Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (12 page)

Whitesnake had now become a sort of
comfort food for the powerful UK music press. Wrote the esteemed Geoff Barton
in
Sounds
,  “
Ready An’ Willing
breaks little new ground, springs
few surprises, but it’s a ‘good’ album nonetheless, upstanding and steadfastly
true to the time-honoured Whitesnake tradition.” He continues, mischievously: “Although
the album cover’s no
Lovehunter
, there’s enough sexist action on the
lyric front to keep your feminist friends frothing at the mouth for some time
to come, I’d say.”

Dante Bonutto, another legendary metal
journalist, wrote: “With
Ready An’ Willing
, what you expect is what you
get: an album of diamond-hard rock (not HM) played with skill, verve and, above
all, feel.” He also notes that, “The production is spot on, successfully
capturing the power of Whitesnake live without losing the subtleties and
refinements that make this band a bit special.”

Keith Sharp, from Canada’s
Music
Express
wrote, “Sounding not unlike a good Free album, Whitesnake run the
gamut of R&B rock with Coverdale occasionally winding the pace down with a
couple of powerful mid-tempo numbers. Coverdale has the power to generate a
strong vocal presence and the experience of people like Lord and Paice ensures that
the arrangements are tight.”

In March of 1980,
Sounds
magazine
published the results of their 1979 reader’s poll and Whitesnake popped up
despite not having a new album to place the band prominently in minds (
Ready
An’ Willing
was still a couple of months away). Nonetheless, Jon Lord won top
keyboardist, Ian Paice hit No. 5 in the drummer category, Coverdale made No. 6
as top vocalist and then a rousing No. 3 as best male sex object, after Sting
and Lemmy! A year later, Coverdale would take top spot for this coveted prize,
second as best vocalist (after Peter Gabriel), with Whitesnake showing up as
seventh best band. Ian and Jon dependably popped up again in their
chosen professions with the guitarists of the band remaining noticeably absent
from any
Sounds
accolades.

In any event, quite clearly, over the
years it’s become gospel that
Ready An’ Willing
is a magical Whitesnake
record to the band’s fanbase, but this is also one of those occasions where the
makers of a record themselves recognize that there’s some sort of abstract,
ethereal vibe within the grooves of a certain one of their albums over any other,
by consensus. The happenstance restores one’s faith that there is indeed a sort
of Platonic ideal as to what art is, floating around the ether,
and that those attuned to it will agree that it’s there, irrespective of whether
they are makers of it or watchers and listeners from the outside.

 “That is probably my favourite
Whitesnake album, to be honest,” votes Moody. “The following album,
Come An’
Get It
was more commercial. The
Ready An’ Willing
album was my kind
of album. I loved the song I wrote with David called ‘Ain’t Gonna Cry No More’
with the acoustic guitar thing. We did a blues called ‘Love Man’ and we did ‘Fool
For Your Loving.’ I felt the most comfortable with that album, more so than I
did with all of the other Whitesnake albums. There is really something special
about that album. That album just has something that I felt a bit more than the
others. The core of most of my music is a lot of blues in there.
And
Ready An’ Willing
had that bluesy rocky soul about it, which I love.
It’s the album I wanted to do with Whitesnake.”

 “
Ready An’ Willing
is probably my
favourite,” seconds Marsden. “The live album I think is great, because it
functions very well as a greatest hits. But probably
Ready An’ Willing
is my favourite and
Lovehunter
is probably my least favourite, but that’s
not to say I don’t like it. I think there are some great songs on there that we
could probably have improved on a year later. ‘Walking In The Shadow Of The
Blues’ for instance is fantastic on the live album, with Ian Paice playing
drums.”

Ultimately the record did good UK
business, having vaulted to No. 6 in the charts, but only middling work in the
States, where it stalled at No. 90. To all intents and purposes,
Ready An’
Willing
sounded like old news in the rapidly ramping metal environment of the
day. But it was old news with classic rock swagger that is only now becoming
noticed, appreciated, cherished.

 “I wouldn’t think it would have amounted
to much in America,” verifies Murray, “although ‘Fool For Your Loving’ got some
sort of airplay. Let’s see, we recorded that in the beginning of 1980. In the
fall of 1980, we toured the States with Jethro Tull and that really didn’t seem
to do us much good. We did a couple of months with Jethro Tull, which really
wasn’t the right thing to do and then the following summer we did a couple of
weeks with Judas Priest. We were in the middle between them and Iron Maiden.
And we kind of came off that tour because it wasn’t really happening. So we
didn’t make a big impression on the States around that period.

 “In the UK, certainly around that time, there
would be two or three nights at something like the Hammersmith Odeon, so that’s
like 10,000 or 12,000 people altogether, and then reasonably-sized theatres
all around the UK. And then the same kind of thing, although maybe not at that
point around Europe, but starting to build, up to that point, in Germany in
particular. And at the end of that year we toured supporting AC/DC in much bigger
places and that helped us a lot.”

Referring to the Tull tour, Coverdale
told
Rockography
: “It was not a rock ‘n’ roll audience. You had me
masturbating all over the stage, and there were all these
Wall Street
Journal
types with pipes who were expecting a freakin’ flute player!”

Much more satisfying was the band’s
experience playing in Japan, which the classic line-up visited on three
occasions.

 “Well, a couple of things there,”
reflects Murray. “For one, they have great sounding concert halls there, for
the most part. And you get there and suddenly everybody can hear what they’re
playing, because you’re not in some gloomy sports arena that wasn’t designed
for music at all. Or some, you know, 100-year-old theatre in Britain that isn’t
really suitable. And also, the combination, particularly if you go there
when you’re a young band, and suddenly, instead of having a bunch of
17-year-old guys following you around, you get 17-year-old girls. Certainly in
those days, and maybe still now, I don’t know, at least for a certain period of
their lives, Japanese girls seem to treat rock bands as teenybopper idols. So,
we would have a typical thing — which happened to every band — hordes of girls
crowding the hotel foyers and then following you to the train station and then
getting on the bullet train with you and coming to the next show and all that
stuff.”

 “But, coupled with that, you’ve also got
the fact that when they’re at the show, the audiences are really listening, and
very appreciative of what you’re doing musically and technically. It just
seemed a more attractive combination, at least, for a couple of weeks a year.
You were having a quite different sort of experience than everywhere else you were.
So it can be a very satisfying place to play. Although the cliché is that they
clap for fifteen seconds and then stop dead, and then it’s dead silence until the
end of the next song. But you felt that because of that, they were actually
listening.

 “Now the difference is, for example in
America, the audiences will be very wild and crazy, and that can be very
encouraging too. In amongst that, you probably will have people who are very
appreciative of the skill of the musicians, as it were; they’re not just kind
of wildly going nuts. And so that enthusiasm really makes the
band play better, any band. You take that a bit further and you’ve got South
America and the kind of Latin countries; well, Spain, Italy, even Russia, to be
honest. Same kind of mentality. Where they just go completely crazy, you think,
well, it wouldn’t matter what you do. They’re just kind of out of control. It’s
like they’re not really listening, you see what I mean? So you’ve got the
extremes. And then you go to the extreme in the south of England where they’re
kind of sitting there and showing very little enthusiasm. They probably might
think that they are, but compared to other countries they’re not. And the
further north in Britain, go to Scotland, they’re really wild, mad, and great audiences
to play to, but a little bit scary [
laughs
]. Everywhere you go is
different, so it’s nice to be able to play all sorts of different countries and
situations.”

Two months before
Ready An’ Willing
hit the streets, the band had issued a Japan only
Live At Hammersmith
,
on Sunburst/Toshiba. The album would become sides three and four of the
double LP version of the widely issued
Live… In The Heart Of The City
,
which was released on November 1st of 1980. A single record version was
fashioned for North America. Onward and upward, the live album reached No. 5 in
the UK charts but only No. 146 in the US.

Record one featured the
band just into their
Ready An’ Willing
tour, the classic line-up rocking
their way with both barrels through a rock-solid, dare I say, heavy metal set list
on June 23rd and June 24th of 1980 — eight tracks, minimal jams, everything up-tempo.
Snakebite
is represented by the happy, riffy “Come On,” and
Trouble
by speed metaller “Take Me With You.”
Lovehunter
’s heaviest track, “Walking
In The Shadow Of The Blues,” is here, as is the thumping title track. Of note,
within weeks of this gig, Bernie would be getting married to one Mary Plummer.
Best man on the blessed occasion? None other than long-time Marsden
collaborator and future Whitesnake drummer Cozy Powell, who had also been
instrumental in getting Bernie the Paice Ashton Lord gig.

Record two of the live album features the
band in concert just a month after the release of
Trouble
, November
23rd, 1978, and thus Dave Dowle is the drummer and not Ian Paice. This is the
set issued in Japan. For curious contrast, there’s another version of “Come On,”
slightly tighter and punchier, but just as brisk. Also fast, is the
band’s version of the Purple classic “Might Just Take Your Life,” with Dowle
keeping the beat moving during the verse rather than the change-ups Paicey had
written. “Lie Down,” from
Trouble
, is played at nearly punk pace, punk
keyboards from Jon Lord included. Closing the first side is a straight and
competent “Ain’t No Love.” Side two represents the type of snoozer live display
turned in by the likes of Rainbow, Gillan and Deep Purple, namely one tight
rocker (in the present case, “Trouble”), and then a way-long version of Purple’s
leaden “Mistreated.”

 “(Whitesnake) have fashioned an
excellent live album that should do well anywhere,” said
Music Express
. “Coverdale’s
R&B rock roots are well projected on lengthy lyrical excursions like ‘Lovehunter,’
‘Come On’ and ‘Fool For Your Loving.’ The fulcrum, though, is the
title track, a funky number that’s laced with Coverdale’s sultry R&B voice,
effective enough to induce their British audience into a lusty sing-along.
Aurally and musically as effective as Deep Purple in its prime, Whitesnake have
all the chemistry to crack the States and this album should help them.”

Add it all up, and
Live... In The
Heart Of The City
does indeed make the point that Whitesnake could be
legitimately viewed as one of those mid-guard acts — not old guard, and not
kids taking over, like Tygers, Maiden, Holocaust or Fist — fully participating
in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, disdain for that idea from every last
member of Whitesnake notwithstanding.