Ian Gillan will forever be known as the singer with Deep Purple’s most successful line-ups. But between 1976 and 1982, he embarked on an eventful solo career that saw him journey from rock’n’roll to jazz rock and back again, nearly ruining himself financially in the process. In 2006, he looked back on the highs and lows of The Ian Gillan Band and the eponymously-named Gillan.

There has never been a dull moment in Ian Gillan’s career. From his 60s bands The Moonshiners, The Javelins and Episode Six to his three separate stints in Deep Purple, via an unlikely one-album service in Black Sabbath, he’s been a fixture of the British rock scene for decades.

But there’s one period of his long and sometimes chequered past that often gets overlooked: his solo years bet

“I didn’t know what to do with myself,” he recalls today. “I had more money than sense. Well, I didn’t actually have the money, it was held for me in various bank accounts. But all I had to do was ask for it.”

Gillan invested that money in three diverse ventures: a London recording studio called Kingsway Recorders (formerly De Lane Lea Studios, where many Purple classics had been recorded); a hotel in the Thames Valley; and a motorcycle-engine manufacturing firm. For a man more used to Space Truckin’ around the stars, the harsh realities of the business world would ultimately hit him hard in the pocket – and cause no end of acrimony in the process. But more about that later.

Gillan genuinely had no intention of rock’n’rolling again, especially after Purple’s old management team had expressed indifference about a diverse set of songs he’d knocked up with session musicians at Kingsway in spring 1974. But the following year Gillan received a fateful phone call from Roger Glover, who he’d known since their pre-Purple combo Episode Six.