Ian Gillan And Tony Iommi Team Up For WhoCares Charity Album
Friday, 04 May 2012
Written by Jon Stickler
Deep Purple´s Ian Gillan (right) and Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi (above) took everybody by surprise in 2011 by releasing a charity single 'Out Of My Mind', renewing the collaboration that led the pair to record the 'Born Again' album in 1984 under the moniker Black Sabbath. For the occasion, the two rock legends called a few friends, asking for some “help”. None other than Jason Newsted, Jon Lord and Nicko McBrain completed the supergroup.
The single was a joyful and inspired moment. The spark to bring Iommi and Gillan in a studio, together again was to finance the rebuilding of a music school in Armenia they had visited together on various occasions in past years.
Far from being a spectacular charity project, 'WhoCares' was a nice gesture, done with class, from two musicians with nothing to prove, willing to support music, where music is considered a luxury.
Speaking about the project, Ian Gillan says: “As I said once in the song 'Razzle Dazzle' (from Deep Purple's 'Bananas' album) ..."it’s a real fine line between an orgy of destruction and a wonderful time".
The destruction of conformity in this case: Some of these pieces never really fitted into their contemporary program and got side-lined or forgotten, and some of the album tracks never had much exposure. As the track-listing for this album came together I noticed many of the titles had character similarities; a combination of freshness as they finally felt the sun on their backs and rebellion in a ‘yeah told you so’ kind of way.
And that adds up to a wonderful time. And that adds up to more money for the music school we are building in Armenia.
And what about WhoCares… this ad hoc benefit band put together by Tony Iommi and myself on a flight home from Yerevan, where we’d been deeply humbled by the honours and expectations bestowed upon us. Well that’s it really, in a nutshell, so to speak, what more can I say; it’s all there in the music.”
'WhoCares’ track-list is being finalized at this very moment. Among the tracks: the 2 original 'WhoCares’ songs, Deep Purple’s unreleased studio jam 'Dick Pimple', a song from Repo Depo (a band Ian Gillan formed before the Deep Purple reunion which never released any song official before this CD), 2 unreleased songs from Tony Iommi featuring Glenn Hughes, obscure collaborations, B-sides lost on 7” vinyl, exclusive live versions recorded live on radio.
'WhoCares' will be released on June 22nd on earMUSIC. A dream come true for Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath fans!
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The single was a joyful and inspired moment. The spark to bring Iommi and Gillan in a studio, together again was to finance the rebuilding of a music school in Armenia they had visited together on various occasions in past years.
