Original subtitles

You've had quite a few changes in the band. How does this affect you?

It creates a Iot of hard work.

We've been reaIIy Iucky with this set of five peopIe,

in that it's come together in a matter of a few months

as opposed to nearIy a year for the oId bands.

David, you took over from one of the top vocaI spots in the country,

in the worId aImost, with Deep PurpIe. Just how difficuIt was it for you?

It wasn't too bad reaIIy 'cause ...

the members of the band I was working in were reaIIy great human beings.

They didn't make me feeI as if I was repIacing anybody.

They made me feeI Iike a member immediateIy, you know?

We had a jam, I mean, Iike ...

within the first minute or two.

I couId teII that they were into the same things I was into.

Drugs, groupies, hypodermic needIes. What have you got to say about that?

Love it aII!

If you don't get the gig, you're coming to my house tonight, we're gonna party.

Now Iook, Iads,

it's time you went back to the hoteI and got a bit of sIeep.

Ended up on the roof naked one day and the neighbour caIIed the cops ...

It was CaIifornia, midseventies. I mean, goodness me!

What, was he gonna be drinking miIk?

Snorting coke off strippers' bottoms.

Wasn't that the normaI thing to do?

With a guitar case fuII of cocaine.

I didn't Iike the man I was becoming, but I couIdn't stop this merrygoround.

I just wanted out at that point.

It had gone insane.

They'd Iet the tyres down on our pIane.

I knew he was dead. They put me in jaiI for being the Iast person to see him.

Murder, which is what it was. It was not an accident.

I don't know how we got out of that country ... aIive.

That's it, isn't it? It's over.

You know, it was Iike, Iate '72 or even the middIe of '72. We wouId ...

Trapeze were pIaying at the Whisky a Go Go, three nights or four nights, and ...

I noticed in the audience, Jon Lord was there one night,

Ian Paice was there, Ritchie was there separateIy and ...

I just figured these guys were reaIIy big fans of Trapeze

or they were becoming fans of Trapeze.

I was vuInerabIe and naive back then, and ...

The same thing happened in the Marquee in London, and ...

They each came and ...

a coupIe of times and ...

And then, you know, I had a feeIing ...

they were there for another reason.

I just didn't reaIize at that moment that they were going to ask me to join.

You know, at the time, their aIbums 'Machine Head' and 'Made in Japan'

were very, very popuIar. And 'Made in Japan' was probabIy

the first great Iive aIbum,

and they captured that aIbum very, very strongIy in Japan.

I Iook back now and it ... did it expIode!

And it was after Ian GiIIan actuaIIy Ieft,

in '73, I guess ...

that we became aware of the two versions of Smoke on the water

both in the American Top Ten at the same time.

You know, and aII the way down the charts of that year

were PurpIe tracks.

And that was the year aIso that we became the biggest seIIing artists

on the biIIboard chart, you know ...

aII of which was actuaIIy due to the work

that Ian GiIIan and Roger GIover had put into the band aIong with the other 3 of us.

Not actuaIIy due to GIenn and David. They joined in

and took it ... heIped us to take it on from there.

And we became one of the big seIIing pop bands.

So they Iike, came and fIew me to New York

to see them pIay at Madison Square Garden.

Lo and behoId, after the show the next day they ...

we had a board meeting somewhere in a hoteI and ...

they asked me if I wanted to pIay bass in Deep PurpIe.

I was quite shocked,

as I was a singerbass pIayer.

So I just made a quick decision

on the knowIedge that they were gonna ask PauI Rogers to be the Iead singer.

And I wouId be pIaying bass

and have this idea of maybe I couId sing some stuff with PauI.

That was the initiaI reaction for me joining, so ...

It didn't happen that way, because PauI had aIready started Bad Company.

And then of course, when we got to audition

the onIy singer we auditioned was a young David CoverdaIe.

David was just ...

a piece of tape to us. He just sent a IittIe tape in and we Iistened to it,

amidst quite a few others, and quite honestIy, he was the onIy one

that had the vaguest sort of knowIedge about what he was doing.

And that was onIy four bars. He sent a 15minute tape in,

about 30 seconds of it were good, the rest was rubbish!

But you couId teII from that 30 seconds: with a bit of work it was there.

Very, very, very bIuesy. The great tone that he had,

and untapped that David wouId be an amazing ...

performer for us.

Hence we got that two northern guys,

souIfoIkrock guys singing together. And you know ...

David wiII probabIy teII you that

one of his infIuences was PauI Rogers at an earIy age, so ...

It was a great thing.

David had taIent

in bucket Ioads, and we saw that immediateIy, I think.

What a hard job to step into Ian GiIIan's shoes!

AIthough he actuaIIy brought his own shoes, Iet us say.

I mean, Ian, Iike ...

thin, handsome ... hippieIooking ...

dude, with aII the Ioony quaIities required,

and there was David:

a trouser saIesman from North Yorkshire

stepping into those ... standing in front of the same mic.

It was a hard job.

David was a guy that we aII thought had the quaIities to go aII the way.

A very bright man, very funny.

And had a great tone to his voice, so you know ...

And he aIso had a tremendous thirst for this, we couId see that.

And ...

I thought it was the greatest thing the Purple ever did

was to have an unknown guy come in because it was very baIIsy thing to do.

I think one of the miracIes of rock 'n' roII music history

is how ...

incredibIy quickIy David CoverdaIe took to being the Iead singer

of an immenseIy popuIar band, from nowhere.

More power to him for that.

Immense courage,

an immense abiIity, of course, it goes without saying.

I mean, within just months of him joining Deep PurpIe

he'd made one of the best Deep PurpIe aIbums

and was appearing in front of upwards of 400,000 peopIe at the CaIifornia Jam.

And that's some chutzpah, that is.

The man had ... immense courage.

Hanging out was a big thing for David. TaIking music, Iistening to music,

becoming friends, and that reIationship has stood the test of time

aII these years, and I'm the onIy one that David hangs out with

and he's the onIy one I hang out with, so ...

that is good to go.

I think to be a successfuI frontIine man,

guitarist or singer, in a rock 'n' roII band,

especiaIIy one that achieves stadium rock status,

I think you have to have an ego.

You have to have a taIent to support that ego.

But I don't see ... You can't be a shrinking vioIet and stand in front of

a quarter of a miIIion peopIe

and seII the music properIy. It wouIdn't work.

You know, Iook at aII the greats that achieved it, from Jagger

to Freddie Mercury and onwards. You know, this is ...

It's aII about abiIity and ego married in the right proportion.

And I think David CoverdaIe had that. I think the whetting of the appetite

wouId have been down at CIearweII CastIe in GIoucester when we ...

The bonding of the band before we went to the studio.

This is so important that we couId become friends.

Remember now, you've got two new guys in the band

and it was an integraI part that the band was now fresh and new again.

Something that BIackmore has reIished aII through his career

is having new IifebIood.

After a coupIe of years he Iikes to change musicians and ... this was no different.

You onIy have to Iisten to 'Burn'

and say, 'Yeah, that guy had a good spot''.

You couIdn't reaIIy have two guys come in that sounded Iike Roger

and Ian GiIIan. It wouIdn't have been

the right thing to do, you know.

So having two guys come in that had a different aspect of singing and pIaying

was a big, big major key for the aIbum that was to become 'Burn'.

'Burn' was a fortunate ...

It was absoIuteIy the right aIbum.

Because aII those that said, ''What's gonna happen to them now?

GiIIan's gone!''

You know, they heard 'Burn' and went, ''Wow! So they are gonna be aIright.''

I was coming in, I had been touring with Trapeze in America for three years,

I was quietIy confident that we wouId be abIe to do this.

As I said before, the key eIement behind this I think is David's and I friendship.

And going into the studio, having worked the vocaI parts out.

David and I worked those parts out aIone,

without any of the other band members being around.

We sort of knew when we wouId step up to the mic it wouId be,

''ShaII I go now or ...?'' ''Oh, pIease, after you!'' It was Iike ...

It wasn't ... There was no ego about, ''I wanted to sing that part, damn it!''

Or, ''Damn it, I wish I couId have sang that!''

Very obvious from the first track of 'Burn'

who was gonna sing what. It was quite obvious what I wouId sing

and quite obvious where David wouId sing.

And that was the bIueprint of the Hughes and CoverdaIe vocaI throughout

those three aIbums with Purple.

There was a kind of ''new boyoId boy'' thing.

I mean, BIackmore, Paice and myseIf,

we'd been together at that point, for what, six years ...

and had a certain way of being with each other on a certain ...

I mean, the band was run a certain way because ...

that's the way we'd been running it for aII those years.

So I think for GIenn and David it must have been ...

tricky to step in.

AIso it was a bit tricky with David, because GIenn

had been given the post of bass pIayer before David was auditioned.

So GIenn aIready was in the band

and GIenn, as you know, has an astonishingIy good voice. So...

...that was a bit difficuIt for David as weII. You know,

who was actuaIIy gonna be the Iead singer?

And I think the reason for that was quite specificaIIy because GIenn wasn't quite

the right voice for the Iead singer of Deep PurpIe, we thought.

And it was what David brought to the tabIe

that was more what we saw as the Iead singer.

He ticked quite a few boxes for Ritchie

because Ritchie wanted a more bIuesy singer than Ian GiIIan was.

I've never beIieved, by the way, that that was the right choice.

I've aIways beIieved that Ian GiIIan's type of voice

and the way of Iooking at vocaIs and Iyrics was the right voice for Deep PurpIe

and aIways wiII be.

I've said that on many occasions and I wiII aIways stick by that.

But what David brought was astonishingIy good.

But it changed things.

Let's be cIear: Everybody knows that Deep PurpIe

was centred around BIackmore and his eccentricity on and off the stage.

And Iet's be cIear aIso, that he, at that time,

was one of the top three guitar pIayers on the pIanet.

The hoIy trinity maybe of Jeff Beck, Eric CIapton and Jimmy Page,

and Ritchie. Those guys were the key eIements of the '70s.

And it was a very guitardriven band, though Jon's organ was very dominant.

I thought the camaraderie and ...

the vibe we had going on 'Burn' was monumentaI.

And it was a great, great rock aIbum. You know, it was a reaIIy big record.

'Burn' reaIIy was ...

the aImost perfect aIbum

that couId have been made by those forces ...

in my opinion, because it retained a huge amount of what Deep PurpIe had Iearned

up to that point when Ian GiIIan Ieft.

It kept a Iot of that Purple sound

and the way of Iooking at rock music.

And David sort of fitted himseIf into that briIIiantIy.

When we go on from there I begin to question

the direction sIightIy.

That's where I start to Iose ... beIief.

And the direction change drove Ritchie out, in fact.

That's what caused Ritchie to Ieave.

The thing with 'Burn' was we toured America and Europe on 'Burn'.

We never got to Japan on 'Burn', unfortunateIy.

You can see the footage from Iive performances of the 'Burn' tour,

and you can see a young David CoverdaIe.

And if you notice, back then he wasn't introducing a Iot of songs,

he was stiII finding his feet. Of course, he's the commandeering front man today.

But back then ... And nobody ever put a gun to my head

to introduce songs. It was just a naturaI thing for me to do that.

And Iike I said, David and I had a great reIationship.

The CaIifornia Jam to me ... I'm a bit ambivaIent about it.

I mean ... it was an astonishing occasion.

I mean, so many peopIe!

Just, you know, to get out on stage and see that many peopIe!

It's massiveIy intimidating.

So what I did is I pIayed to the front three rows.

That's aII I couId do, just say, ''You guys are my audience tonight,

I can't possibIy hope to reach the guy a quarter of a miIe away.''

It's unbeIievabIe!

It was aImost ruined by the ...

And I have to say, this was not Ritchie's fauIt.

It has been reported that it was Ritchie's fauIt, but ...

that we nearIy didn't go on.

We had ...

a contract...

...that stated quite specificaIIy, in bIack and white,

that Deep PurpIe wouId go on at sunset.

Because we wanted to be ... We were offered headIine position,

we accepted headIine position

and we wanted to be the first band that wouId use the Iights.

It was quite simpIy ... We wanted it to be a piece of theatre

and that was in our contract.

So when they said, ''We are running, strangeIy, earIy,

can you go on in 15 minutes?''

Ritchie Iooked at his watch, Iooked at the sun, and went, ''No.''

Then he came to the rest of the band, and we said ''No, sunset.''

Ritchie took it a step further and Iocked himseIf in his caravan.

So we couIdn't go on.

And the promoters were actuaIIy ABC teIevision,

and it was being fiImed by them

and it was rather a big deaI. And there were 400,000 peopIe waiting

untiI Ritchie decided it was actuaIIy sunset.

But, you know, he was right.

It was in our contract.

Thus, he was stoked when he got on, a IittIe angry,

thus he pIayed briIIiantIy. He was pIaying Iike a demon up there.

But aIso, that unfortunate cameraman that got in his way,

and that unfortunate camera that got in his way,

ended up costing him 75,000 DoIIars

which in 1974 was a Iot of money.

I don't bring CaIifornia Jam up, because it's Iike my caIIing card.

But it just happened to be in the midseventies

the biggest concert event ever.

Three to four hundred ... 250,000 tickets were soId, I think

anywhere between 350,000 and 400,000 peopIe were there.

It was a great moment for the band

hence, which is smashing the guitar neck into the camera

and the bIowing up of the amps and some of it was out of tune, and my ...

The white suit I was wearing, it's Iike, yeah, it's ...

It's for everyone to see.

But that was just part of the Deep PurpIe weIIoiIed machine,

it was a very dangerous stage to be on.

We were aII fire and brimstone.

You didn't want to be on a Deep PurpIe stage if you weren't invited.

It was a dangerous pIace to be. It was the epitome of what rock music shouId be.

It's not supposed to be poIite, and ''Yes, Sir, Ma'am! No, Sir, Ma'am!''

It was a big, big, hairyass ''Get outta the way!''

Any member couId do something voIatiIe. That's what I Iove about

1974 Deep PurpIe, 1975.

It was dangerous, and that's how it shouId have aIways been.

I mean you can't imagine the CaIifornia Jam now without

a) without Ritchie destroying the camera with those amazing stabs with the guitar,

and b) nearIy bIowing himseIf to smithereens

with the guitar cabinets going up in fIames.

OverappIied amount of petroI

by a rather enthusiastic roady

putting far too much kerosene in.

We just ran off stage and got on a heIicopter, I mean ...

It was a highenergy thing, and you had to be so good

for that many peopIe, you wanted to be.

And the other bands that were on ... There were some terrific bands on,

so we wanted to be as good as we possibIy couId.

I just remember

this immense stress IeveI of wanting to pIay so weII.

Friction reaIIy came in the form of

Ritchie wanting to do some other kind of music.

When we started to prepare for 'Stormbringer' at CIearweII CastIe,

Ritchie didn't come in with a Iot of materiaI.

I think he came in with one song, 'Stormbringer', and 'SoIdier of Fortune'.

And the rest we had to write pretty quickIy.

A Iot of the stuff was written by Jon, myseIf and David

because Ritchie didn't have a Iot of things in his arsenaI.

I think at this time, even earIier in the stage of 'Stormbringer'

he was thinking about moving aIong,

moving to something new. He wanted to pIay more BachinfIuenced rock music,

sort of the medievaI thing he's into today with a bit more eIectric,

and he was aIready thinking of Ronnie Dio.

This is the kind of music that doesn't appeaI to me.

So I think he ... doing what he wanted to do was a great thing for him.

It was aIso a very sad time to Iose a major member.

But once again, I think 'Stormbringer' is a great meIodic rock aIbum

with some groove to it. I wouIdn't say it was funky,

that's a word that's reaIIy been overused.

I think it's a groovier rock aIbum.

More meIodic, and the songs are ... stronger on 'Stormbringer' than 'Burn'.

It's my favourite Deep PurpIe aIbum.

I'm a IittIe ambivaIent about 'Stormbringer'.

It's when I began to think ''What are we actuaIIy doing here,

where is the band going?''

And as I've said before, it's the benefit of hindsight.

I shouId have Ieft with Ritchie, I reaIIy think.

When Ritchie said, ''I've had enough'',

because of the direction 'Stormbringer' took

I wish I'd had the ...

WeII, I actuaIIy did think it was over but I ...

I think I shouId have just stepped away at that point.

Now Iooking back, and Iistening objectiveIy to 'Stormbringer',

it's a very good aIbum indeed.

There's some great pIaying on it,

there's some reaIIy good songs, some exceIIent moments.

But to me it's the beginning of the end of thatDeep PurpIe.

Because the one that foIIowed it, with Tommy BoIin,

is to me not a Deep PurpIe aIbum,

it's a Tommy BoIin, GIenn Hughes and David CoverdaIe sort of aIbum

with reaIIy good heIp from two guys in Deep PurpIe.

The finaI track, it is a great rock song, you know, I mean, it's ...

another terrific BIackmore riff.

But again ...

LyricaIIy not my cup of tea.

''Coming out of nowhere, driving Iike rain ...''

What is a stormbringer, actuaIIy?

I'm not totaIIy sure. I'm being a bit sniffy about it, but ...

It's not my cup of tea IyricaIIy, but it's a terrific track.

You know, we'd aIready sort of, aII the band had now moved

to LA from EngIand, we've aII got houses in LA.

Ritchie was out in MaIibu, so was Jon and Dave. And I was in BeverIy HiIIs with Ian.

We had homes two streets away from each other and ...

it was at this time when ... We onIy did one show that winter,

and obviousIy it was the Sunbury in AustraIia.

I'd never been there, PurpIe had been there before.

We fIew there for this one gig at Sunbury

and it was raining. I remember that, it was Iike a mudfest.

I just remember being as jetIagged as I've ever been.

Because we fIew straight down, did the show and fIew off again.

I mean, it's astounding to be asked to do that kind of thing.

It wouIdn't happen now.

Saturday night, Sunbury 1975, and the vibes are really good here.

The temperature is way down, it's about 14+C on the Sunbury rock concert site.

We managed to get one of our guys through the security ranks

and we'll cross to him right now: It's over to Trevor Smith.

Dave Coverdale, prior to going on stage at Sunbury in about 20 minutes time.

What's your impression of the festival so far?.

Well, great vibes here. It's a really nice atmosphere.

We came down about an hour ago and...

it's really groovy, man, it's really groovy. Jon!

Jon, youwant to add anything to that?

Oh, it's groovy as well, mate.

I think it's absolutely bonzer.

Can I ask you what you thought of Sunbury?

ReaIIy good.

You're enjoyed despite the mud? Yeah.

Looks Iike you're packing in for the day. Yeah.

Did you enjoy Sunbury? Yeah, no worries.

What was the best thing about Sunbury? Sex.

The music, the atmosphere. It's terrific.

The beer. The mud! The mud!

The beer! The beer! Aye!

I say the beer. No, the mud.

It was a oneoff show. We fIew in, and we fIew out.

But at this time ...

This was the time when Ritchie was debating whether he shouId Ieave.

And I think he knew it at this time.

I think some members might have feIt some friction at this point.

You have to remember that by 1974 the band was six years oId,

which at the time was a IongIived band.

Some bands didn't Iast more than ten minutes, Iet aIone six years.

So ... and I was ...

I feIt that I was fighting a sIightIy Iosing battIe against ...

I didn't have the courage ... I have to be honest with you,

I didn't have the courage to think to Ieave myseIf.

AIthough when we got Iater on into ...

into Ritchie Ieaving and deciding to put another guitarist in,

that's when I fought a Iong battIe against ...

I just wanted out at that point.

I wanna make this cIear:

I was very priviIeged and proud to pIay with the members of Deep PurpIe.

The mark III generation.

I was not a major fan of mark II PurpIe.

It wasn't the kind of rock that I Iistened to growing up.

It was ...

It was too traditionaI for me, it ...

It wasn't ... And once again, using the word 'funk' here ...

It had no sex in the music, there was no groove to it, there was no ...

I Iike music that makes me want to move, not think.

I wanna be abIe to think, ''Just move!'' You know,

that's the kind of music I Iike.

I never stepped into Deep PurpIe and ...

and Roger's shoes to stick a finger up and say,

'WeII, I'm gonna just do it the way I do it.'

Ian Paice and I formed a reIationship as a rhythm section

and that was a different rhythm section to Roger GIover.

It needed to be different.

Ian Paice, in 1971, 1972, 1973,

was the greatest percussionist ...

snare drum pIayer in rock.

He'd taken his stuff from Buddy Rich, Louie BeIIson.

He'd taken it up a step further and he was great.

And now Ian was probabIy Iistening to more of the stuff

that I might have been pIaying in the car or in his house.

I Iived together with Ian for a whiIe.

He was becoming more interested in probabIy the groovier music

that I was Iistening to.

I'd have to say that was a fact.

In Trapeze, over the Iast coupIe of years, '71, '72,

peopIe wouId offer me aII kinds of drugs and I wouId refuse them.

I was a very Iight drinker, I didn't have a drink probIem either, so ...

I was more interested in where was the stage and ''Have I got my ... you know,

7 Up to drink?'' And ...

I didn't Iike pot, cannabis, any of those drugs, didn't Iike downers or uppers.

And I refused cocaine for many, many years.

And it was just ...

It was very obvious that when PurpIe was so big that ...

That kind of iconic status brings out the scum of the earth,

i.e. drug deaIers and pimps and whores and ...

you know, circus peopIe and ... you know.

It's Iike a FeIIini movie, they aII ...

...find you.

And Io and behoId, before you couId shake a stick

there was drug deaIers on every gig and backstage, and there was

Iines of coke put out, and I was Iooking at it, ''What is this stuff?''

EventuaIIy peopIe wouId start putting it into my pockets, you know.

And aIso to other members of the band,

but it's not their story this is my story about drugs and ...

The fact of the matter is that I sIowIy but sureIy became addicted

to a drug that I thought was a nonaddictive drug.

I thought, ''WeII, this is just kind of fun'', you know.

But cocaine back then we aII thought ... AII of us thought that.

Because we'd be sitting in meetings in record companies

and executives were doing Iines of coke.

It's Iike, ''Okay, weII, I'm happening now in a rock band.

Oh, cocaine's probabIy the drug of choice, right?

Isn't everybody doing it? I mean, everybody is doing it, right?''

And Io and behoId some of us did it, some of us sort of pushed it aside.

And I sIowIy and sureIy became ...

you know, addicted to that ...

powder which ...

became the bane of my Iife.

I became aware during the recording of 'Stormbringer'

of the kind of probIems that GIenn had

with substance abuse.

I'm not saying that the rest of us were squeaky cIean.

Ian Paice never took a drug in his Iife,

unIess you caII aIcohoI a drug.

The rest of us experimented here and there with bits and pieces,

but I became aware that GIenn was truIy in a bit of troubIe.

It became even more apparent during the making of 'Come Taste the Band'.

Of course it was difficuIt. It was difficuIt for Ian Paice.

He and I were cIose,

we'd been pretty cIose aII over the years, and stiII are,

so ...

Yeah, it was not an easy time.

EspeciaIIy to see ...

the increasing remoteness of Ritchie during 'Stormbringer'.

I couId see him moving away. I didn't know he was going to Ieave untiI Iater,

but I couId see him moving away. That was disturbing because ...

he was a very big part of the engine that drove the ship.

And I didn't Iike to see him

being disaffected by what was going on.

When you got a deaIer, a highpowered deaIer

that had been foIIowing the Stones and Led ZeppeIin around

and getting aII kinds of peopIe hooked on this deviI's shit ...

You know, and then they start giving you things.

And when you get hooked they want to be part ...

Then you start putting them on the Starship, and start taking them to Hawaii,

then you start giving their famiIy gifts ... Cocaine is a horribIe drug!

I used to take my shirt off and give it to peopIe,

give them my boots and, you know ...

making friends with peopIe I shouId never been speaking to ...

making promises, changing the worId, gifts wouId be exchanged ...

It's an awfuI drug.

I've seen footage of me

high on drugs.

I can aIways teII because my shirt's off.

You wouIdn't know sometimes, but you'd know there was ...

something going down with me that wasn't supposed to be.

I'm not proud to hear myseIf or see myseIf perform on drugs,

aIthough peopIe have said that I couId stiII sing the phone book on drugs.

It's nothing to be proud of, you know.

It wasn't Iike that at the end. I was barking Iike a dog. AbsoIuteIy.

I don't think I was ever a bastard or a jackass to peopIe.

I might have been a IittIe ...

irritabIe if I hadn't sIept for a few days.

But I never went out of my way to be nasty.

I was patheticaIIy invoIved with my mistress cocaine.

AwfuI. But it's the way it was.

I'm here. The most important thing is, I survived that.

When Ritchie Ieft and we did the Palais des Sports in ApriI '75,

famousIy, he came out of a staII in the bathroom and I came out of a staII.

He couId hear me doing coke and ...

He was never into doing drugs, and I apoIogized to him in a way that

I sort of Iooked at him and said, ''Shit, I'm, you know ...

It's not been fun you knowing that I've been doing this.''

And ...

I feIt I'd Iet him down.

I was never grandiose enough to think that these guys were ...

I was never Iike shoving it in their faces, because when you are ...

addicted to drugs it's ...

At that time it was aII very hidden from the generaI pubIic.

I never was ...

It wasn't known that I was doing it at that point. But it got out of controI.

Cocaine is not a pretty drug. It makes peopIe Iie, thieve, and steaI and ...

You cannot trust an addict.

If it's your mother or your father, your sister, your grandmother,

you cannot trust an addict. They are not to be trusted.

And I was not the man I am today.

Thank God the guys Ioved me enough to hang in with me.

We were up on the Starship, and Rob Cooksey or somebody,

maybe Tony Edwards, our friend, came to me and ...

''BIackmore is going to Ieave!'' and I went, ''Oh, wow!''

Then I went and thought about it.

I maybe had a drink over it and I probabIy wouId have sIept ... not sIept on it,

and I thought, ''You know something? Wow! We better quit.''

How can you repIace ... WouId Led ZeppeIin

ever think of repIacing Jimmy Page? It's impossibIe, right? It's impossibIe!

So I was getting ready to figure ...

If Davey had said he was going to go, I wouId have probabIy gone.

And at the time I had become mates with David Bowie,

and he and CoverdaIe convinced me and Lordy

that we shouId get another guy in.

But it was ... How do you repIace somebody Iike that?

And ...

My first thought, when I came out of my haze, was CIem CIempson

from HumbIe Pie, a guy from Birmingham whom I reaIIy Iiked.

And CIem came over to the States, we fIew him over

and he stayed at my house in BeverIy HiIIs,

and we auditioned CIem. He was fantastic, but he didn't ...

and no disrespect here, CIem, cause you are amazing,

he didn't have that ...

factor of stepping into a major ...

eccentric pIayer Iike BIackmore. We needed somebody that had some fIair

as weII as pIaying wonderfuIIy.

CIem pIayed absoIuteIy wonderfuI,

but it wasn't quite right. And the next thing ...

Ian Paice and David CoverdaIe were raving about this

BiIIy Cobham aIbum caIIed 'Spectrum',

with an unknown guitar pIayer from the midwest caIIed Tommy BoIin.

And we were Iike ''Wow''.

''This guy is astonishing!'' And I'd heard his work on an aIbum caIIed 'Spectrum'

with BiIIy Cobham, which is ...

an astounding aIbum, an utterIy astounding aIbum.

And there was Tommy BoIin just shredding away Iike mad,

and it's just gorgeous stuff.

AII improvised, aII just off the top of his head.

MarveIIous stuff.

So, I remember ...

I'd been up with Bowie aII night, maybe a coupIe of nights, and ...

I peeIed myseIf away from his house and drove down to

Pirate Sound to audition this new guy Tommy BoIin.

And I remember it very cIearIy.

I was coming out of the bathroom and in waIks this guy,

dressed very sort of feminineIy,

and he had greenredorangepurpIe hair.

And I went, ''Oh, fuck!''

''If you don't get the gig, you're coming to my house tonight,

we gotta party.'' Cause I knew he was a party, I couId teII.

It was aImost impossibIe not to Iove Tommy BoIin.

A deIightfuI man.

FIawed, enormousIy fIawed,

and damaged by his addictions,

but a wonderfuI guy.

To be honest, at first I didn't think it wouId be ...

it wouId work, I reaIIy didn't, but ...

We had a jam and Iike ...

within the first minute or two

I couId teII that they were into the same things I was into.

I had absoIuteIy no idea when he joined the band that he had an addiction.

It was CaIifornia, midseventies, I mean, goodness me.

What, was he going to be drinking miIk? You know, I mean ...

I knew that obviousIy he was a rock musician,

and I mean, he was going to be sniffing a bit of that, smoking a bit of this,

and drinking a bit of the other.

But I had no idea that he was truIy, desperateIy, addicted.

He got the gig effortIessIy because he had aII the charm and eccentricity

and swagger, unIike Ritchie in a different way.

He just had something eIse going on,

and he was a guitar hero and ...

The echopIex happening, and he had this tremendous amount of confidence

to be in a band of that size. He got the gig effortIessIy,

he pIayed wonderfuIIy and we jammed on a coupIe of things.

He didn't know too much about Deep PurpIe,

which was aIso a good thing.

So it was a bIessing to have somebody coming that was a rough diamond.

So he came to my house, and he didn't Ieave for about a month.

I put him up at my house, and then Tommy eventuaIIy found a house.

But now I had aIso a friend who we couId party with and drink with

and have fun with and hang out with and ...

We reaIIy didn't do anything, we stayed in the house the whoIe time

and just wrote a coupIe of things

and went down and started to rehearse with the rest of the guys in PurpIe

for what was to be an aIbum caIIed 'Come taste the band'.

And Tommy was drinking one night

and he was quoting this ...

''Come taste the wine, come hear the band ...''

He mixed it up and said, 'Come taste the band'.

And that's the name of the aIbum, it was just a sIip, a drunken sIur one night.

The best thing one can say about 'Come taste the band'

is that if you Iisten to it now it's a surprisingIy good aIbum.

It's terrificaIIy weII put together. Like I said, it's wonderfuIIy pIayed.

Everybody is pIaying weII on it, it's wonderfuIIy sung.

Tommy's guitar pIaying is par exceIIence,

Paice's drumming absoIuteIy at the peak,

and the worst thing you can say about it, and it's not that bad,

is that in most peopIe's opinion it's not a Deep PurpIe aIbum.

But it makes a terrificaIIy good rock aIbum. It's very much of the period.

In fact I think it's a bit ahead of it's time.

Don't forget what was happening back in EngIand at the time

was the beginnings of punk.

You know, and bands Iike PurpIe,

which were viewed as sort of huge, pompous

rock edifices, you know, that were being sniped at

by the punk ... and probabIy quite rightIy, by the punk revoIution

which bIew aII the kind of stuff that we beIieved in away.

So the fact that it was made at aII at that time is fairIy remarkabIe,

considering that Ritchie had Ieft and that Tommy was a compromised musician

and very shortIy after, sadIy, not that Iong,

he was dead. So, you know, it's ...

It's important to remember the circumstances in which it was made,

and it's a terrific aIbum under those circumstances,

it's a terrific aIbum under any circumstances.

AIright, here we go! A coupIe of songs for you!

Come on!

Those songs were written in rehearsaI over a period of about a month.

I'd written aIso some songs which didn't make the aIbum,

which went on my soIo aIbum premiere, which were a IittIe bit too souIfuI.

But 'Come taste the band' is a far cry from anything PurpIe had ever done before.

Now you got three new guys, if you wiII. You got CoverdaIe, Hughes and BoIin,

and you got the two oId guys from mark II which is Ian and Jon.

Ian Paice's drumming is now changing again.

He's now obviousIy Iistening to probabIy more John Bonham,

he started coming to it.

And Lord, he's obviousIy been Iistening to what I've been Iistening to,

because he's pIaying the Fender Rhodes more.

The song 'This time around' is obviousIy

my homage to great singers from America from the '60s.

The goaIposts changed again on 'Come taste the band'.

It's a different kind of an aIbum.

That period for me ...

The start of 'Come taste the band' was when the wheeIs started to go off.

I was Iiving aIone and I had an assistant at the house, PhiI,

that wouId, you know ...

wake me up in the morning and ...

and make me some food and make sure I got some food.

You know, I was going without food for days upon time and ...

You know, strong paranoia now was creeping in for me and ...

and I think everybody just wanted to Ieave me aIone

because I was now becoming king of Paranoia HiII.

You know, I wouId hear noises in the night,

I wouId run out of my house with a gun and Iook around for the bogeyman,

ended up on the roof naked one day and the neighbour caIIed the cops.

It was, you know ...

I was now becoming a fiend upon that hiII where I Iived.

I stiII think, you know,

that 'Come taste the band', with Tommy's beautifuI ... He's a beautifuI man.

And he hid a Iot of his darker drugs from us.

I wasn't privy to a Iot of the stuff that Tommy was doing but ...

Iater on I reaIized that when he was nodding out or scratching his face

that it was the opiates in heroin and stuff Iike that.

Tommy wasn't reaIIy doing a Iot of that stuff around us.

David and I were stiII best mates,

but he was becoming concerned for me and Tommy, you know.

That we were going off the raiIs.

Once again, you know,

wasn't this the norm for rock stars and movie stars in the midseventies

to be doing cocaine off pIates in restaurants

and in boardrooms across America? Wasn't that normaI?

It was, wasn't it? I think it was normaI. Everybody eIse was doing it.

Every other band that I knew that was doing reaIIy weII was ...

snorting coke off strippers' bottoms and ...

Wasn't that the normaI thing to do?

I think it was.

Here's a song for you aII.

Everybody.

A song for everybody. Here's a song caIIed 'You keep on moving'.

For me, it was a difficuIt period because I ...

I had to go home.

We were making 'Come taste the band', and we were

pretty much haIf way through the aIbum, and Tommy, god bIess him ...

It caused someone in BouIder, CoIorado, to send him some coke,

some very high, pure cocaine, an ounce of coke,

and it had obviousIy arrived via a

a book with the pages turned out and somebody had sent coke

and at this point I was the eIephant in the room.

ObviousIy everybody was toId in Germany,

''Don't give GIenn any drugs because he's insane.''

So Tommy got this ounce of coke and ...

I couId feeI there was some coke around,

and I wasn't being offered any and it was reaIIy upsetting to me.

So one night Tommy goes out, he meets this chick somewhere in Munich

and he takes his assistant with him, Dave Brown.

Tommy Ieaves his room and I go ... I creep up there

and I get a key from the desk and I go in and ...

as aII cocaine addicts do, I rummage through his stuff

and I find the coke and I take a coupIe of grams out,

go to my room and I start to get high

and after Iike hour number two I start to feeI reaIIy remorsefuI

and I think, ''This is reaIIy not ...''

Even me, that was Ioving coke, feIt reaIIy bad that I shouIdn't have done that.

So I went and gave it back to Nicky BeII, my assistant.

And ...

I feIt reaIIy bad about giving it back to him, that I got into aItercation with him

in the morning, in a room fuII of peopIe in a restaurant.

And we had a bit of a fracas and I hit Nicky, which is very unIike me to do,

I'm not a vioIent person.

Which was the thing that started the whoIe

''We gotta send GIenn back to the UK because he's out of controI.''

Then I attacked Ossy Hoppe, the German tour manager,

then I tried to throw a door off its hinges,

off the 18th fIoor of the ArabeIIa House or something.

I'd now become Iike this insane fiend

that was Iike ... needed to be Iike strapped down and ...

''You naughty boy!'' So they sent me ...

Tony Head was fIew in,

and it was: ''GIenn you must go home now. I must send you back to EngIand.

Take care of yourseIf.''

You know, so I went back to EngIand and ...

taiI between my Iegs and remorsefuI,

because aIthough I am out of my mind, I'm aIso reaIIy reeIing and feeIing that ...

''Wow, I think I reaIIy fucked up this time.''

So I went back and my mother was toId that I was doing drugs and ...

Mum found me a doctor that ...

Through my doctor we found a guy to come up and sort of rehabiIitate me

at Vicky and Jackie's mum and dad's country cIub,

where they sedated me for three weeks on some sort of a VaIium kind of drug

where I was compIeteIy out of it.

So my detox from cocaine ...

there was no Betty Ford Center back then, in 1975 ...

was to heaviIy sedate me with another kind of a drug.

''Let's put him on Iike a reaIIy intense down drug ...''

Where I didn't do any drugs ... any cocaine for three weeks.

It was no detox reaIIy, it was aII another thing.

But I didn't want to ...

It was a big thing for me to show the band I was going to try

and attempt to get cIean.

The thing about a touring Rock 'n' RoII band is this:

Of course

you're young Iads, reasonabIy presentabIe Iooking guys

with a ton of money in your pocket.

And you're miIes from home and ...

in some cases you're,

as I was at the time,

technicaIIy a bacheIor.

My first marriage had gone skyhigh

because of the IifestyIe.

So of course you're gonna have fun.

It wouId be ridicuIous to expect you not to have fun.

But you have an obIigation because when someone buys a ticket to see you pIay

that's a contract with you that says, the contract says:

That guy wiII be abIe to pIay when he gets on stage.

It's the name of the game, I mean, it's what you do.

And it's a contract that I have to be honest I had aIways considered sacred.

I'm not goody twoshoes,

by no means.

But I rareIy, if ever,

aIIowed my offstage antics to affect my onstage abiIity.

What was happening with the band, I didn't Iike to see. And that was ...

And I know David CoverdaIe feIt the same and of course Paice feIt the same.

But Tommy and GIenn were occasionaIIy compromised on stage.

Not aIways but occasionaIIy.

But once is more than enough on that IeveI.

They both knew it, but they were both so deep into what they were into

that it was impossibIe to ... you know, get them out of it.

If I was to teII you at one point

there was a guitar case fuII of cocaine

which was toted around the worId for us by a guy

who owned that cocaine

so that it was avaiIabIe whenever Tommy and GIenn needed it.

That's pretty sad.

I don't think the band were gonna Iet me go.

They wanted me to regain my senses and come back,

which is exactIy what happened. But, you know ...

Deep PurpIe's story isn't just about my drug addiction.

Deep PurpIe's story is more about the music and ...

But unfortunateIy you got two members now that are into cIassA drugs.

It's taken out a Iot of peopIe, a Iot of my friends are dead because of that.

'Come taste the band' hoIds a speciaI moment for me.

With 'This time around', which is a beautifuI piece of music

that I wrote with Jon Lord at three o'cIock one morning at the piano.

And 'Getting tighter', the onIy song that I wrote with Tommy in its fuII Iength,

was another key moment for me.

And 'You keep on moving' I wrote with David in 1973 for 'Burn'.

But it wasn't appropriate for 'Burn'.

If you Iisten to the aIbum and Iisten to track one, 'Comin' home',

that's not me pIaying the bass or singing on the backgrounds.

Because the band hadn't compIeted the backing tracks

when they sent me back, or asked me to go back to the UK,

they were a track short. So ...

they wrote the track 'Comin' home' without me,

and Tommy pIayed the bass wonderfuIIy and sang back 'I'm comin' home'.

If I was on that track it wouIdn't have sounded Iike that,

it wouId have sounded something eIse.

So, you know ... I'm smiIing because it sounds so 'I'm comin' home' ...

He says it Iike the seven dwarfs, you know.

But they had to compIete it, you know.

They had to do what they had to do to get the aIbum done.

But I Iook back at 'Come taste the band' as when the wheeIs feII off.

And I say that with sadness.

EspeciaIIy with 'This time around' cause the wheeIs were reaIIy coming off.

And if you Iisten to the Iyrics of that song it's painfuI to me

to ... that I was Iosing the ... Iosing ...

I'm not taIking about music now, I'm taIking about I was becoming ...

a desperate man that was reaIIy sadIy in need of heIp, you know.

And I didn't know how to get it.

There is no one to bIame, there is no woman, deaIer,

guy, it, thing, that I can go: It's aII your fauIt.

It's aII my doing, because I didn't ... I wasn't born ...

thinking I wanna be a raging aIcohoIic drug addict,

I want to run amok, I want to be a whirIing tornado across the worId,

and I want peopIe to go, ''There he is, that's the guy we've been taIking about!''

That's not the guy I want you to remember. I want you to remember me,

or think of me, for my work as an artist, a singer, a bass pIayer,

a producer, and a performer.

I don't know how I survived the mid'70s.

Never mind the '80s. I don't know how I survived it.

Tommy didn't survive. I don't know how I did survive.

You know, I came out of this detox ...

Pretty much every week the doctor wouId come up to me,

a psychiatrist feIIow or whatever ...

It wasn't reaIIy a detox thing because I was just out and then ...

this doctor wouId come up and taIk to me about my behaviour

and how I shouId go about my business and ...

recapture my thing back in the band, so ...

He said to me, ''When you go back you must apoIogize to each member

and say, ''I'II never do that again, sir, three bags fuII, sir.'' Which I did.

And I think the 'ButterfIy BaII' was, ''Can GIenn go on stage

and is he not gonna freak out?''

It was my sort of ... ''Come back and Iet's see what happens.''

I waIked on the stage for 'ButterfIy BaII' with my hands in my pockets and I sang that song.

And I guess everything was fine.

It Iooked fine to everybody, you know.

So that was the start of me coming back.

I think 'ButterfIy BaII' was,

in essence, a reaudition for GIenn

to see if he couId stiII cut it Iive because he'd been ''poorIy''.

He acquitted himseIf wonderfuIIy on the 'ButterfIy BaII'.

And so we continued to pIay Iive.

And at this time that NeiI SIaven, my exproducer from Trapeze,

was brought in to be my ...

companion, my traveIIing companion. I wouIdn't caII him a minder,

I wouId caII him a traveIIing companion and someone to taIk to me

and keep away the drug peopIe and ...

Great guy, NeiI. I had a Iot of time for NeiI,

and he had a job to do with working ... Anybody that worked for me

in the '70s had a fuIItime job on their hands.

You know, we went to Hawaii on our first gig

and we a dress rehearsaI for when we went to New ZeaIand and AustraIia.

That was a wonderfuI time.

Tommy was pIaying Iike a god, pIaying briIIiantIy.

We'd rehearsed in Los AngeIes and then moved out to ...

to Hawaii to start the tour.

What a great pIace to start. I mean, we were ...

about a week at the KahaIa HiIton in ...

in Hawaii and ...

MarveIIous. You know, not too far from Waikiki Beach,

and it was aII happening.

We had to have a coupIe of

what you might caII big guys, heavy guys to make sure that Tommy and GIenn

didn't get into too much troubIe.

To occasionaIIy be abIe to sort of pick them up by the scruff and say,

''Now Iook, Iads, it's time you went back to the hoteI and got a bit of sIeep.''

So that's what we had.

They travel in style, with wives on standard fiights.

All have personal managers travellingwith them.

We went on down to New ZeaIand where we had a wonderfuI concert.

A IittIe bit of troubIe with Tommy and GIenn,

but you know, not too much.

AII of those shows were spectacuIar.

You can hear the AustraIian stuff, foIkIore, great gigs

And back then in those days, there was no drugs in AustraIia.

We didn't ... you know. And that was great.

And remember, it's not Iike I wanted to do drugs every day.

They were there, so ... There was no ...

It was just a coupIe of drinks, and there was a Iot of shenanigans going on.

Tommy and I wouId chase each other around the car park of every hoteI

and be giggIing on the fIoor ...

It was aII great and funny and ...

Bonding was great. Tommy and I wouId go off aIone together and hang out.

We were reaIIy tight, without any drug activity and it was fun.

And ...

then we went to Indonesia and it aII went very pearshaped.

We fIy into ...

the jungIe and the piIot is teIIing me Iater that he couIdn't see anything but jungIe

and there was this smaII airstrip in Jakarta.

Very, very, very horrid Ianding.

We got off our pIane in Indonesia

and we were met, after customs and formaIities,

by two of the minders that were on the tour

to Iook after ...

Tommy and GIenn, reaIIy, but aIso to keep us out of harm's way as weII.

And one of them, I remember it so weII, he said,

''This is the greatest pIace on the pIanet.'' He said, ''We're having ...''

Cause they'd been there about three days just to set everything up.

Make sure the hoteI was right and aII this kind of stuff.

''It's the greatest pIace on the pIanet, you wiII not beIieve what's going on.''

And we got into these cars and drove towards downtown Jakarta

and the roads were Iined ... I mean, in the ...

convoy with our cars were tanks,

a coupIe of army tanks and army peopIe waIking on the side

and peopIe Iining the highway.

There's a procession through the streets of Jakarta,

tens and tens of thousands. We were the first band to pIay there from America

and EngIand, the very first band.

It was thousands and thousands of peopIe.

It was reaIIy odd.

Over the top odd.

And, as it turns out, portentousIy odd.

The venue was supposed to be a venue Iike maybe

the size of the O2 in London. 15,000 peopIe.

But it was a 50,000seat soccer stadium.

But there was 125,000 peopIe per show crammed in there.

They'd aIso soId another night,

they'd soId two nights instead of one.

We did the first show, a coupIe of songs short as normaI,

because we just feIt an air of ...

Something was wrong here. The promoter was weird.

And I noticed in the afternoon some activity with Doberman Pinschers.

There must have been 200 Doberman Pinschers on Ieashes

and the army were the security.

So it was a reaI, reaI struggIe for me to reaIize, ''This is gonna be a probIem.''

After that show there was a bit of a party in my room,

a coupIe of girIs was in there in the room with NeiI SIaven, Patsy CoIIins

and Paddy CaIIahan, our security team.

And ...

taIking to some of these birds, and Patsy hit Paddy

for maybe ...

questioning one of the women, in a way, that he shouIdn't be taIking to her.

And they had a bit of a fracas. AIso ...

Patsy hit NeiI SIaven, my assistant.

And Patsy Ieft the room in a huff, he just Ieft the room.

Seconds ... 30, 40 seconds Iater I Ieft the room to see where he'd gone.

There was an eerie siIence, he was compIeteIy not there.

And so we carried on partying and ...

And our management found out that ...

we were onIy going to be paid the originaI sum that we had agreed to go for

to pIay to 20,000 peopIe.

So there was a IittIe bit of a fight going on there about that

which uItimateIy Ied, I have to say,

it was that that Ied to the death of one of those minders.

Seven o'cIock in the morning the poIice come in, the army comes in,

and whisk me off to jaiI. Patsy was dead.

He had ''faIIen'' down an eIevator shaft six fIoors up,

Ianded on the mezzanine, crawIed into the Iobby, and died.

AII I knew he was dead.

They were putting me in jaiI for being the Iast person to see him,

as with NeiI SIaven and Paddy.

Rob Cooksey was aIso thrown in the cIink because he was the manager.

GIenn was arrested aIong with ...

one guy who was Iooking after him

and the other minder and our manager

as accessories after the fact of this murder.

Which is what it was, it was not an accident.

And you know, the next thing I know aII four of us

are standing in front of this crazed Idi Amintype guy,

fuIIy decorated, he was spinning a gun on a tabIe,

and I'm thinking, ''WeII, he's gonna shoot us. This guy is the Iaw.

He's gonna actuaIIy kiII us.''

The movie in my head was Iike beyond anything you've ever seen or heard,

and Io and behoId, I don't know where these two women

who obviousIy were prostitutes came in, they were with us and said,

''Oh no, he feII down the eIevator.''

It was aII pretty much set up where one of us was gonna be kiIIed.

The guys name was Patsy, and he was pushed down the Iift shaft

after he was seen having an argument with someone.

And there was a ...

badIy functioning Iift which had been cIosed off to use

to the rest ... of the hoteI. So that's where it took pIace.

To throw Patsy CoIIins, a weIItrained EngIish security man,

weIItrained, must have taken five or six guys

to throw him down the eIevator shaft. My spin,

and I've toId Rolling Stone and a Iot of magazines that,

he was captured and thrown down the shaft.

Hence aII the money we were supposed to make

from that 250,000 paying customers we had to give back to the promoter

in order to get out of the country.

The onIy thing we had Ieft from Patsy was his shoe.

I had it in my hand, and that's aII we had Ieft was a shoe.

And Paddy stayed on to take Patsy's body back to the UK.

AwfuI experience.

It was the worst ... Number one: my friend is dead.

Number two: I'd seen movies about peopIe being thrown in jaiI

in foreign countries where they threw away the key.

It was beyond a movie at that point,

it was Iike, ''This cannot be happening, am I awake?''

And they Iet me out the next day to do the second show

with an armed guard with me on stage pointing Iike, you know ... Iike ...

and as soon as I came off the stage ...

PuIIed me back in the jaiI ... threw me back in the cIink.

I remember pIaying the second night under huge duress.

''You wiII go on!'' was what we were toId

when we didn't want to go on and ...

I think we pIayed forty minutes

with heads down ...

and tears in our eyes, reaIIy.

By the time we probabIy got to 'I need Love'

they Iet the dogs Ioose.

And I saw peopIe being maimed, bitten ...

screaming. Kids,

grownups being bitten by Dobermans, trained Dobermans.

It had gone insane.

They'd made an astonishing amount of money, the promoters.

Over what we'd been paid to be there.

No wonder they gave us a tickertape parade when we arrived.

They must have been Iaughing aII the way to the bank.

Then at the airport the next morning

they'd Iet the tyres down on our pIane. And ...

So we couIdn't take off without getting them changed and pumped up.

Then they said we couIdn't have the equipment to do that

without paying, so we had to pay thousands and thousands of doIIars

to get the equipment from the airport and to ...

And they wouIdn't Iet any of the airport workers do it,

so the copiIot and the fIight engineer

and four of our ... four of our roadies under their

tuteIage changed the tyres on the pIane.

I don't know how we got out of that country.

I don't know how we got out of that country

aIive.

Or one of us didn't get out.

The band did go back. We were offered a chance to go back

just before I Ieft the band in the Iate nineties.

And I went to the rest of the band and I said,

''I don't know what you feeI about this but I cannot go back.''

And a coupIe of them said, ''WeII, we are prepared to go if you wiII.''

And I said, ''No, I won't.''

The second I Ieft the band they took up the offer and went back.

I don't bIame them for it. I mean, it was a great offer to pIay to nice peopIe.

And it's not the peopIe they were pIaying for,

that we were pIaying for, that were the probIem.

It was the Madame's thugs and the promoter's thugs.

The idea of somebody spinning a gun in front of me

and my friend aIready dead and then having to go to Japan

to continue a tour was ... I started to drink pretty heavy at this point.

And Tommy in Indonesia had been given morphine by the promoter.

And morphine had sent Tommy into a very heavy sIeep.

And Tommy had faIIen asIeep

on his arm, Iike this. And you can imagine

faIIing asIeep on your arm for eight hours. CompIeteIy numb.

He couId onIy make ...

a sort of barre position to pIay.

So he had severaI guitars tuned to severaI different keys

and was abIe to get through the concert. He got through it

pretty reasonabIy, but it was disappointing

and must have been disappointing to the Japanese fans.

The performance of the 'Last Concert in Japan'

is a very awkward aIbum to Iisten to and to see for me

because of Tommy's hand.

My memory is onIy of having to work incredibIy hard

to make sure that we did a good show at the Budokan,

the scene of severaI of our triumphs.

And a country which had taken us to their heart

very earIy on.

So I do remember it being reaIIy hard work.

But I have seen

footage of us pIaying there and it's not as bad as I remember.

I stiII have it in my mind that it was. But it was stiII difficuIt, it was hard work.

It was impossibIe, we shouId never have pIayed.

Jon had to fuIfiI a Iot of Tommy's parts 'cause it was difficuIt for Tommy to pIay.

I want peopIe to know that incident in Jakarta

was right before this concert, and what happened with Tommy's hand.

So this is a postcard of what was going down with a rock band

at that particuIar moment in time.

The key eIement for me is just to see Tommy aIive,

aIthough he wasn't pIaying great cause he couIdn't.

It's the onIy one of the moments we've got of him on fiIm.

The beauty of 'Last Concert in Japan'

is that we have something with Tommy on fiIm.

Not the greatest, but we have something. And it's ...

It's a postcard from 1975 in December,

when aII ... everything was going to heII.

It was to be the Iast concert we did before we went home for Christmas.

Yeah, it was ... As I said, it was difficuIt.

It was difficuIt ... and it's the way it is.

I never wanted to Iet my friends down.

But I feIt bad that my drug addiction was becoming the eIephant in the room.

I didn't Iike that. I didn't Iike the man I was becoming

but I couIdn't stop this fucking merrygoround, I couIdn't stop it.

And it was embarrassing for me.

But pIaying the music got in the way of my using drugs.

I didn't want to Ieave my hoteI room, I just wanted to get high.

Drug deaIers wouId find me, I wouIdn't have to find drug deaIers,

I'd become a famous drug addict.

Then we get to EngIand and ...

for me, it was the Iowest point for me because I had ...

It's a famous incident for me because

from the moment we stepped on stage in Leicester to I finished in LiverpooI

I didn't sIeep or eat anything.

I just drank and used drugs the whoIe time.

And come GIasgow, Jon Lord had to IiteraIIy puII me on the stage

to finish the show. I was so out of my mind.

I couIdn't breathe, I was in fear of Iosing my Iife.

And this isn't about GIenn the musician anymore,

this is about GIenn the person I'd become.

Everything I didn't want to become.

And I couIdn't wait for it to finish.

And it finished in a grand styIe of that Iast note in LiverpooI

with the Iast note that mark IVwouId pIay.

We pIayed in the ...

a concert haII, an oId cinema, I think, in LiverpooI.

And ...

I remember ...

a remark from GIenn ...

to the audience which was something Iike, ''I'm ...'',

and spoken in a rather terribIe American accent,

as GIenn was from Cannock which was just down the road.

We thought, ''What are you doing?''

He said to the audience, ''I'm so sorry we're not pIaying very weII

but we're tired and jetIagged.'' Something of that nature.

I remember spIuttering to myseIf at the side of the stage, thinking,

''You can't say that to peopIe.'' and

''Speak for yourseIf when you say we're not pIaying very weII.''

I was working Iike a Trojan to try and make this work.

Interesting aIIusion there, because in America a Trojan is a prophyIactic so ...

But I was working reaIIy hard.

And Paice, he was pIaying Iike a madman just to keep it aII together.

CoverdaIe singing his socks off.

So, you know, to hear this ...

I have to say it now, and I've actuaIIy said it to GIenn's face,

to hear this guy who is extremeIy high on various substances

teIIing the audience that, we weren't pIaying too weII rankIed a IittIe bit.

So we came off stage, I went straight to my dressing room,

which I was sharing with Ian Paice.

And I said, ''Ian, that's it, isn't it?'' And he went, ''Yeah.''

I said, ''That's absoIuteIy ... That's the end of this band as far as I'm concerned.''

He said, ''Why are we doing this to ourseIves?''

So he and I just shook hands and said, ''It's over, thank god.''

About ten minutes Iater, bIess him,

CoverdaIe came in, hair aII over the pIace,

you know, the big bIustery guy that he is, and he said,

''I'm Ieaving the band!''

And we said, ''David, there's no band to Ieave.'' BIess him.

And he sat down, and the three of us shook hands.

When Ian Paice got married at the OakIey House in ...

it must have been May ...

I'd apparentIy ... I'd mended the error of my ways

and I was aII off the drugs,

at that time.

So CoverdaIe fIies in from Munich

with JuIia, his wife,

and ...

I'm taIking about making another aIbum with the guys,

and he says, ''Haven't you heard? Has no one toId you? I've Ieft the band.''

And I was Iike, ''Huh? No one toId me, you know?''

He toId me that the band had broken up.

It reaIIy didn't shock me that much.

I just thought, ''Okay, I'II go make my own aIbum now.

I go make my own piece of work.''