Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (15 page)

“I’ll tell you exactly what it was. My
daughter, who fortunately is incredibly talented musically, went through a
period in her early formative years, 4 or 5 years old of getting hit with
bacterial meningitis, Kawasaki syndrome, all of these horrendous killer
illnesses, and after that I realized, with all the unhappiness that I had
professionally, and disappointment, that that was absolutely no reason to have
my head in my hands with that ‘What am I going to do?’ scenario. When you see a
helpless child ill, really all you have is the talent of the doctors and
prayers to God for her recovery. I came out of her illness with the
balls to turn around and say, ‘This means nothing to me; I want out.’ And at
that time I was in the middle of a record and nobody knew how to finish it, other
than myself. So that was the only ace I held in able to get out of those
contracts.”

Over to side two, and there’s
the other rock anthem that would help make Whitesnake a pop culture phenomenon
for a stratospheric flash in time for a few brief years at the
end of the 1980s.

“‘Here I Go Again’ I wrote many, many
years ago, again, in Portugal, before people in America heard it in ‘87 or
whatever, and it was actually about the breakup of my first marriage,” explains
Coverdale. “And I wrote that in 1980, ‘81, so that’s pretty old. It’s
interesting. That turned into a huge anthem, fist punching the
air stuff, which is interesting because it isn’t that kind of theme.
But whatever. I’ve had enough people talk to me or write to me and say how
helpful or beneficial the song was to them in a particular crisis in their
lives. And that to me, as a writer, is success, when you can connect like that.
And that was a problem I had with Whitesnake. A lot of the stuff was becoming
so overtly pompous, catering to big rock stadium scenarios. You’d get the
sentiment of the song in the beginning and then the group would explode in and
I was just riding the gods of electricity, let alone trying to put any sort of
emotional content into it.”

The version of “Here I Go Again” on
Saints
& Sinners
isn’t radically less produced or less hair metal than the
one (or two!) known the world o’er from Whitesnake years later. Still, there
are choice nuances to behold, one being Murray’s tight yet inventive bass line,
perfect for Ian Paice’s straight delivery; Ian, in essence, stepping aside so
that Neil can shine.

“Nonetheless,” says Murray, “
Saints
& Sinners
was still pretty much the same sound and line-up, though we
seemed to be getting a bit tired. There was a rather complacent attitude
because we’d had reasonable success. Maybe not the States, but in Europe and
Japan we’d been doing pretty well by that time. It’s the usual thing. When you
have a bit of success, you just stop feeling that you have to… The hunger
slightly goes. And you know, if two or three guys in the band want to sit and
watch a football game on TV rather than be in the studio, there’s
not much you can do about it. Unless you are the one paying the
bills, and you tell them, ‘Right, get down there or you’re fired.’ So it’s
tricky. And I’m not saying it’s a bad record. But you know, in some ways, for
me, I found it a bit predictable, some of the things that people came up with.”

“So, the morale in the band was sinking
down a bit,” continues Murray. “And we were taking some things for granted.
Like I say, also the songs and the style of the band was becoming a little bit predictable.
You would find the same chord sequences and the same kind of riffs cropping up
again. So in some ways,
Saints & Sinners
wasn’t as satisfying as it
should’ve been, in various departments. Whereas
Come An’ Get It
,
everybody was really kind of coasting along but in a good way, sort of knowing
that we’d proved ourselves and had our sound and our style. It was just that by
the time it got to
Saints & Sinners
, the songs started to be the
same. Nobody was really putting quite enough effort into making them
different.

“Also, there was an issue with Ian Paice
when we were making
Saints & Sinners
where, for some reason, he
really got into a knot with his playing. He had a real kind of mental block at
that time, a sort of crisis of confidence in his playing. And I don’t know
quite what the cause of that was. He kind of lost his enthusiasm or his
adventurousness or the style he’d had with Deep Purple. The thing is, he was
wanting everything to be absolutely perfectly in time and he started playing
less and less and it was just a temporary thing. It contributed to the
feeling on the album sessions, that things weren’t the same as they
used to be.”

“Now, going alongside all of this is the
business side of it,” continues Murray, “where possibly Whitesnake wouldn’t
have gotten going in the first place if it wasn’t for one of Deep Purple’s
managers, John Coletta, who had taken us on board. But when we signed to him in
‘78 he was not only the manager, he was also the publisher and the
record company, and that was not a good thing for us in terms of knowing where the
money was going. So yeah, although he’d been half of Purple’s management in the
‘70s, under the contract with Whitesnake, he also had, as well as the
management, the publishing and the record company, in Britain, which was then
licensed to other labels and stuff. So tons of money would be coming in, but we
wouldn’t really see very much of it.”

“It took a year or two to probably get
into profit and start getting somewhere, but I think as we became successful
and from then on — particularly as David, Jon and Ian had been in this massive
band Deep Purple at the height of their success — they’re going, ‘Hang on, we
should be seeing a lot more money than we are getting.’

“The feeling was that the
label that we were on, a subsidiary of Atlantic, really didn’t have the
clout to make the band happen in America and, coupled with that, there
was the dissatisfaction with our management. The other three of us, myself,
Bernie and Micky, we were slightly in the dark about all the financial side of
it. We were sort of taken advantage of, really, but it got to the
point where after doing the bulk of
Saints & Sinners
, David
basically wanted to get away from Mr. Coletta and start again with a new record
deal and management and everything else. So, this started to set in motion
David basically paying the management a lot of money to get away from all the
contracts. So, in the spring of ‘82, that’s when the big change was made.”

“And also, it seemed to be a good idea in
his mind to make changes within the band because he just felt that the
attitude wasn’t the same,” continues Murray. “As I say, dissatisfaction was
starting to build in the band. There wasn’t the same sort of fire and
enthusiasm and excitement that there had been before. When we were trying to
make it, it was great to be part of something where you’re playing tiny little clubs,
and a year later you’re playing Hammersmith Odeon and a year later you’re
playing arenas. It was really quite a fast trajectory to the band becoming
successful in Britain, Europe and Japan.”

The very nature of Whitesnake’s music — let’s
face it, party rock played and sung good — well, that was also part of the
problem, especially as it pertained to the ex-Purple members of the
band.

“For Ian and Jon,” explains Murray, “Whitesnake
was fun music to play but it didn’t show them off in the way that Deep Purple
did. I mean, Deep Purple, you had three virtuosos and you know, a bass player and
a singer [
laughs
]. However good they were, you still had these
amazing players, absolutely top of their game. And in Whitesnake, it’s still the
case, but with two other guitarists and a different kind of music, it wasn’t
quite so easy for them to, I don’t know, maybe even just play what they
wanted to play or to stretch out. There wasn’t that opportunity for them, playing-wise.”

Still, very little of this strife can be
heard in the record at hand. Arguably,
Saints & Sinners
is an even
more lively and fiery record than the last — the band’s
Flick Of The Switch
as it were, compared to
Back In Black
and
For Those About To Rock
to draw an AC/DC analogy. Side two is illustrative of this roustabout gang
feel, with “Love An’ Affection” roundhouse rocking, and “Rock An’ Roll Angels”
stirring up a textured vibe and feel in the orbit of Mott and the
Stones.

But it’s “Dancing Girls” that brings back
the metal, and brings it strong. Like “Young Blood,” this one’s a steamroller,
even if Jon Lord throws up top a cool Stevie Wonder rhythm and sound, which
gives way for a traditional Hammond solo come break time.

“‘Dancing Girls’ had this kind of Sly
Stone vibe about it,” recalls Marsden. “Boom lacka-lacka, boom lacka-lacka. But
I can’t remember that much about it. When you weren’t involved in the
writing of something, you don’t take a great deal of notice of them
until you play them. And then once we recorded them in the studio, my bit for
that song that was written by somebody else... it was done, kind of thing. So
you leave it for them to get on with it. I guess that’s how Ian must’ve felt
about stuff. Once he’d done his thing, he’d be gone. He didn’t have to hang
around the studio for the next six weeks like we did.”

A title track closes the
album, and strangely — yet at the same time adding a sense of cohesion — the
song is a bruising circular blues metal, a variation on the approach used for the
faster “Love An’ Affection” and the slower “Crying In The Rain.” Great tune, and
a catchy, catch it to go phrase-riddled holler-along that frankly could have
been brought forward successfully the same way “Crying In The Rain” and “Here I
Go Again” would be, given the lifts in energy, the twists and turns to the
riffing, the Guns N’ Roses swagger to the damn thing.

As a post-mortem comment from Marsden, he
figures, “
Come An’ Get It
is a natural follow-up to
Ready An’ Willing
,
with the live album in the middle. But
Saints & Sinners
is a strange
album, because it’s kind of the breakup album. And yet recently, I had to do
some liner notes for a box set, so I revisited it, and it’s a great record. I
was amazed, I was amazed! The stuff was as strong as anything we’d done, and
well of course, the biggie of all-time was on there — ‘Here I Go Again’ was on
it. You know, how bad was it to go out on that album? That would do me just
fine, you know? [
laughs
].”

“It’s not my job to sit here and make
excuses,” noted Jon Lord to
Kerrang!
a year later, “but the
backing tracks were made at the end of 1981 under quite difficult circumstances
in terms of the band itself and the producer. His bottle really went when
confronted with what we wanted. Plus, we went through about nineteen different
studios! It had to be released, though; unfortunately, it was a ‘contractual
obligation’ album — shades of Monty Python! — otherwise we would have been sued
from here to Christmas! To be honest, the sales of that album did show that it
wasn’t as well-received as it could’ve been. There were some great moments on
it, though, and I think that it ended up sounding as it did was a tribute to the
band in that situation. It does sound a bit ‘down,’ though, if you put it
against
Ready An’ Willing
, which I think is the best studio album.”

Kerrang!
’s
Chas De Whalley, reviewing the record, wrote “And no matter how much effort
David Coverdale put into it — and he obviously sweated blood — he can’t
disguise the fact that this is not his finest album. But give him full marks
for trying. And cross your fingers that with his new line-up, he’ll get it all
sorted for next time.”

Providing the apocalyptic theme
for De Whalley’s assessment, no doubt, was the fact that David had indeed been
verbose on the topic of the degradation of the band.

Explained David, to Dante Bonutto in the
same issue of
Kerrang!
that featured the above review: “Sometimes you
just sit there and think, why the hell do I bother? Anyway, it all proved very
expensive, but I’m pleased it’s sorted out at last because in the
final analysis, the buck stops with me. It rests on my ass, and I’m sick of
picking up the pieces of other people’s mistakes. I’m not perfect, but I’m
going for as close as possible to that. Listen, I’ve always asked for everyone’s
opinion. But towards the end, they started to get so high and mighty I thought,
fuck it. And when I get angry, it’s not a pretty sight; definitely firecrackers
up people’s asses time.”