Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (13 page)

The tour that generated the
live album had marked the first time Whitesnake would ply their
trade in the US, Whitesnake supporting the aforementioned Jethro Tull,
beginning April 10th, 1980 in the Washington DC area, winding up November 12th
at the LA Sports Arena. An obviously bad match that one, as has been stated by the
guys. Even though some rockers tend to spin the positive about a situation like
that, given that you’re being put in front of potential new fans by not “preaching
to the choir,” Whitesnake really needed to be shown to the increasing army of
hard rock fans throughout America (and Canada) at this juncture. After all, let’s
not kid anybody, they weren’t pop enough for the mainstream young, nor bluesy
enough for a generalist classic rock crowd — and forget Jethro Tull’s prog-minded
audience, although Tull guitarist Martin Barre could riff with the
best of them.

On December 9, 1980, Whitesnake had been
punching the clock, working up a sweat by warming up a crowd of punters in
Saarbrücken, Germany, most of whom had paid to see the headliner, AC/DC. David
Coverdale, caught up in his normal level of exuberance, had managed to fall off
the stage, tearing a cartilage. Unfortunately, the injury was such that the
remainder of tour dates would have to be cancelled. Infinitely worse, of course,
was that just hours earlier John Lennon had been shot and killed execution-style
across the sea in New York City, a devastating blow for rock fans everywhere,
including this now sidelined band of life-long Beatles fans.

-7-

Come An’ Get
It
– “How’s That For A Double Name-Drop?”

By 1981, Whitesnake were becoming a
well-established and moderately successful act on home soil, in mainland
Europe, even in Japan, although North America was lagging. A critically
acclaimed and commercially successful studio album had been quickly followed by
a live album that garnered the same response, and now it was time for a
follow-up.

Enough of the hot, cold, cramped
studios... “
Come An’ Get It
was all done at John Lennon’s place, well,
Ringo’s,” begins Marsden, referring to Startling Studios, Tittenhurst Park,
Ascot. “How’s that for a double name-drop? That was, again, much like Abbey
Road [at the time of the interview, Bernie had been recording a solo album there].
You lifted your game there.”

 Marsden also recalls that Ringo had only
taken possession of the place quite recently because: “Many of the
light switches still had John and Yoko written on them and stuff like that. But
at the time, being that much younger, I don’t suppose we gave it as much
thought to be working there. When I look back at some of the movies now, things
like
Give Me Some Truth
, that scene, Lennon and all these
people sitting at his kitchen table, well, I had my breakfast there
for six weeks. At the time, I didn’t really think about it. When I was at Abbey
Road this time, I was more conscious of the history behind it. But, having said
that, Startling was really good, a very good studio. To work in that room where
he did ‘Imagine,’ that was a vibe as well. We were all very aware of that.”

Adds Murray, “At that time, Ringo was
renting it out to people to use for recording, and there was a studio in there.
Though in actual fact, we used other rooms in the house for the
drums and keyboards, because the studio wasn’t actually that big.”

As Marsden commented earlier, the
band finally had a say when it came to the cover art.
Come An’ Get It
,
issued April 1, 1981, would arrive in a wrapper featuring a white snake coiled
up inside a glass apple — kind of creepy if you think about it. Flip to the
back, and the serpent has shattered his glass prison and escaped.

Paicey kicks off the record with a dead
simple beat, and we’re into the title track, a plain-as-day pop rocker with
chord changes right outta the Foreigner songbook. But Marsden pleads innocence.
“You know, I don’t think so. It’s a coincidence. You know, that whole genre, it
just comes out of that period. I suppose at some point, the bands have to cross-over
each other. In fact, the only person listening to Foreigner probably would’ve
been me. I quite liked ‘Feels Like The First Time;’ I thought that was a
fantastic song. And I was kind of conscious of Foreigner, but I honestly don’t
believe that the other guys had even heard of them [
laughs
]. So yeah, ‘
Come
An’ Get It
,’ the song, was right in the groove of Whitesnake at the
time, that whole Ian Paice thing.”

One also notices immediately that the
production job on the album was a bit one-dimensional, not quite as high
fidelity as that afforded
Ready An’ Willing
.

“I think it was just the
different sound of the studio, maybe,” shrugs Bernie, non-plussed at the
idea, probably because the record was so successful. “Maybe it was a little
more polished?” I wonder. “I’m not sure,” responds Marsden. “Martin Birch always
brought a whole bunch of stuff to every record; he was fantastic. You know, he
really was the extra member. He was a very, very good producer. I mean ‘Don’t
Break My Heart Again’ for instance, the guitar solo on that was, as far as I’m
concerned, a run-through, and I did it, and he said, ‘Thank you very much, that’ll
do.’ And I did it another five or six times, and he sat there, you know,
getting more and more bored, and he said, ‘We’ve got it, we’ve got it.’ And he
was right. That’s the kind of thing you need people like that for.”

“Hot Stuff” was an up-tempo rocker with
an inverted beat, namely with snare on beats one and three. It might have
sounded heavier, had Jon not been so prevalent on piano-sounding keyboards
mimicking the riff. That type of arrangement, plus the spare, midrange-y
production, underscored this idea that
Come An’ Get It
was a poppier
album than its predecessor.

 “Yeah, I suppose, with hindsight, it
probably is,” concedes Marsden. “But I don’t think we made it like that. I
think it was just a natural progression of the tunes, you know, just getting them
together. ‘Child Of Babylon’ was a natural progression. ‘Hot Stuff,’ that was a
kind of nod to the heavier side of what we do. It was never one of my
favourites, but there you go. You can’t like every track on every album. I
loved ‘Till The Day I Die;’ I thought David was really writing strong at that
point. I thought that the album itself was pretty fine. It went straight in at
No. 1 here in the UK. An instant success; No. 1 the day it came out, so that’s
kind of hard to disregard. Because you go well, it’s got to be the
best album.”

Not quite -
Come An’ Get It
did
indeed hit a robust chord at No. 2, but it was kept from No. 1 by
Kings Of
The Wild Frontier
, Adam And The Ants’ second album, demonstrating that
despite all the press heavy metal was getting at the time, something called
post-punk (in all its flavours) was also running riot up and down the
charts.

Next up was the moodier, yet still poppy,
thump of “Don’t Break My Heart Again” which, as David related, he had written
about his daughter, Jessica, with Coverdale clanging out the chord sequence
throughout the night at Tittenhurst on a piano. Following on was a heavy and
slowly funky ballad called “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights,” distinguished by a
tight and note-dense bass line from Murray as well as Jon Lord prominent in the
mix with Hammond washes.

Side one of the original vinyl closes
with a knees-up boogie rocker called “Wine, Women An’ Song,” a party rocker
very much in the Status Quo vein. Jon Lord adjusts his gear and goes for a
honky tonk piano sound for this one as the backing vocalists David, Bernie and
Micky, A.K.A. “The Three Piece Suite,” exhort the three pleasures named in the
title. This is the cut chosen as the one for which the whole band gets a full songwriting
credit.

As for “Child Of Babylon”... “I worked
pretty closely with the great Jon Lord on that song,” says Marsden. “I had this
idea that I wanted to have the texture that only Jon could come up with, and he
did a fantastic job on that, with the synthesizers. The synthesizers
in those days, the multi-key ones were quite unusual. So I got this idea, and I
tried to explain it, and he was great. He sat down, we worked it out, and he
came up with it, and, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ I was very happy with that.”

“Jon Lord’s biggest strength was Jon
Lord,” laughs Marsden, when asked about the big man’s strengths and weaknesses
in the studio, given that he was never considered much of a songwriter. “You
could just play anything to the man and he was able to go, ‘Well, what about
this?’ and ‘What about that?’ And you just go, ‘Yeah.’ And on stage, he was a giant.
I think, the best. Tell me anybody better on a Hammond organ in a rock ‘n’ roll
band, I’d probably argue with you. I was there every night, I listened to him.
He was fantastic. And he was a great guy, great musician. And on the
writing side of it, he was very, very gracious. I’d say, ‘You know, Jon, you
really helped me on this; I think you should maybe have a piece of this.’ And
he’d say, ‘No no, no, I wouldn’t have helped you if you hadn’t have had those
ideas. I’m just putting your ideas into music.’ He was that kind of guy.

“Because he was more technically adept as
a musician, he could write notes down. I still can’t do that. He’d write it
down. We’d play some things on the guitar, and he’d write it down and then
he would do his version of it, and I always remembered that. As the
years went by, when people I’d been working with would come up with ideas, they’d
just jump on them and say ‘I’ll have a piece of that.’ That wasn’t Jon.”

“Child Of Babylon” is essentially this
side’s “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights,” a bluesy ballad that one could see on a
Bad Company or Lynyrd Skynyrd album, although, again, the production is stiff, the
playing is stiff... there’s just something not very serious or classic about
this record, despite at least a few potentially weighty tracks like this one.
Sacrilege perhaps in the utterance, but this one is actually ruined by Martin
Birch and Ian Paice, two near unassailable rock icons who should know better.

Then it’s back into the
kind of light-hearted pop metal that proposes
Come An’ Get It
as one of the
unsung stepping stone records toward the hair metal of the mid-1980s. “Would I
Lie To You” echoes the simple stacked chords of the title track, so again, we’re
into a bit of a thick-headed Foreigner sound, rock for kids, not historians. As
for the title, Coverdale says he saw that quip on a pin that a female admirer
of the band they’d met in Southampton had given him.

“‘Would I Lie To You,’ you think, well,
that’s a love song,” notes Marsden, “but it’s not — it’s about the
manager [
laughs
]. But that was a real three-way song. That was, I had a
piece, and everybody else... David wrote the words. That’s pretty much how we
used to work. There wasn’t as much, shall I say, writing competition by then.
That
I would say. We’d kind of write something, well, there
you go, there’s a song. Whereas on
Lovehunter
, there was a frenzy of
songs coming in from everywhere.”

Except it’s not really about the
manager. Rather, it’s the usual ol’ in/out. “Yes,” laughs Murray, when asked if
Coverdale’s one-track mind when it came to the literary side of the
band ever got on the rest of the guys’ nerves. “And you know, there’s
that stubborn mentality that if you criticize him for it, he’ll do it more.
Just to piss you off. Just to say, ‘Well, this is what I do and lots of people
like it.’ Plus he had his sex symbol image and the lyrics went along with that.
And, you know, he certainly has written deeper lyrics since then.
But that was probably another thing that was getting a bit too samey. It’s like,
time to move on from that.”

Coverdale defends himself, in
conversation with Gavin Martin, “If you listen to it, there’s a lot more to it
than meets the eye. Of course there’s stuff that is crying out to be lambasted,
but I stand by that as much as I stand by the more soul-searching pieces. I’m
very casual about some of the things we do and extremely serious about others.
I read a lot of mail and I get letters saying, ‘Why do you bother
with all the sex stuff when you can write songs with the depth of ‘Blindman’ or
‘Crying In The Rain?’ I get others that say why write miserable blues tunes
when we all enjoy your happy-go-lucky stuff like ‘Wine, Women An’ Song?’ Total
nudity is a turnoff. I do believe in certain things like being in your
underwear; the suggestion of that makes one sweat. No, really, I don’t want to
sing fuck me baby ‘til the juice runs down her legs. There’s a lot of tunes
where the male is dominant, which the fuckin’ female militant journalists pick
up on. Of course, there’s the other angle where a guy is heel ground into the
carpet by an over-aggressive woman.”

“We were very much so Bad Company, Free
fans, maybe a bit of Foreigner perhaps,” continues Murray, explaining the
band’s knowledge base and motivations, back at the musical end of things. “And then
the earlier ‘70s British blues rock bands. Myself, Micky and Bernie came out
of that blues explosion, and David was very into the blues singers, Bobby
Bland, B.B. King, whoever, so there was always a great streak of standard
twelve bar blues running through everything, and then just taking that and
applying it to the rock songs.

“But at that point there was very little
influence from typical American rock bands. I mean, we wouldn’t be listening to
Kansas and Kiss and Aerosmith and Ted Nugent. Whereas after about five years of
the band, certainly I thought we should move more into an American-style
direction of the early ‘80s. Because I thought we had kind of gone as far as we
could with that style. But that was sort of resisted. David is rather
known for doing this. He digs his heels in and then suddenly he changes his
mind and goes like, ‘Okay, everything in the past is gone now; now we’re going
to do this.’ And later, through pressure from Geffen etc., he did realize it
was time to get into more what was happening in the States, Van Halen,
whatever. I don’t know, as far as favourites go, it’s hard for me to choose
between
Ready An’ Willing
and
Come An’ Get It
. I like them
both a lot. I also think the
1987
album is very good as well. But for my
own enjoyment I would probably choose
Come An’ Get It
. But I don’t
listen to much of my own stuff at all.”

Okay, the arguably American sound of
Come
An’ Get It
aside, 1981 is very much in the thick of the New Wave Of British
Heavy Metal. For better or worse, voluntarily or not, Whitesnake, like Gillan,
like Rainbow, were accepted as ingredients in the pot, pedigrees
notwithstanding.

“No, well, we felt so much older than them,”
laughs Murray, “and we felt somewhat paternal. Some of that we thought was rather
amateurish and not really our scene. And some of it was kind of — it’s hard to
explain — but very white-sounding. There is very little soul or blues or jazz
influence in those bands, and most heavy metal bands, until maybe more recently
with the rap stuff. But in various ways, either the singing or playing wouldn’t
be to our taste. Or the kind of songs they were doing were just too straight.
And obviously a lot of bands developed and became more sophisticated. I suppose
Def Leppard would be about my favourite, but I think a lot of the
others deserved to go back to obscurity [
laughs
].”