Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan has taken up meditation to curb his “irresponsible behaviour”.
The 78-year-old rocker opened up about his wild life during the band’s heyday, claiming that while he didn’t take hard drugs, he did enjoy drinking and partying all night long. But he realised he needed to make a big change if he wanted to keep making music, and so he began meditating to control his smoking and drinking.
He told The Independent: “I decided very early on in my life that I had to change. I was too wild and things were going wrong if I wanted to have a future as a musician.”
“I started meditating at that point and discovered a lot of things I could control. It was important for me to survive to start meditating and eliminate a lot of my irresponsible behavior.”
“It’s really important to have things under control. Whether you’re going on stage that night or you’ve written 14 songs, you’ve got to deliver. There’s no point lying around drunk.”
“You can’t survive if you continue to live like that. Your body can’t take it. So you have to be physically realistic. Your mind is tired. You either evolve or you die.”
He adds about his earlier behaviour: “I wasn’t a drinker. I just liked drinking and I had friends who drank – pretty much everyone did. We didn’t do drugs, we just drank. And if you’re lame, obviously you can’t perform, so you’d wait until the performance was over. There was a certain element of discipline there, which was more self-survival than anything else.”
Gillan adds: “It’s not rock ‘n’ roll to be a 40-year-old rebel.”
