Heavy rock legend switches bands after car crash on way to hotel

The Deep Purple star was once the owner of The Springs Resort & Golf Club in North Stoke near Wallingford – now part of the Talacre-based Darwin Escapes portfolio

The rock singer’s guitar-shaped swimming pool is no more, but resort manager Ben Scholes said in 2024 renovations and new facilities – including the 1893 spa and Ridgeway Restaurant – have proved incredibly popular with visitors from across the UK and beyond.

READ MORE: Rock legend open to AI in music

Ian Gillan has other strong Oxfordshire connections – one night early in 1983 a meeting at a different hotel in the county led to him joining heavy rock contemporaries Black Sabbath.

He told Mojo magazine’s Hello Goodbye column that he joined Black Sabbath after getting a call from Tony Iommi suggesting a drink somewhere between Birmingham and Reading.

Ian Gillan said: “We decided upon The Bear at Woodstock. I was driving an orange two-litre Fiat Mirafiori, which got rear-ended by a guy who was chasing me and didn’t see me stop at a junction.

“I pulled up outside The Bear with a wreck of a car.

“I can’t remember anything else until the next day when I had a call from my manager Phil Banfield.

“He said something along the lines of ‘Ian if you are going to be making major career decisions you should be talking to me first’.

“Apparently we had a few drinks and they (Black Sabbath) offered me the gig and I, who had nothing else on at the time, agreed.”

Ian Gillan in 2010 (Image: Aleksey Chalabyan Xelgen)

Ian Gillan told Mojo Black Sabbath then went straight to the Manor Studio in Shipton-on-Cherwell to record the Born Again album.

The singer added that during the recording sessions he was camping in the grounds in a small tent.

“I like camping and cooking my breakfast over an open fire. After breakfast I would go into the studio to hear what they had put down and then start work on the lyrics,” he told the magazine.

The singer left Black Sabbath after about a year, as it was agreed he should make one album and tour for a year.

He added: “I was incompatible, our backgrounds were chalk and cheese, musically and geographically.”

Ian Gillan rejoined Deep Purple in 1984 and remains a member of the band.