Rock legend, Deep Purple lead singer Ian Gillan has had a connection with Armenia and Armenian people ever since he joined Rock Aid Armenia initiative in 1989.

Gillan gave four concerts in Yerevan in 1990. He returned to Armenia in 2009 for the Armenia Grateful 2 Rock project, organized at the initiative of Mediamax and Do Something.

In 2010, Ian Gillan traveled to Armenia twice: for two charity concerts with Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra and for a Deep Purple concert.

His last visit to Armenia was in September 2013, when he attended the opening ceremony of Gyumri N6 Music School, which had been renovated in the framework of Rock Aid Armenia/Armenia Grateful 2 Rock project.

In May 2014, Ian Gillan was awarded the honorary title “Friend of Armenians 2014” in the assembly hall of St. Vartan Cathedral in New York.

In January 2015, Gillan addressed a letter to the people of Gyumri after the brutal murder of the Avetisyan family.

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In 2010, Mediamax shot “Pictures of Home” movie telling about Ian Gillan’s affinity with Armenia.

We present excerpts from Ian Gillan’s interview used in the movie.

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Time and the departed

Time is a great healer, and music is the accompaniment to that. We mourn when tragedy happens, we feel. We feel for ourselves, not for the departed. It’s the pain of loss. It’s the great mourning, when you lose a relative or a friend or people in your community. The people that have gone are not suffering anymore. They’re somewhere else. Their spirit is somewhere else. So, it’s this bond that we have with humanity that causes the pain. And it takes time to heal it.

Armenia

The complexity of human nature is that a part of it is actually the learning process of making friends, or feeling the difficult situations… If you walk into a room, you can tell the atmosphere... You can tell whether it is friendly atmosphere or it is unsettled. Some people are more sensitive than others. Some cultures are more sensitive than others.

Ian Gillan

Photo: Mediamax

I felt in Armenia a great affinity with my natural spirit – very welcoming, very open, a great strength in the community of knowing who you are. You’re not undecided about things. You have strength. And I felt very welcome. Naturally, it’s greatly appreciated if you go to somebody’s house, they open the door and say, “Come in. Would you like some food? Some company and some conversation?” And so, it’s easy to be friendly with Armenia, with Armenian people. It’s easy. You make it easy. You have strong spirit. And your aspirations are easily expressed and easy to understand. I sense a great feeling of optimism and I understand that, because that’s my nature and my family’s nature.

Dream and infinity

I’ve had a dream all of my life. I first heard the word “infinity” when I was eight years old. My school teacher said, “The word infinity means things go on forever, in all directions.” I went home and it was a summer night and I thought like, “Things go on forever? It’s not possible! How can it be possible? No, everything must stop somewhere!” And I thought of my bedroom. I was lying in my bedroom, and the room, it ends with the boundaries, but beyond the door is the house, and beyond the house is the garden and beyond the garden is the street, and beyond the street is the town, and beyond the town is the country and there is the Coast of England and then there’s the ocean and then there’s the planet Earth and there’s the sky and the stars and the galaxies. And I was going crazy now and so I thought, it has to stop somewhere! And so, in my imagination I built a brick wall at the end of my garden, around the universe, as far as I could imagine, beyond all imagination, with this brick wall, and then I thought ok, now I feel safe and I started to fall asleep and then I woke up, I was like, “Oh my God, what is behind the bricks?” And I thought, it does go on forever, but it’s impossible to understand, because it has to be in easily manageable proportions. So I have been thinking about this all my life.

God and religion

God is not the same thing as religion. And my understanding of God and religion has been encapsulated in a small phrase by saying to my friends that if I was born in Mecca, it’s most unlikely that I would have grown up a catholic, and if you follow that line of thinking, you can understand the difference between how we understand God, or the spirit, or the human soul with our own local culture, with our own environment.

Ian Gillan

Photo: Mediamax

And, of course, they’re all different. And we end up having arguments about God, but I believe strongly that we have a spirit within us, and we might as well call it God. It is a word that we understand and a word that everyone respects. But religions claim there is one God. And each religion, I believe, is valued. But it’s very old. And, well, it’s reading from books, written by Prophets a long time ago. And we can improve our science of understanding. Euclid told us about parallel lines, but a hundred years ago we started thinking contemporarily and we now know that parallel lines don’t exist. And my dream is to just continue to explore these things with people, who have imagination and try to bring understanding a little further, forward. If we can jump our science forward, then we can jump our thinking of God forward as well. And we can improve our moral guidance and maybe change things a little bit. It’s not that dramatic, but it’s very important to me.