Don Airey took over for the legendary Jon Lord in Deep Purple when the elder Lord decided to retire from the band. Airey, the logical choice, has had an amazing career, playing with some of the greatest men to ever brandish a guitar, including Ritchie Blackmore, Gary Moore, Randy Rhoads, Brian May, Brad Gillis, Tony Iommi, Glenn Tipoton, KK Downing, Steve Via—well, you get the picture.

He is Heavy Metal’s best known keyboard player, a dubious accolade, but an honor that Airey wears with pride. In a genre based on the electric guitar, the keyboard is usually given the background treatment, if given the light of day at all. Airey, along with Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, have changed all of that. Purple’s love affair with the keyboard is well documented but it was Airey that brought the instrument to new heights when he wrote and performed the opening to "Mr. Crowley" on Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Oz.

Now, after two decades, Airey has released his second solo album, an ode to the universe, titled A Light in the Sky. The musical concept album sees Airey showing off all of his influences and even brining out two songs that could have been on the next Deep Purple album. The album is a complex weaving of styles that will thrill any fan of any of the bands Airey has been a part of. Read on to learn how the album came to be as well as how Airey went from seeing Deep Purple perform in 1971 to becoming their current keyboard player.

Don: I took a quick break of twenty years. To be honest, this one comes down to the fact that somebody offered me a record deal. I had been working on stuff since the last solo album, so I had a lot of the material. I got the tracks together and put a theme to it. The label is an instrumental label, so much of it is instrumental but there are a few songs as well. I tried to really show my past influences throughout my career.

Don: "Endless Night" as well, as it is pretty much a Rainbow track.

Don: When you have a warehouse full of keyboards, which I have, you are going to get some pretty spacey stuff. I have a big interest in astronomy. I have a big telescope, and I live in a place where the skies are very clear at night; there is not much ambient light. I read a lot of Steven Hawking stuff and books about where we come from and how the universe was formed. Nobody actually knows how life was formed but they know how everything that constitutes the earth came about.

Don: It came about when I was around six years old. I was born in the north of England. One winters night I looked out the window and saw the Aurora Borealis—we used to get it back then. When you are six years old you are going, "What on the earth is that?" It was one of the most amazing things I have ever saw. My interest really came from that moment.

Don: It is very interesting in terms of astrophysics because there is a background sound to the universe that comes the Big Bang. It is called Background Radiation. It is present anywhere you care to point a receiver. It comes from all over the universe. It was discovered in the late 1960's. It is what you get on FM radio in-between stations. That quote came from Indian scriptures. It is interesting that the Indian scriptures came from 2000 years ago. The opening track is called "Big Bang" but I didn’t do a big explosion; I just did a single note.

Don: Carl Sentence was in a band called and Persian Risk in the ‘80's then he joined Krokus for a bit. I saw him in a musical that was going around England and he was absolutely standout so I got a hold of him. He was just brilliant on the album; he wrote some lyrics.

Don: Lidia Baich is a leading concert performer in England. I met her when Purple did that Pavarotti charity show. She is an extraordinarily pretty girl and we started talking and stayed in touch. I flew her over to the studio in Lincolnshire from Vienna. It was quite an adventure getting her over here but she did fantastic. My main interest on this album was to play it live—there are no overdubs on the Hammond or the guitar. We laid that down when we started. We knew we were going in to just play live.

Don: I was a bit uncertain when I started. I knew I wanted to feature the Hammond. A lot of stuff came up in the studio, when we were recording. What I really wanted to do was to refer back to my history. I started with Coliseum II with Gary Moore. I wanted to do a little tribute to Jon Lord and a little tribute to Keith Emerson. I wanted to give a tip of the hat to all the people I have really admired over the years.

Don: You do have to listen.

Don: I was at a music conservatory in Manchester. I happened to see Deep Purple—this was 1971. I thought in my head, "That is what I want to do." I had a jazz trio that I played with in Manchester for money. An agent saw us and he phoned me up. I had just finished college and I was going to be taking a teaching job. This agent calls me up and says, "There is a cruise liner getting ready to go to Hong Kong. Can you be on it tomorrow with a band?" I said, "Yes." I just changed tracks right away. I went around the world on this cruise line and I ended up back in England and I met Cozy Powell. I really didn’t plan it; it just happened.

Don: He is missed by anyone who knew him. He was one of the most wonderful people, and musicians, I have ever known. It is funny—every time I am sitting in a bar in a hotel with Ian Paice or Ian Gillan, and there is a guy playing the piano and I say, "There but for the grace of Cozy Powell go I."

Don: I can certainly vouch for that. I would have never predicted that to happen.

Don: I am not sure if they even looked for anybody else. I got it by accident. I would have thought that Brian Auger would be the more obvious choice. Jon was ill the summer before on tour and I stepped on stage with only 24 hours notice. After about ten seconds, I decided to stop trying to sound like Jon and started trying to sound like myself. It worked out very well and I enjoyed playing with them very much.

Don: The current tour can attest to that. We even played Siberia when we did a three-week tour of Russia. It is an amazing place with amazing people. They have amazing audience. We are one of the few bands that goes everywhere.

Don: I had to do it in-between tours—five days here and five days there. I think we did it all in 19 days. We had to be very organized. It was like an old fashioned session. I had the music all laid out for them and I sent them all tapes. We just stuck to the plan and it just went like clockwork. It was one of the most enjoyable projects I have ever been involved in.

Don: It all just came together and fell into place. We had a wonderful engineer named Ewan Davies that knew what I was after and he just got it out of us. He was a big reason that we got it done so quickly and got the sound we needed.

Don: I had the final say on everything. He worked as an engineer in the old fashioned way that they used to work, which is to say that he had everything ready to record the musicians. The first song we did was "Space Troll Patrol." We put the microphones up and we got a great drum sound. He came running out after the first take and he was yelling, "THE HAMMOND! THE HAMMOND!" He was so excited about the sound we were getting that he could not contain himself. Not many people play the Hammond anymore. They play a digital Hammond but I had the old A-100 in there.

Don: Until recently, we were carrying Jon Lord’s C-3 that I bought from him. I am now using a Hammond A-100 that dates from sometime in the late sixties. It has been modified and re-cased and chopped. All the valves are spring loaded and all the electronics have been replaced. For a week or two, I was a bit dubius about the sound. He told me to give it a week or two in order for it to settle in. He was quite right. We get the most glorious sound, everybody remarks on it. It gets a better sound than Jon’s.

Don: I always loved Purple and I loved what he was doing. Even though Jon is a virtuoso, it is what he doesn’t play that I love. Jon is the second best Hammond player I have ever heard, with Jimmy Smith being the best. I loved what Jon did on the early Purple albums but he changed his style when they did In Rock. The guy that really inspired me was Keith Emerson. He just blew me away and he still does. I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago and I was charmed.

Don: [long pause] It is hard to see yourself as others see you. I have always tried to just do my best. When I worked on the cruise ship, I used to write out music and keep my nose to the grindstone. The crew was shocked, as they had never had a band onboard that worked that hard.

I came to a crisis in my life in the early ‘90s. It was the ‘I’m too old for rock n’ roll’ type of thing. I was trying to diversify a bit. I had a bit of a family problem at the same time. My oldest son was very, very ill. It was a pretty traumatic period in my life. He got better, miraculously.

When I came out on the other side, I wondered, "What should I do with my life?" I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, "You play keyboards–that is what you do. What kind of keyboard do you play?" I said, "Hammond." He said, "Have you got a Hammond?" I said, "No, I haven’t." So, I bought a Hammond and I practiced for six months. I had been out of the business for two years and I decided that I would practice so that when the call came, I would be ready. My son, while he was quite ill when he was young, is now my keyboard tech. He took to life on the road like a duck to water. He is a very valuable member of the crew. It is wonderful for us as a family.

Don: I was with Uli Roth and I saw Purple. We played on the same bill at a festival. Deep Purple were the headliners so we stayed around to watch them. I had seen Jon in Whitesnake and his heart wasn’t in it. When I saw him with Purple, that night, I told Uli, "He has really got it all back." Uli told me that he saw my jaw drop standing there watching Jon. It confirmed to me that Jon had worked through issues, like I had, and had really got his chops back. You can never really take a day off from it because you will not have it. If you take a year off then it will take you two years to get it back.

Don: We talked the other day, as I am in Berlin. I had hoped to see him but he had just gone to Japan, so I will have to see him another time.

Don: It is just bad luck. It must be punishment for sins of a previous existence.

Don: [much laughter]

Don: I had known Ozzy for a few years. I worked on the Black Sabbath album Never Say Die. It was a hoot playing with them on that album. I am very proud of the keyboards on that album. I was only about 24 at that time. You have something at that age that you lose as you get older. You have a freshness then, that later on you learn to make up for it with craft and technique.

Ozzy and I had kept in touch after that. When I was in Rainbow, he kept sending Bob Daisley down to see me and ask me if I would join the band. Rainbow was doing well at the time but I knew from their history that I would not be around a long time in Rainbow. Ozzy called me and said, "Will you at least come down and do the sessions?" I said I would come in and do the overdubs. I went in and they played me "Crazy Train." They asked me, "What do you hear for that?" I said, "Absolutely nothing. I am not going to touch that as it is brilliant." I met Randy [Rhoads] and I thought he was fantastic. They told me they wanted an intro for "Mr. Crowley." They were all telling me, "Try this and try that." Finally, I told them, "Look, everyone just get out of the studio. Give me a half an hour alone with Max Norman." They left and when they came back, I played the intro and Ozzy said, "It’s like he plugged into my fucking head."

Don: I was in Ozzy’s band for three or four years. We had a great time.

Don: Yes, I am. Glenn Tipton and Kenny Downing are just so fantastic when they play together. Rob is back with them so it is just great again.

Don: If I can get the ball rolling, then there will be a small tour when we can fit it in. The sales have been quite good in the shops but it is selling like hot cakes on the Deep Purple tour. We are selling forty to fifty copies a night on tour. I am getting great feedback on my website from people who bought it.

Don: That could be a good idea. Occasionally, I do the Weekend Warrior type thing where I fly out for a gig and they provide the back-line and a couple of keyboards. We do Rainbow and some Ozzy stuff and a bit of Whitesnake. We play just the stuff that I played on. I played to ten thousand people in Bulgaria recently. I was quite shocked to see how many people showed up. We played "Shooting Star" and "Endless Nights" from the album and it went over great.

Don: We will do an album, probably this year. The last one we did has kept us in business for the last three years, as we have been touring it for that long. Deep Purple are back where they belong. They are playing quite good. The crowds are big and they are full of young people who are so enthusiastic. We played three encores just last night. It was overwhelming and very gratifying. In Purple, nobody gets out of line and they all appreciate what is happening.

Don: It only happened because Ian Gillan got ill and they had to put the dates back in another time. Jon and I had a ball. I did my keyboard solo, which ends up going into the beginning of "Perfect Strangers." When it got to that point, I just ducked down and Jon ducked up. Suddenly, as if by magic, I became Jon. He played about three songs and then we did the encores together. We even traveled together for the gigs and we would get lost because we were talking so much. We really are like a couple of old women when we get together. I recently played with him on The Sunflower Jam, which is Ian Paice’s charity gig. We always have a great time.

Don: It was an honor to stand behind him and watch him work. He has something that nobody else has got. When I play "Smoke On The Water" and I am playing that synthesizer sound—it makes an awesome racket. You just go, "Wow, that sounds great."

www.donairey.com
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