When Ian Gillan performed naked: ‘A great experience’

In an interview with Riff X’s “Metal XS”, reported by Blabbermout.net, the singer of Deep Purple Ian Gillan talked about a particularly memorable concert he gave as a soloist in 2009 at Ferropolis, an open-air museum of enormous mid-20th-century industrial machinery in Germany.

This is what the 79-year-old British musician said: “I remember doing a show in Germany, a solo show with an orchestra.

It was a disaster. It was in a mining facility with huge machinery. It was like having a science fiction backdrop, a Ferropolis, as it was called in Germany. Sometimes they organize big festivals there. That was a disaster. It was raining and they hadn’t sold any tickets. There must have been 20,000 people. There were 200 or 300. The promoter had placed the seats very far from the stage. There was no cover on the stage. There were no monitors. There were no lights, just a white light on the stage. A caravan for me. Nothing for the orchestra and musicians. It was raining cats and dogs. We arrive at halftime. Everything was terrible. They all took shelter under the stage, wet with their instruments. I was sitting naked in my trailer. Enter my personal assistant. My clothes are soaked. He jokingly says, ‘Oh, they’re making a fortune out there selling ponchos. Look, I bought one for you.’ It’s like Niagara Falls when you get on the boat, and it’s just clear plastic ponchos. I told her, ‘This is what I’m going to wear on stage for the second half of the show.’ And she’s like, ‘I dare you.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.’ So I walked out on stage naked, except for the plastic poncho, which was transparent. The orchestra stood up and realized what was happening and started playing with fire. We had a blast because we laughed at the rain, we laughed at the circumstances. The audience got up from their seats, there weren’t many of them, and they all came to the front of the stage and suddenly we were all intertwined in this thing.”

Gillan continued on the wave of memory: “Someone shot a video with their camera and it ended up on YouTube that same evening. Around midnight, the phone started ringing. My manager: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing? ‘ Then came Deep Purple’s manager: ‘What are you doing, destroying the band’s reputation?’ So I said, ‘Well, actually, if you were there, you would have understood. But this camera recorded, the sound and vision were out of sync, because of the distance it was horrible, the orchestra was all out of tune , because of the rain. And it seemed like a cacophony of absolute nonsense. If you were there, you would have understood the circumstances. And it was Sally, who said, ‘Ian actually saved the day.’ just watched it on YouTube, you’d think this was the worst thing that ever happened. In fact, it was one of the best experiences of my life.”