Gustav Temple meets the Deep Purple frontman to discuss hard rock hair and clothes, Little Richard and Terry-Thomas’ house on Ibiza.
Where are you from originally?
Hounslow, West London. I used to play on Heathrow before the airport was built. Hounslow Heath, it was called, where once Dick Turpin used to ride, I believe, and I still see him now and then, galloping down the runway, with his cape flying and his pistols raised, saying ‘Stand and Deliver!’
And where are you speaking from today?
I’m on the Algarve in Portugal, where I’ve lived for over 20 years.
How did you decide on Portugal as a place to settle long-term? Were there any other options for you?
I used to try and combine work and holidays between tours. It started with the Caribbean: Jamaica, Montserrat and the Cayman Islands, but of course it’s far too arduous to go there for the weekend. So I started looking to settle somewhere, first at the islands in the Mediterranean: Menorca, Ibiza, Mallorca.
Terry-Thomas had a wonderful house in Santa Eularia on Ibiza, on the top of a mountain. He got to it by donkey and built this place. He made a mistake with the paperwork so that he never actually owned the land. But he owned the building on the land and he built a beautiful house, where he raised his kids Tiger and Cushan. He built a lovely lagoon-type swimming pool with a covered terrace; it was idyllic. I stayed there for a month.
Terry was long gone by then; Cushan and Tiger were looking after the house. But we had to ask them to leave, actually. They’d rented me the house but they thought they could still do their drug deals in the kitchen, and continue to be in residence. So I said, no, no, I’ve rented the house and we’re using all the bedrooms. I’ve got family coming out, so bye-bye. They were reluctant to leave.
I think Terry-Thomas was more of a G&T man when it came to drugs.
He also liked champagne. On the roof of the covered terrace there was a bit of string dangling with a small noose at the bottom. I asked the housekeeper what it was for and he said, Oh that’s where Mr. Thomas used to hang his champagne bottle, so it was never too far out of reach.
When you were in Deep Purple, how strict was the dress code?
I like dressing up and wearing a suit every now and again, and I like it to be nice and to fit well. But in the working world that I grew up in, there was a big emphasis on fashion. We decided that, by definition, if you’re fashionable this week, then next week you’re finished. We decided to avoid that with music and with clothes, so we pretty much wore what happened to be fashionable anyway, on the bohemian end of society.
It’s a standing joke actually, if you look at the rags on the rails in our dressing room, headscarves and things like that. Simon McBride was always introduced as the man who won the best-dressed Leprechaun in Deep Purple award for three years running.
What about hard rock hair, did you have to have long hair?
I think in some quarters, but I cut my hair when I was bareback horse riding in the New Forest. My hair grew longer and when I felt it on my back it was something very primitive, like an energy I wanted to keep, so I grew it very long. And then everyone else did and so I cut it off again. My hair doesn’t really belong to me; it belongs to other people. As if it’s some kind of magic totem.
Do you prefer the term heavy rock or hard rock for Deep Purple?
If you want to pick a genre, then I would prefer hard rock. Only because heavy rock was the next step into heavy metal. I’ve turned down awards for heavy metal, even though most of my friends are in it, like Black Sabbath and the guys in Metallica. We’re good mates but that isn’t really our bag. My rock ‘n’ roll was Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry, and that’s just to start with. And if you took any of those into today’s music scene, they’d be instantly sliced up and put into separate genres and played on different radio stations. They would not be allowed to be all of the same genre.
Did you ever meet any of them?
Oh yeah. I remember being in a small club in Los Angeles where Little Richard was doing a performance and he’d hired a huge band. We had a nice chat in the dressing room afterwards. He was an extraordinary man.
Would you describe him as eccentric?
He was outrageous, and eccentric, and we couldn’t all live that kind of life.
Would you like to be called eccentric yourself?
I do my best. I think I’m Norman Normal, personally, but I think the rest of you are all mad!
Wasn’t Little Richard always a bit miffed that he never really got the recognition he deserved, for practically inventing rock ‘n’ roll?
Chuck Berry and Little Richard were indeed miffed that the British bands came along and covered their songs, because we could. There was radio apartheid in America. There were black stations and the white guys never heard this stuff.
I’ve spoken to so many American musicians who’ve asked me, where do you get all this stuff from? And I say, from you! We gave it our own energy and enthusiasm. Young people were just going crazy; it was the first time people were dancing in the aisles at a concert. Post-Victorian society was outraged.
These days it’s very hard to outrage anyone with your appearance. You can almost get a stronger reaction from the public by wearing a tweed three-piece suit.
Well I’ve worn a three-piece tweed suit, although I don’t wear tweed any more; I tend to wear lighter materials. I’ve got a couple of suits and some nice jackets, which I wear if I’m going to a restaurant or on a chat show.
What’s wrong with tweed – too hot for the Algarve?
Nothing wrong with tweed, it’s just that ninety per of the time, in my house in Portugal, I don’t wear any clothes at all. I fall in the pool about four times a day when I’m working, just to cool off. I said to a friend of mine who came to stay once, why are you getting dressed to go in the pool? And the look on her face when she fell into contact with the water without any clothes on, it was fantastic.
The Talking Gibberish tour starts on 28th April 2027, with 25 shows around England, Scotland and Wales.
