Ian Gillan says Sabbath is more important than Purple and Zeppelin

Over the decades, fans and journalists named Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin as the “unholy trinity” of British heavy Rock music. All those groups were formed in the late 60s and really became big in the early 70s, inspiring countless other artists. The vocalist Ian Gillan was lucky enough to have been part of two of those bands: Deep Purple, obviously, and Black Sabbath (From 1982 to 1984), recording with them the album “Born Again” (1983).

In an interview with The Sun, the singer talked about that “unholy trinity” and said that Sabbath probably was the most important band of the three.

Ian Gillan says Sabbath is more important than Purple and Zeppelin

“Just like ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’, the ‘unholy trinity’ was created entirely by our good friends the music journalists. We knew them, drank with them and they put into words what everyone was doing — something distinctive and identifiable.”

“To a certain extent, Sabbath were the most important because without them there would have been no Seattle (grunge scene) or Heavy Metal. What Tony was delivering in those early days was just awesome. It was so powerful.”

“The three bands did something that had never been done before. They were putting into action all the things that had been building up over the previous ten years,” Ian Gillan said.

When Gillan joined Black Sabbath, they had lost Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice, who left the group. So they had the original drummer Bill Ward back and the then former Deep Purple singer. Although many fans loved “Born Again”, the band didn’t like the mixing. Iommi said many times that they liked the result but then the person in charge changed something that made the album sound bad.

Gillan is currently promoting the new Deep Purple studio album “=1”, which is the first one with the new guitarist Simon McBride. They have many scheduled tour dates in 2024 to promote the new album, you can check them out here.