‘Fireball’: Ian Gillan picks the most underrated Deep Purple album
Ian Gillan has enjoyed a widely fruitful career and is rightly deemed one of the most effective frontmen of the classic rock era. Not only does he possess a distinctive and primal form of vocal delivery, but Gillan has brought to life an extensive collection of influential tracks, a crucial player in the development of the hard rock and metal genres.
Gillan is best known as the wailing vocalist and lyricist of Deep Purple, a group so vital to developing heavy metal that they rank only behind peers Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Whether it be ‘Smoke on the Water’, ‘Black Night’, or ‘Highway Star’, Gillan was as essential to the best chapter of Deep Purple as was guitar hero Ritchie Blackmore, with the pair forming a scintillating sonic assault.
Considering his long history with Deep Purple, Gillan has often been asked to comment on the band’s story, given that it is one of the most oscillating in history, with an extensive cast of characters playing their part. Ever the realist, the frontman has commented on the parameters of the group’s successes and failures numerous times and once even named the album he considers their most underrated.
When speaking to Eddie Trunk in 2017, Gillan was asked which album by Deep Purple he believes to be undervalued, to which he swiftly named it 1971’s Fireball, the record which contains the title track and ‘Strange Kind of Woman’.
Gillan said: “Fireball, without a doubt, underrated because everyone freaked out. ‘Oh, it’s different than In Rock!'”
“Well, yeah. It was trying other dimensions of Purple. More of the funky side, more of the blues side, more of the soul side. And we’re not a unidimensional outfit. We draw from many influences in our formative years,” the vocalist explained regarding its significance. “And that got a lot of criticism. Because it wasn’t identical to In Rock. I think that’s the most underrated album.”
Fireball was such a success that it became Deep Purple’s first number-one album in the UK and set them up commercially as well as artistically for their most celebrated chapter. This was something Gillan outlined when speaking to Face Culture in 2009, and he went as far as to describe it as his “favourite” album from that chapter of the band.
He said: “The reason why Fireball is my favourite album of the period, it was because without Fireball we would never be able to make Machine Head. Machine Head was probably the first album that was successful, really, on a huge worldwide scale”.
Listen to Fireball below.
