When heavy metal god Ian Gillan left Deep Purple, he first formed a jazz fusion band called The Ian Gillan Band, but found it artistically and commercially unsatisfactory.

He then formed this band, Gillan, initially a rock band that moved in a punk-metal direction with its second album, the first released outside of Japan and Australia.

Little known in the US and dissolved when Ian joined the re-formed Deep Purple in 1984, Gillan was a monster hit in Europe as part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWoBHM), selling over ten million records.