Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan turned to meditation to curb his “irresponsible behaviour”.
Ian Gillan swapped booze for meditation
The 78-year-old rocker has opened up about his wild ways during the band’s hey day – insisting he wasn’t into hard drugs but he did enjoy all-night boozy benders – but he realised he needed to make a huge change if he wanted to be able to continue to make music and he turned to meditation to control his smoking and drinking.
He told the Independent newspaper: “At an early stage in my life I decided I had to change. I was too wild and there were things going on that were just not good if I wanted to have a future as a musician.
“I started meditation at that point and I found a lot of things that you could control. That was important, to start meditating and clear the decks of a load of the irresponsible behaviour, if you’re going to survive.
“It’s pretty important to get on top of things. You got to deliver, whether you’re on stage that night or whether you’re writing 14 songs. There’s no point laying around being drunk.”
“You can’t survive if you keep going through life like that, your body can’t take it. So you’ve got to be practical in a physical sense. It blows your mind too. You evolve or die.”
He added of his previous antics: “I wasn’t a drunk. I just used to enjoy a drink and I was in company that did – pretty much everyone did. We didn’t do drugs so we just did booze. And you obviously can’t perform if you’re legless so you wait until afterwards. There’s a certain element of discipline there which is more along the lines of self-survival than anything else.”
Gillan added: “To be a 40-year-old rebel … that’s not very rock’n’roll.”
