Don Airey has lived the better part of his professional life as a musical mercenary logging time with groups including Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Whitesnake and Ozzy Osbourne. Having floated in and out of the Deep Purple circle of acquaintances for decades, he was finally asked to join the group proper in 2001.

Middle schooler Ian Scott Wilson is part of the inaugural intern recruitment class for a new program here at Egypt Today where promising young journalists will receive direction, mentoring and exposure for their talents.

The following excerpt is taken from an interview Ian conducted with Don Airey while on tour with Deep Purple.

Don Airey: Apart from Deep Purple? Well, when I was still quite young I was in a band called Rainbow and that was very exciting. We had hit singles, we were on the television a lot and we traveled all around the world. Every band is your favorite band at that time, but you just move on through your life. You can look back and say, “Yeah, that was amazing.”

I remember when I was in Rainbow and we first toured England, we played in a place called Newcastle, which is near my home. Now, we had been in America, so we didn’t really appreciate how big we had become in England. And when I got out of my car and walked toward the stage door, there were hundreds of people there and they kind of jumped on me and they took my jacket! I lost my shirt and my coat and all I could think of was “What did I do wrong?” [laughs]

All of these incredible things happened to me, which at the time I didn’t think that much about, but to look back on it you think, “My word, that was something.” The other exciting band was called the Ozzy Osbourne Band and I was in Ozzy’s band for four years and there was never a dull moment.

Yeah, I am still friends. I saw them last year in fact. I went around to their house and had tea with Ozzy, Sharon, Jack and Kelly. They were very friendly and it was good to see them.

They were very polite and as well behaved as you and your sister are now. They just sat there and said, “Would you like some more tea?”

Yes. When he left the band, I agreed to take the organ from him because he said that he didn’t want it any more so I have kind of inherited it. I did say that if he ever wanted it back he could have it.

That is a pretty good question. I guess it would be the guitar. I love guitar players. I love classical violin players as well. I am a big fan of the clarinet, jazz clarinet particularly. I play each of those but I am not very good at any.

Most of the time. I mean, the trouble with playing keyboards is, there are all of these machines that can go wrong. You have to turn them on and they are not very loud and you have to have electricity and somebody who knows how to set them up and somebody who knows how to fix them. Playing them is easy but keeping them going is the hard part. With piano it is easy because you have just got the piano and that is all. et