By Martin Popoff

Busy, busy busy, and always on the move, IAN GILLAN is of course lead singer and wordsmith for DEEP PURPLE, the world’s busiest band, certainly one of them, especially “of the old guard.” But that doesn’t stop the man from wanting to feed his non-Purple-y musical muse, which, oddly, these days, draws the man to Buffalo, New York, and points north to Toronto, where he’s built a little army of enablers.

“Brilliant, amazing, best thing they’ve ever heard; of course, this is only from the first 200 journalists I’ve spoken to,” laughs the mischievous but always charming leader of the greatest hard rock band ever (Gillan) and also the fourth (Purple), on his new rock-lite solo album One Eye To Morocco.

“These songs were written over the last four or five years, and they were written on a few days when Steve Morris (guitarist, but not Steve Morse… of course) would come down for a few beers, ‘Oh, I’ve got a few ideas.’ So we would work on them over a day or two or three, he goes home, we put five songs in the library. This happens a few times, and we ended up with 38 songs in various stages of completion. Then he’d say, ‘How about we do a collection of this? What about putting some of the songs together on a record?’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s no chance. Purple is very busy and I’m having a great time with the guys, so…’ Unfortunately, Roger Glover’s mother got ill and died last year. So we canceled a couple of tours, so that Roger could spend the last few days with his mom in London. So I headed to Buffalo, New York and we started the selection process, and we rehearsed the guys, we went into the studio, put the bed tracks down, the guide vocals down in three days, and finished up over the next week or so. So all the songs were written under very relaxed circumstances. Now grant you, my roots are probably showing, because without a rock rhythm section or any improvised guitar solos, which was the brief at the beginning of the sessions, probably in that undiluted form you can hear all the influences that I went through when I was a kid - rhythm and blues, the rock ‘n’ roll, blues, the reggae, all that sort of thing. But it wasn’t consciously done that way. I think it emerged, really, as quite a surprise to us all, when we gave birth to such a lovely child.”

True to his words, what you get is a whirlwind trip of traditional styles, a smorg that perhaps belies a man of Gillan’s vintage and rich rock look at the world, as well as a play and ploy away from things he can accomplish with his main act – no grinding chords ‘n’ organs here, more like a myriad of textures applied on a tour of song type ‘n’ typestyle clinics. Frustrating for those of us who want a bonafide “Gillan” album out of the man, but there you go. As well, a definite blues pulse (but more like a half dozen bules touchstones) skips through the record – does co-worker and guitarist Michael Lee Jackson lean this way as well?

“I wouldn’t know about that. I haven’t spoken to him about it. His natural groove is that American rock ‘n’ roll, bluesy thing, that’s for sure. I think he’s been imbedded in music and movies since he’s been a child. There are pictures of him and a very young Clint Eastwood all over his walls (laughs), and I think when I heard ‘Better Days’, he just played it for me at my house, on acoustic guitar, and I thought well, that’s great, it’s just understated, just a simple acoustic guitar and a great story about two mature people being in love and slightly afraid of the future.”

After a pursuit down a world music angle falls flat, Ian at least cops to a bit of a reggae vibe here and there. Relating to him a vignette from Sweet’s Steve Priest about the reggae boom of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s in Britain, Ian says he missed that one.

“Well, there was one coming up, but I didn’t pick that up at the time. I was more into blues, rhythm and blues, Tamla Motown, rock ‘n’ roll, that sort of thing. But I got into it much later, in fact, as Bob Marley and Island Records - we were on the same label. So I got to sniff out this Caribbean flavour, mon, and it eventually became a stable part of any party, playing some Bob Marley records. And I think the earlier stuff was a lot to do with the Jamaican West Indian immigration into London at the time, and they brought their music and their soul food with them. So I remember a lot of people having interest at that time, but it was a bit before me. Not that I’m younger, but it just didn’t touch me until later on. But the bass line in ‘Girl Goes To Show’, is that beautiful... I remember Rodney Appleby saying to me, in my face, when he heard the demo tracks, he said, ‘That weren’t written by no bass player’ (laughs). So he took it away and suddenly it’s got this humanized (sings it). It’s just fantastic, and the recovered art of the rhythm guitar makes it of course absolutely perfect.”

And still, one can’t help but “learn” from this record that world travel, or more accurately, the life experience from being a man of the world, infuses Ian’s songs.

“I feel like a traveling musician. I mean, that’s how we look at it - we’re lucky buggers. That’s how we describe ourselves. World citizen? Not really. I am in a position, having traveled so much, to take a slightly objective view of different cultures and different lives, in the way of things, how they are disturbingly similar, but just different. So all of those things have to remain euphemistically a little diplomatic, I’m afraid (laughs).”

One Eye To Morocco is out now on Eagle Records. Touring it is unlikely, as Ian and his celebrated graybeards are pumped and primed to enter the studio soon to at least consider the idea of a next Deep Purple studio album.