‘Nothing At All’: Ian Gillan on the Deep Purple track that has “everything”
It’s hard to really pin down a band like Deep Purple to any one genre. Outside of the different lineups they have sported over the years, listening to every album from their glory period tends to feel like listening to completely different acts half the time. If there was one piece that captured the essence of what Purple was all about, vocalist Ian Gillan thought it had to be the song ‘Nothing At All’.
Granted, Gillan was never in the trenches with the band when everything started. Out of all the members from the core lineup, only drummer Ian Paice has seen everything in the group, from their days as a jam outfit, a la Vanilla Fudge, to their turn as hard rock juggernauts with Gillan behind the mic.
When the Deep Purple first got the ball rolling with their Mark II lineup with Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, it was never clear what version of them you would get on every song. A track like ‘Black Night’ may be closer to the Led Zeppelin school of rock and roll, but how do you even categorise a piece like ‘Child In Time’, a nearly ten-minute epic featuring the first heavy metal screams ever recorded?
Although the group has lost legendary keyboardist Jon Lord to cancer and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore to medieval music, they have continued on with Don Airey and Steve Morse among their ranks. The group has had its fair share of surprises in its later years, like the album Now What?!, ‘Nothing At All’ from Whoosh! was indebted to the classic sound of Purple.
When talking about the track with VWMusic, Gillan thought that the structure was closer to how the band wrote in the age of projects like Machine Head, saying, “I think it tells a story in a way that I like to tell it. It’s mostly lyrical, but when I heard that lick, first of all, before the song was written, it just did things to my heartstrings, and I said, ‘I want to sing that song.’ For us, it’s a different rhythm… It’s just got everything, and in my book, it’s the ultimate Deep Purple song.”
Despite the shuffle being a bit of a change of pace from what Purple had become known for, they had done a few rolling rhythms before, including ‘Pictures of Home’ off Machine Head. When you look at what Deep Purple is doing beneath Gillan’s lyrics, you have to rub your eyes to make sure they aren’t pulled from 1974.
Compared to the odd bits of studio trickery that they would put into their records now and then, this feels like the band cutting loose in the studio in the only way they know how. While there are definitely some places where pieces are corrected to suit the song, the lion’s share of the mix feels like the group condensing hours of jamming into one piece, including the trademark trade-offs between guitar and organ.
This is also one of the most open-hearted lyrics that Gillan has ever sung as if he’s talking about all life’s problems and assuring everyone from his kids to his family to his fallen friends that they have nothing to fear. After years spent dominating the rock world, the fact that Gillan can still find time to smile through the hardships is a victory in this business. Not many lived to see their twilight years, but now that they’re here, Gillan is happy to be still doing what he’s doing and making the best music he can.