DEEP PURPLE fan-site The Highway Star spoke with renown artist Ioannis (URIAH HEEP, QUIET RIOT, FATES WARNING, LYNYRD SKYNYRD) recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

The Highway Star: Your work with Deep Purple included cover art for Abandon (1998) and Rapture of the Deep (2005), and graphic design for Bananas (2003). Anything else?

Ioannis: "I was introduced to Deep Purple, specifically, Bruce Payne (their manager) and Roger Glover, by a good friend Jim Lewis. He at the time managed YNGWIE MALMSTEEN (a client) among other acts. He was also the VP of A&R; with Polygram in the early '80s and had worked with Deep Purple and RAINBOW. They had just completed Abandon and were running late in getting the cover art together. I sat at Bruce’s office and along with Roger, who has always been the art director for the band as long as I have worked with them, and discussed a series of ideas. About a week later I showed them several concepts, the cover that eventually became Abandon was one of them. I then was asked to design a tour book, which I did with Roger, merchandise and tour laminates. Since then I have worked with them on every studio release (compilations and best offs are usually designed in-house by the label and the band is not involved creatively). So to fully answer your question, yes I did the singles, merchandise, tour books and tour passes for the tours. I also was asked to design promotional posters during the Bananas tour."

The Highway Star: How much creative freedom did you have during these projects?

Ioannis: "They pretty much let me run with it so they can see the first batch of ideas, then Bruce and Roger get heavily involved in the final. In the case of Bananas, they had the concept and presented me with two photos to work with. One was from a company in Hong Kong, I think, which became the tour book, and another was a photo Bruce took, which became the cover. For Rapture of the Deep, Roger had this cartoon that he found, he intended to use it as the basis for a concept he wanted but at the end we ended up using the cartoon. Ian Gillan liked it a lot.

On the tour book art I co-designed the first with Roger (Total Abandon) but the last two I did my own thing with direction from Bruce Payne. One of my most favorite images that I did was the singles cover art for Haunted off the Bananas album, which the band loved, and was also used as a t-shirt."

Read the entire interview here.

Check out Ioannis work at this location.