Beer Boys.

Deep Purple's Ian Gillan is in the news again for a story he first told us in 2006.

Deep Purple's Ian Gillan is in the news again for a story he first told us in 2006. He says in an interview with 100 Percent Rock, "I can tell you with a completely straight face that I smoked my first joint when I was 38 years old. That was with some buddies because I really was intrigued to see what the effect was. I thought it was great, to be honest -- but it’s never been my cup of tea."

Gillan believes that Purple's roots as a pub band in England generally kept them from succumbing to serious drug issues -- besides guitarist Tommy Bolin's death from an overdose in 1976. He explains, "Our poison was beer, basically. We used to drink beer and whiskey. That’s a good thing, because [if] you wake up with a bad head, you don’t drink for a few days, and so we grew up with learning to measure that fairly well."