Deep Purple's Ian Gillan recalls the hedonism of the Swinging Sixties

Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan has shared his memories of the hedonism and debauchery he witnessed as a younger man in the 1960s.

The topic arose during a [paywalled] interview with The Independent , in reference to the lyrics of new Deep Purple song Now You're Talkin' , on the band's recently released =1 album. The opening verse of the song finds Gillan picking his way through a wild, libidinous party, with lyrics such as “ There's a whole load of bodies kinda hard to tell, could be a menage-a-many from Hell. And I don't know who's doing what to whom, but surely they are doing it well ...”

“Have you never been to a party like that?” Gillan asks writer Mark Beaumont. “You haven’t lived. That was all that happened in the Sixties! You’d go to a party and you were stepping over people all over the place who were doing all kinds of things… when you’re a teenager in your early twenties in the Sixties, that was just normal.

“The one in Now You’re Talking [sic] is a compilation,” Gillan continues. “I’ve seen people falling out of upstairs windows and getting up and walking back to the bar. I’ve seen parties in Beirut, parties in Australia and parties behind the iron curtain that were just too wild to describe.”

Gillan also recalls a night out in Munich, Germany, sometime in the 1960s, where his 'awakening as a lifelong night crawler’ began.

“The place was full of night people and I thought, This is where I belong,” he says. “There were police, actors, hookers, waiters, people who were winding down and finished work late. People were playing guitars and smoking joints. I didn’t smoke my first joint till I was 38 years old so most of my life was quite mild by comparison with later generations, but we did know how to enjoy ourselves.”

Deep Purple's =1 entered the UK album chart this week at number 12.