Still Crazy After All Those Beers By Sylvie Simmons, Raw Magazine Gillan's least favorite Gillan-connected album ever is 'Born Again', the one memento of his year in Black Sabbath, which he supposedly smashed and chucked in the bin when they sent it to him. "It's the worst produced album I've ever heard in my life! If anyone could ever hear the demos of songs like 'Trashed' or 'Disturbing The Priest', it would throw a different light on it all together. But Geezer Butler, unfortunately, dominated the post-production and the mixes were so bass-heavy it was virtually unplayable." Does he view his Sabbath period as just another giant cock-up in his non-Purple career? "It was a good year. To this day Tony Iommi is one of my best friends." You'll recall that Ian broke up the Gillan band to join the Sabs and enough mud was subsequently slug around by his former colleagues in the band at the time to make a reproduction Donington field. They claimed Ian was lying when he said he was suffering from voice problems, which was the official reason the band actually called it a day, and had planned to join Sabbath all along. "I did have voice problems. I've since had an operation on my throat - I had my tonsils out. I had no plans to join Black Sabbath. We had talked about the reunion of Purple but I knew that was at least two years away. I went out with Geezer and Tony and we got drunk, and I found out the next day that I agreed to join the band. And they're such nice guys. It was great fun and it paid the bills and I had a lovely year with them and that was it."
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Gillan The Hero - a tribute to Born Again