One of the most heartfelt tributes paid to the late Ozzy Osborne came from Ian Gillan. “I can’t help smiling, even now,” wrote the Deep Purple singer. You improved my life – thanks mate.” Poignant words from a voice that, just like Osborne, helped defined the hard rock and heavy metal genres from the outset.

The parallels ran deeper – not least when Gillan joined Ozzy's old pals Black Sabbath in 1983, for the controversial Born Again album. There's an additional link in the shape of guitarist Bernie Tormé, who played in both frontmen’s solo bands.

Dublin-born Tormé, a uniquely gifted player whose legacy has received renewed attention via two recent box sets, had a ferocious style that blended shred-level chops, hotwired blues licks, and ear-grabbing whammy-bar dives, making him a cornerstone of Gillan from 1979 to 1981.

And although his stint with Ozzy lasted a mere seven gigs, from April 1 to April 10, 1982, the Prince of Darkness deemed it to be of pivotal importance in allowing his career to continue after the tragic death of Randy Rhoads in a plane crash the previous month.

Deciding to continue his tour, Osborne had frantically reached out to many well-known guitarists, including Michael Schenker and Gary Moore, but later confirmed that Tormé had been the only one willing to step up. The Irishman first listened to Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman the day before flying out to join the road trip, reportedly learning the material in flight.

Despite the additional pressure of hooking up with a band still processing the shock of Rhoads’ death, Tormé took the stage at Stabler Arena, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, remaining until longer-term replacement Brad Gillis was ready to take over.

In 2022 Osbourne told Metal Hammer: “I remember thinking, ‘I’m done.’ Sharon... said, ‘No, Randy wouldn’t have liked that, you’ve got to keep his memory alive.’ Bernie was rushed in at the last minute, didn’t know what he was getting into – but he did me a great favor. If it wasn’t for him I’d have given up.”

Of course, Tormé’s legacy extends far beyond that fleeting tenure. Last February’s Gillan: 1978-1982 collection showcased the guitarist’s vital contribution to the success of that band, as both soloist and songwriter. Seven months earlier, Tormé: The Bernie Tormé Archives Vol. 2 brought together his mid-80s albums with future LA Guns frontman Phil Lewis.

By 1982, Tormé had blazed a singular trail through the UK music scene. Influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Gary Moore, and Rory Gallagher, he’d played in mid-70s hard rock combo Scrapyard with future Gillan bassist John McCoy. Enthused by the energy of the punk scene, he then formed his own punky power trio, the Bernie Tormé Band, gigging with Generation X and the Boomtown Rats.

When he supported Gillan in January 1979, Tormé’s fretmelting musicianship and exuberant showmanship impressed the headliner.

Speaking to this writer in 2024, Gillan recalled: “He was doing his soundcheck, and all I could describe is that he was having sex with his guitar!

“It was unbelievable; so exciting. I thought, ‘Wow, I’d like to work with this guy!’” When previous six-stringer Steve Byrd quit shortly thereafter, Tormé lit a fire under Gillan, as can be heard on Glory Road highlight Unchain Your Brain. “Bernie and I ended up great friends,” said the singer.

Leaving in 1981, the guitarist re-emerged with Bernie Tormé and the Electric Gypsies before teaming up with former Girl frontman Phil Lewis in Tormé in 1984. They recorded two effervescent glam-punk albums – gathered in The Bernie Torme Archive Vol 2 set – complete with characteristically wild, exciting fretwork, as in Eyes of the World).

Sadly, the UK’s major record labels’ indifference to rock limited their prospects. In 1987, Lewis accepted Tracii Guns’ offer to join LA Guns, going on to major Stateside success.

Tormé also crossed the Atlantic, joining former Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider’s Desperado. Their prolific partnership fueled a titanic debut album loaded with pounding, blues-infused riffs and ripping solos, only for record label politics to scupper its release and sink the band.

Returning to the UK, Tormé continued to launch well-received albums until his untimely passing in 2019, including a reunion with former Gillan bandmate John McCoy in GMT.

His continued friendship with Phil Lewis saw him guest with LA Guns onstage in later years, the last such occasion occurring in 2017.

“It was inconceivable playing a show in London without Bernie showing up,” Lewis said. “Tracii adored him; they became really good friends.”

“Bernie was fearless,” Guns – a diehard Rhoads fan – marvels. “To step into Randy Rhoads’ shoes that fast was brave. I was just listening to some of the recordings from the dates he did with Ozzy. He was playing right out of Randy’s pedalboard and amp.

“Bernie told me that Randy's pedalboard was doing changes on its own, which is one of the things that really freaked him out about doing the gig. And Rudy told me that before I knew Bernie.”

He continues: “He was a true pentatonic Lord. The way he interpreted the solos, the rhythms, the fills – it's actually mind-blowing because it's off the cuff. That’s why he was so brave.

“And he’s playing the Stratocaster, so it’s almost like Hendrix stepping in for Randy. And he looked great next to Ozzy.”

The impression Tormé left on Guns was as immediate as the one he’d left on Osbourne.

“It was only a two-day period where we were in London,” Guns says. “But we had a lot of conversations. We really had great respect for each other. He was still passionate about creating music and playing live.

“Next thing I know, we're onstage doing Rip and Tear. He had his Strat and I’m like, ‘Turn it up!’ He goes, ‘Oh, I’m gonna turn it up!’ To play with him and Phil at the same time was a huge experience for me – I watched that video a lot.

“Bernie could have done it a hundred more times with us. I was looking forward to more of that.”

• For more information head to Tormé’s website.

Deep Purple have paid homage to Smoke on The Water's origins by returning to where it all started. On July 8, the band performed their iconic track at the 58th edition of the Montreux Jazz Festival, on a brand-new stage built over Lake Geneva.

As the classic rock legends – who now count guitarist Simon McBride among their ranks – played the instantly recognizable riff to an audience of 5,000, the curtain at the back of the stage dropped to reveal the lake and a setup of actual fire – and smoke – on the water.

Frontman Ian Gillan then instructed the crowd to take over singing duties for a crowd sing-along moment. This performance marked the 10th time Deep Purple have performed at the festival.

The band shared anecdotes about the fateful fire that inspired Smoke on the Water in a question-and-answer panel held before their performance.

In 1971, the band was in a casino in Montreux, recording what would be 1972's Machine Head, using The Rolling Stones' mobile studio.

On the eve of the recording session, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were playing in the casino's theater. However, at the beginning of King Kong's synth solo, someone fired a flared gun towards the ceiling, and the casino caught fire – alongside the Mothers' equipment.

“It burned all afternoon, all evening, all through the night. We went and looked at it the next morning, and there it was, gone. It was a frightening thing,” recalled bassist Roger Glover, as transcribed by The Standard.

“The following morning, I was in my room alone and I woke up with those words on my lips, and I said them out to an empty room. And then I kind of really woke up and I said, ‘What did I just say? Smoke on the water?’ No idea what it meant. I mentioned it to Ian [Gillan] and he said, ‘Yeah, sounds like a drug song. Better not do that.’”

In an interview with Classic Rock, drummer Ian Paice recalled the chaotic recording session. “The first track we laid down – and the last to be finished – was Smoke on the Water, before we knew what it was going to be called. There was no soundproofing and we were recording at night. A hell of a racket!”

Founding guitarist Ritchie Blackmore added: “We did Smoke on the Water there, and the riff I made up in the spur of the moment. I just threw it together with Ian Paice. Roger Glover joined in. We went outside to the mobile unit and were listening back to one of the takes, and there was some hammering on the door.

“It was the local police, and they were trying to stop the whole thing because it was so loud. We knew that they were coming to close everything down. We said to Martin Birch, our engineer: ‘Let’s see if we have a take.’ So they were outside hammering and taking out their guns.”

Fortunately, the band managed to get the track down before the police broke in and chucked them all out. What was meant to be an album filler eventually became the band's greatest hit and, arguably, one of the most recognizable guitar riffs of all time.

It's no secret that Black Sabbath went through a litany of lineup changes during their near-50-year run as heavy metal's pioneers. 

Though the band's music often shifted to accommodate the different strengths of those members who came and went – the vastly different, but equally powerful vocal styles of Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio, for instance – rarely did it get as much of a jolt as when Dio left the group in 1982 and was replaced by then-former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan.

Gillan's bluesy singing and wry lyrics were, to put it mildly, a stark departure from Osbourne and Dio's respective styles as frontmen. Though the Gillan/Sabbath partnership ended after just one album (1983's Born Again), it did give us the unique spectacle of the godfathers of heavy metal covering one of hard rock's other giants.

During the Gillan-fronted tour in support of Born Again, Sabbath took to playing the song for which Gillan is most known, Deep Purple's none-more-classic Smoke on the Water, as an encore. Black Sabbath played the song over 60 times during the tour, which stretched from 1983 through the following year. You can hear a typically hard-edged version of it from the Born Again trek above.

“I suggested we play Smoke on The Water, because Ian was known for it and it seemed like a bum deal for him not to do any of his stuff while he was doing all of ours,” Sabbath electric guitar hero Tony Iommi recalls in his 2011 memoir, Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. “I don't know whether we played it properly, but the audience loved it.”

Iommi would later cover the track again in 1989 with an all-star cast including Ritchie Blackmore, David Gilmour, Alex Lifeson and Brian May.

The Born Again tour was also notable in the band's history not only for this cover, but for the infamous 'Stonehenge' set the group ordered for the stage. 

Due to a misunderstanding between band and set designers, 'Stonehenge' ended up significantly different (larger, in this case) than the band envisioned.

Sound kind of familiar?

“When we were thinking about the stage set for our Born Again tour, Geezer [Butler, Sabbath's bass guitar player] said: 'Why don't we have something that looks like Stonehenge, you know, with stones and all that stuff?',” Iommi says in Iron Man.

“Geezer jotted down what it should look like and gave it to the designers. Two or three months later we saw it. We rehearsed for the tour at the Birmingham NEC and we said: 'Oh great, the stage set is going to come today!'”

You can probably guess the sight that greeted the band.

“It came in and we couldn't believe it. It was as big as the real Stonehenge,” Iommi remembers. “They had taken Geezer's measurements the wrong way and thought it was meant to be life-size. I said, 'How the bloody hell did that happen?'”

This is Spinal Tap simply took the legendary mishap and reversed it. 

Though it's rather grainy, you can get a sense of the true enormity of the set – at least the pieces of it that Sabbath's crew could squeeze onto the stage – in the fan-filmed footage of the band's October 21, 1983 performance at the Forum de Montréal in Canada below.

Aside from set design mishaps, Gillan – in a different way than Sabbath's previous two frontmen – was also quite the showman onstage, and struggled to acclimate to other aspects of the band's onstage setup when engaging with the crowd.

Gillan, Iommi says, “once fell over my pedalboard. He was waving at the people, stepped back and, bang! He went arse over head big time.“

All things considered, the Born Again trek was a strange period for the heavy metal godfathers. Gillan departed soon after to join the reunited Deep Purple, while Sabbath (with a number of personnel shifts in between) would struggle both critically and commercially for a number of years, before reuniting first with Dio in 1992 and – a few years later – with Ozzy Osbourne, in their original permutation. 

As for the fate of the Stonehenge props? 

“At the end or the tour we tried to give it all away to the people who had bought London Bridge and reassembled it in Arizona, but they didn't want it,” Iommi reveals in Iron Man. “We couldn't take it back to England, so the crew dumped it off at the docks somewhere and left it. Just ridiculous.”

Bernie Tormé, former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne and Gillan, has died at the age of 66. Tormé had been on life support for the past four weeks, according to his family. The guitarist's death was confirmed in a post on his Facebook page.

Born in Dublin, Tormé first made his mark in London in the mid-Seventies with the Bernie Tormé Band. In 1979 however, he joined then-former Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan's band, Gillan. His tenure with the group lasted two years. 

Following the death of Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads in a plane crash in 1982, Tormé was recruited to take Rhoads' place in Osbourne's band.

Osbourne once told Total Guitar that if it wasn’t for Tormé, he “might never have got back on a stage."

In recent years, Tormé toured and recorded under his own name. His final album, Shadowland, was released last year. 

“Bernie Tormé passed away peacefully on the 17th March 2019, one day short of his 67th birthday, surrounded by his family," the guitarist's family said in a statement. "He had been on life support for the past four weeks at a London hospital following post-flu complications.

“Bernie will be remembered for dedicating his life to his music for five decades. He will be sorely missed.”

After going down a decidedly "animated" route for their last music video—for the Infinite track, "The Surprising,"—Deep Purple have gone for something more conventional for their newest clip, a lyric video for the Deep Purple in Rock track, "Bloodsucker."

The video—which was shot during the band's set at Hellfest 2017 in France—was taken from The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1, a triple-LP vinyl collection of concert recordings culled from the group’s performances at the festival.

The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1—which was produced by Bob Ezrin—will be available December 8 via earMUSIC.

You can preorder The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1 here, and watch the new "Bloodsucker" lyric video below.

Deep Purple have taken a decidedly "surprising" route for their music video for "The Surprising," a single from their newest album Infinite. Partnering with illustrator Matt Rooke and director Peter Rogers, the band have released their first animated music video.

In tandem with the release of the music video, the band also announced two new Infinite-related projects, both of which will see the light of day in November.

From Here to inFinite is a documentary that chronicles the making of the album, while giving viewers an inside look at how the band functions as a unit. It will be released on Blu-ray.

In addition, the band also announced The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1. A triple-LP vinyl collection of concert recordings culled from the group’s performances at Hellfest 2017, the album was produced by Bob Ezrin.

You can watch the video for "The Surprising," and check out the tracklisting of The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1 below.

The inFinite Live Recordings, Vol. 1 Track Listing

• “Time for Bedlam”
• “Fireball”
• “Bloodsucker”
• “Strange Kind of Woman”
• “Uncommon Man”
• “The Surprising”
• “Lazy”
• “Birds of Prey”
• “Hell to Pay”
• Key Solo
• “Perfect Strangers”
• “Space Truckin’”
• “Smoke on the Water”
• “Hush”
• “Black Night”

In July, former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore toldRocknRoll Reporter that he'd be willing to play a "single show" with his former bandmates. Today, Ian Gillan—the band's frontman—shot down this possibility in no uncertain terms, saying "it's not gonna happen."

Speaking to The Vinyl Guide podcast, Gillan said “Ritchie was a difficult character—there’s no denying that. Ritchie and the band got divorced. He walked out in the middle of a tour, and the rain stopped and the sun came out for the band."

"As Ian puts it best: Why would I go back to that misery again?," Gillan continued. "It’s like somebody saying, ‘You’re happily married now, but we want you to get back together with your divorced wife, with which there’s been much bitterness over the years.’"

"Just for the sake of the fans. It’s not gonna happen.”

Deep Purple are currently in the midst of their Long Goodbye tour, and are fresh off the release of their new career-spanning anthology, A Fire in the Sky.

For tour dates and more, head on over to deeppurple.com.

Deep Purple has announced A Fire in the Sky, a career-spanning anthology that will be available as a single CD and a three-CD set.

Each version of the set, which will be released on September 8 in North America through Rhino Records, with an international release following later in the year, includes a selection of songs chosen from the 19 studio albums that Deep Purple recorded between 1968 and 2013.

The single-disc version of A Fire in the Sky features 20 songs and focuses mainly on the band's singles. This features classics - "Smoke On The Water" and "Highway Star" - and lesser-known cuts like "Perfect Strangers," an underrated song from the 1984 album of the same name, and "Hell To Pay," from 2013's Now What?!.

The three-disc version of A Fire in the Sky dives even deeper into Purple's past, with 40 songs, and includes at least one track from every studio album through Now What?!. It also provides a showcase for the group's various incarnations through the years. To date, more than a dozen musicians have appeared on a Deep Purple album.

A Fire in the Sky will also be available as a three-LP set that includes 27 songs. Among the highlights are the single edit version of "Woman From Tokyo," the U.S. single edit for "Burn," and the radio edit of "Bad Attitude."

For more information about Deep Purple, head on over to deeppurple.com.

A Fire in the Sky
Single-Disc Track Listing:
1. "Hell To Pay" (Radio Edit)
2. "Rapture Of The Deep"
3. "Sun Goes Down"
4. "Any Fule Kno That"
5. "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming" (Edit)
6. "Bad Attitude" (Radio Edit)
7. "Knocking At Your Back Door" (Single Edit)
8. "Perfect Strangers" (Single Edit)
9. "You Keep On Moving" (Single Edit)
10. "Soldier Of Fortune"
11. "Burn" (U.S. Single Edit)
12. "Woman From Tokyo" (Single Edit)
13. "Highway Star" (U.S. Single Edit)
14. "Smoke On The Water" (U.S. Single Edit)
15. "Fireball"
16. "Strange Kind Of Woman"
17. "Child In Time (Part 1)"
18. "Speed King" (U.S. Album Edit)
19. "Black Night"
20. "Hush"

A Fire in the Sky
Three-Disc Track Listing:

• Disc One
• 1. "Hell To Pay"
• 2. "Vincent Price"
• 3. "Wrong Man"
• 4. "Rapture Of The Deep"
• 5. "Sun Goes Down"
• 6. "Any Fule Kno That"
• 7. "Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming"
• 8. "Vavoom: Ted The Mechanic"
• 9. "The Battle Rages On"
• 10. "King Of Dreams"
• 11. "Call Of The Wild"
• 12. "Bad Attitude"
• 13. "Knocking At Your Back Door"
• 14. "Perfect Strangers"

Disc Two
1. "You Keep On Moving"
2. "Dealer" (2010 Kevin Shirley Remix)
3. "Stormbringer"
4. "Soldier Of Fortune"
5. "Mistreated"
6. "Might Just Take Your Life"
7. "Burn"
8. "Rat Bat Blue"
9. "Woman From Tokyo"
10. "Space Truckin'"
11. "Smoke On The Water"
12. "When A Blind Man Cries" Disc Three
1. "Highway Star"
2. "Demon's Eye"
3. "Fireball"
4. "Strange Kind Of Woman"
5. "Child In Time"
6. "Speed King" (U.S. Album Edit)
7. "Black Night"
8. "Hallelujah"
9. "Emmaretta" (2012 Stereo Mix)
10. "The Bird Has Flown" (Early Version - 2012 Stereo Mix)
11. "Wring That Neck" (aka "Hard Road")
12. "Kentucky Woman"
13. "Mandrake Root"
14. "Hush"

Deep Purple released a successful album earlier this summer. So did Ritchie Blackmore's band, Blackmore's Night.

But is there a chance these guys will get together and release a Deep Purple album with Blackmore?

According to Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan, it's never gonna happen.

Gillan, whose decades-long feuds with the ex-Deep Purple guitarist are part of rock lore, was asked about the possibility of reaching out to Blackmore during a recent interview with Argentina radio station Vorterix Rock 103.1.

[[ Check out Ritchie Blackmore with Deep Purple in a new DVD — Perfect Strangers Live ]]

His response (which you can hear in the video below): “If you want to talk about Ritchie, I guess we have to — not many people do these days. But the truth of the matter is, from a historical point of view, the band was dying. If Ritchie had stayed in the band, it would have been the end of Deep Purple.

"The shows were getting shorter and shorter, the audiences were getting smaller and smaller. We were playing in small halls, and they weren't even full — they were half empty — and Ritchie was walking off stage every night.

"And so, when he left 20 years ago, it stopped raining and the sun came out, and Jon Lord, amongst others, started walking up straight; his personality re-emerged. So did Roger Glover and Ian Paice; they became they were people originally, instead of fending and cowering in case they upset Ritchie. And so this situation ended, and we're all glad it ended, and we had to rebuild. And, of course, now the distance of time is so great that we just remember the good times.

"And we remember Ritchie as a great player, a great performer, a great writer, and I remember him as my roommate; I used to share rooms with him. But something happened with Ritchie, and that's the end of that. So we remember the past as it was; it was completely and totally different to Jon Lord."

Blackmore left Deep Purple (for good) in November 1993.

After releasing a charity single last year, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan have announced the details of the upcoming debut album from their joint project, WhoCares.

The two-disc set will include two original WhoCares tracks, along with an unreleased Deep Purple jam; a track from Gillan's pre-Deep Purple band Repo Dep), two previously unreleased songs from Tony Iommi featuring Glenn Hughes and "obscure collaborations, B-sides lost on 7-inch." You can view the full track listing below.

WhoCares' debut album is due out August 28 via earMUSIC.

• 01. WhoCares "Out Of My Mind" (first time on an album)
• Featuring Jon Lord, Linde Lindström (HIM), Jason Newsted (Metallica), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
• 02. Black Sabbath "Zero The Hero"
• 03. Ian Gillan feat. Iommi, Ian Paice and Roger Glover "Trashed"
• 04. M. Rakintzis feat. Ian Gillan "Get Away" (first release on a Gillan album, only released in Greece before)
• 05. Tony Iommi feat. Glenn Hughes "Slip Away" (first time on CD)
• 06. Gillan "Don’t Hold Me Back"
• 07. Ian Gillan "She Thinks It’s A Crime" (vinyl single B-side, first time on CD)
• 08. Repo Depo feat. Ian Gillan "Easy Come, Easy Go" (previously unreleased)
• 09. Deep Purple feat. Ronnie James Dio "Smoke On The Water" (live with the Royal Philaarmonic Orchestra)

CD2

01. WhoCares "Holy Water" (first time on an album)
Featuring Jon Lord, Linde Lindström (HIM), Jason Newsted (Metallica), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
02.Black Sabbath "Anno Mundi"
03. Tony Iommi feat. Glenn Hughes "Let it Down Easy" (first time on CD)
04. Ian Gillan "Hole in My Vest" (7" vinyl single B-side, first time on CD)
05. Gillan & Glover feat. Dr. John "Can’t Believe You Wanna Leave me"
06. Ian Gillan & The Javelins "Can I Get A Witness"
07. Garth Rockett & The Moonshiners aka IG "No Laughing in Heaven" (rare track)
08. Ian Gillan "When A Blind Man Cries" (Live at Absolute Radio, previously unreleased)
09. Deep Purple "Dick Pimple"

After releasing a charity single last year, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan have announced the details of the upcoming debut album from their joint project, WhoCares.

The two-disc set will reportedly include two original WhoCares tracks, along with an unreleased Deep Purple jam; a track from Gillan's pre-Deep Purple band Repo Dep), two previously unreleased songs from Tony Iommi featuring Glenn Hughes and "obscure collaborations, B-sides lost on 7-inch." You can view the full track listing below.

WhoCares' debut album is due out July 13 via earMUSIC.

• 01. WhoCares "Out Of My Mind" (first time on an album)
• Featuring Jon Lord, Linde Lindström (HIM), Jason Newsted (Metallica), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
• 02. Black Sabbath "Zero The Hero"
• 03. Ian Gillan feat. Iommi, Ian Paice and Roger Glover "Trashed"
• 04. M. Rakintzis feat. Ian Gillan "Get Away" (first release on a Gillan album, only released in Greece before)
• 05. Tony Iommi feat. Glenn Hughes "Slip Away" (first time on CD)
• 06. Gillan "Don’t Hold Me Back"
• 07. Ian Gillan "She Thinks It’s A Crime" (vinyl single B-side, first time on CD)
• 08. Repo Depo feat. Ian Gillan "Easy Come, Easy Go" (previously unreleased)
• 09. Deep Purple feat. Ronnie James Dio "Smoke On The Water" (live with the Royal Philaarmonic Orchestra)

CD2

01. WhoCares "Holy Water" (first time on an album)
Featuring Jon Lord, Linde Lindström (HIM), Jason Newsted (Metallica), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden)
02.Black Sabbath "Anno Mundi"
03. Tony Iommi feat. Glenn Hughes "Let it Down Easy" (first time on CD)
04. Ian Gillan "Hole in My Vest" (7" vinyl single B-side, first time on CD)
05. Gillan & Glover feat. Dr. John "Can’t Believe You Wanna Leave me"
06. Ian Gillan & The Javelins "Can I Get A Witness"
07. Garth Rockett & The Moonshiners aka IG "No Laughing in Heaven" (rare track)
08. Ian Gillan "When A Blind Man Cries" (Live at Absolute Radio, previously unreleased)
09. Deep Purple "Dick Pimple"

As we reported last fall, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan got together to form WhoCares, releasing two songs for a good cause -- to raise funds to rebuild a music school in Armenia.

Based on the success of that single -- or maybe just the fun of the sessions, which also included former Deep Purple keyboard player Jon Lord, plus Jason Newsted, Nicko McBrain and Linde Lindstrom -- the duo have announced they'll be releasing a full album together.

The album will feature the two WhoCares tracks, namely "Out of My Mind" and "Holy Water," plus rareities from Iommi and Gillan’s vaults. Other tracks will include a Deep Purple studio jam session, an unreleased song from Gillan’s band Repo Depo, two songs from Iommi and Glenn Hughes, plus B-sides and radio performances.

“As I said once in the song ‘Razzle Dazzle,’ ‘It’s a real fine line between an orgy of destruction and a wonderful time,’” Gillan told Ultimate Classic Rock. “The destruction of conformity in this case: Some of these pieces never really fit into their contemporary program and got sidelined or forgotten, and some of the album tracks never had much exposure.

"As the tracklisting for this album came together I noticed many of the titles had character similarities; a combination of freshness as they finally felt the sun on their backs and rebellion in a ‘yeah told you so’ kind of way. And that adds up to a wonderful time. And that adds up to more money for the music school we are building in Armenia.”