainly the best known piece of the entire repertoire of the Deep Purple. “We needed six more minutes of music to complete the album and we were running out of time. We had this jam, so we quickly wrote the lyrics that were a summary of the making of ‘Machine Head’, and that was it. Many months after the album came out, on an American tour, a guy named Russ Shaw from Warner Bros. came to see us and saw the reaction to ‘Smoke’. He tried to understand why we hadn’t released it as a single. Of course, it was six minutes long, so no radio station would pick it up. A few days later we cut it down to 3 minutes and 54 seconds and released it. It was the most played song in the world at the time. I have it etched in my mind. Very simple song, very catchy, great riff.”