DEEP PURPLE Drummer Talks About Split With EMI, New Album

Norway's Metal Express Radio recently conducted an interview with DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal Express Radio: Your new album is coming out on a new label. Why did you part ways with EMI?

Ian Paice: "Well, nowadays a lot of people are moving from one major label to another. First of all, you need to know who you're working with. A record company is an entity without a face, but you need to know the persons you're dealing with. The people who worked at EMI two years ago are no longer there. They didn't know which deal they had to offer us, what we had done in the past. And also their master is in Los Angeles, which is too far from us. At Edel it is totally different: people are excited and have the knowledge to do their job and to work with us. They had done everything we could ever expect from them so far, so we're really glad with them. But let's see when the album will be released. (Laughs)"

Metal Express Radio: Was it the first time you were about leaving EMI or you already thought about it in the past?

Ian Paice: "I think nowadays it's not like the old days when you signed a record deal for 2-3-4 albums. Nowadays to sign a record deal for 2 albums is really amazing. So have to get ready for the change all the time, because you never know what will happen in the future. You're planning by one record to another. Of course, you must have the feeling that you will stay longer at a company. But these days, you just can't be sure."

Metal Express Radio: How do you see your writing style has changed throughout the years?

Ian Paice: "Not really. Writing style changed in the band by nature. Like what Steve [Morse] could write Ritchie [Blackmore] never could write and what Ritchie could write Steve never could write. And so on. So it's the chemistry of the band and the personalities as well. But it always comes out as DEEP PURPLE. You don't want to do exactly the same thing you had done before. And music that became fashioned."

Metal Express Radio: Which member came up with the most ideas for the new album?

Ian Paice: "It's impossible to say. Everyone is doing different things. A lot of ideas come out when Steve and myself are jamming or some of the ideas come up when Don [Airey] and I are jamming. But Roger [Glover] comes up with his bass parts, and then Ian [Gillan] has his own ideas. So it's hard to say. It's kind of a bounce of musical ideas together. Especially with 'Rapture'. Ian got all 5 members in the studio. So it worked out together. The songs were recorded in one or two hour's time. But it's teamwork. There are different views from each people, but all comes in one. So it's difficult to say."

Metal Express Radio: I really love the new album, which is traditional DEEP PURPLE for me. What was the initial idea for the musical direction when you sat down composing new songs?

Ian Paice: "We don't usually have a direction before. We have an idea and we try to keep that opportunity, so we sit down and write the songs. The only thing that we usually do that we leave ourselves enough space for everything, for some keyboard parts, some guitar solos, whatever. In a 4-5 minute song, that we usually do, you can do that. It is the only direction we had in the past and have nowadays as well. But we don't go to the studio that we know what we're going to do. We write the songs and at the end, when you know the page is full written, we know what we have done."

Read the entire interview at MetalExpressRadio.com.