Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (27 page)

“If I concentrate too much, it’s no
good,” added Vivian Campbell. “My problem is that I tend to overthink. I can’t
concentrate solely on the audience because that would be a complete
distraction. The ideal would be a nebulous situation — aware, but not
concentrating, like walking on air. The environment is also an affecting
factor: what kind of day we’re having, how the band plays, what goes on, how
many bottles get thrown at us! Consistency and professionalism are affected by
space and time.”

“The musicianship is first rate,” says
Campbell. “There is no way anyone could accuse us of being a backup band. The
keyword is respect amongst the whole band. There is a strong personal bond
stemming from that respect. Working with Whitesnake is so refreshing. David has
confidence in the people around him. He lets us do what we want and doesn’t
feel the need to oversee everything. He gives us the freedom and respect we
deserve, and even though we didn’t all play on the album, he makes us feel as
if we did.”

But, as alluded to, Vivian Campbell
wouldn’t be around for long. “There were a lot of reasons; there’s
no one reason,” Campbell told me years later. Viv fortunately would land on his
feet with Def Leppard, his third plum job since leaving Ireland. “The major
reason, No. 1, I had just got married when I did that tour. And Tawny Kitaen,
who of course was the video vixen, she and my wife basically fell out. And so
David Coverdale came to me and said, you know, your wife can’t come on tour if
Tawny’s around. And Tawny was there the whole time, so basically I said,
‘David, you know, then I’m not going on tour. I’m not going to work under those
conditions.’ So that was strike one [
laughs
].”

“Strike two was the situation with Adrian
Vandenberg,” continues Viv. “And I like Adrian and I still like him to this day
and he likes me, but he made no secret of the fact, from day one, when I was in
Whitesnake, that he never wanted to work with another guitar player. It was no
reflection on me or my guitar playing or my personality. He just didn’t want to
work with another guitar player. He wanted to be the only guitar player in the
band. And he was the first one that had been recruited for that line-up. And
Coverdale had neglected to mention to him that there was going to be two guitar
players. So he always thought it was a temporary situation. And we went on tour
and the competition between Adrian and me was friendly but fierce. And maybe
that was a good thing. I certainly wouldn’t be as competitive as a guitar
player nowadays, because, to be honest, I wouldn’t give a fuck who did the
solo. But every time we would add a song to the set, we would be like, ‘I’ve
got to do that solo because you’re doing seven and I’m only doing six.’ It
would be pathetic.”

Comments Kalodner on Vandenberg, “The
thing is, remember, most people don’t know this, David did not know Adrian
Vandenberg or any of guys; I mean, he probably knew Rudy and Tommy Aldridge,
but as I said, when they did the first video, with Marty Callner, they
had never, ever played with each other ever. That was my complete fantasy call
for the band. And I didn’t even know if they would stay together
after that video, but they did. And then
Whitesnake
sold almost... most
people don’t know this, but worldwide it sold bigger than almost any record,
except maybe
Slippery When Wet
.”

“So it’s a complicated history,” sighs
Kalodner. “With a lot of artistic experimentation. John Sykes, even though
Coverdale by that time was not even talking to him, they did so much. Mike
Stone was in Canada recording the tracks with John Sykes, and they
did so much amazing experimentation with guitar sounds. And that’s what’s on the
record. And Coverdale was going nuts down here. Because he just hated it. You
know, he hated that John Sykes was working with Mike Stone.”

“You know, I don’t know how much he was
in debt to me,” says Kalodner in closing, offering some vague words on the
financial aftermath of the
Whitesnake
experience. “You know, in terms...
it wasn’t millions, but I never got royalties, and I don’t think he ever paid
me back, ever. But that’s not why I did the record. It’s not why I worked with
him.”

So was there direct financial involvement
on your part? “I was paid by the David Geffen company, and that’s it. I never
got royalties from any artist, which is, you know, maybe the dumbest thing in
history that I ever did.”

So, what you’re saying is, you could’ve
got in on... what, executive producer? Get points that way?

“Yeah, that’s right. That’s what all these
scumbags do now. On eighteen million records, worldwide, or nineteen million
records — isn’t that what it sold? I mean, it sold ten million in the
United States, and Rupert Perry told me it sold almost as many outside.”

I’ve heard fourteen million worldwide.

“Okay, so between fourteen and eighteen
million. At one point that’s a lot of money. Yeah, so no, I never got one dime,
but that’s not why I did it.”

-11-

Slip Of The
Tongue
– “We Made More Money Than God On The Last
Record! “

Sitting on top of
the
world, David Coverdale was living proof of the very best case
scenario — the gold standard — of an act long in the tooth, navigating the
waters of an era one generation past his band’s proposed and supposed peak. In
other words, fantastic voyage across the Atlantic completed, David did not
merely set up a homestead from which he fended off bears and cougars with a
sharp stick. Rather, he built a gleaming palace on the hill and filled it with
trophies hunted and mounted for him by a staff of hair metal minions mesmerized
by his millions (of records sold, at least).

Much of it was about music, yes, but
again, much of it was about looks. David himself had — with gusto – taken to
the uniform of the day, the shaggy, tinted, feathered hair, his face lining
with age in a regal manner, amusingly, very much like the mug on the
front of his larger and looming shadow, Robert Plant.

And then there was his band. Previously,
David was the prettiest, most youthfully vigorous thing on the
stage. But now, Coverdale and Kalodner had colluded to make sure that his back
cast, through the ruthless magic of math, would wrench down the
average age and, more in the abstract, prop the pin-up quotient. And the
hair was beautiful everywhere, even the manes on top of Tommy and Rudy,
sufficiently impressive to hide the lines of experience written into their
storied journeyman faces.

To hammer the point home, the
band had enlisted for their media selves a female version of the
golden god at the mic, namely one Tawny Kitaen, who became the
pin-up of the band’s celebrated video presence, the feminine symbol of all hair
metal, the eye candy to accompany us through the 1980s.

The follow-up to
Whitesnake
would,
come hell or high water, have to be delivered in a reasonably timely fashion,
given the gargantuan success of its predecessor, a hair metal album, to be
sure, but one with some meat on the bones and some pedigree to its players. The
Whitesnake
album had gone gold pretty much immediately upon release, no
surprise, given that
Slide It In
had laid the groundwork for future
numbers by achieving gold a year earlier, although in fact a long two years
after its  1984 release.

And then, almost comically, the
Whitesnake
album would go platinum a month later, double platinum a
month after that, and five times platinum by the end of 1987, at which time
Slide
It In
would go platinum as well. By 1995,
Whitesnake
would sit at an
astounding eight times platinum, with
Slide It In
dragged further
along to an impressive double platinum standing.

The all-important next step in the
band’s suddenly divine career arc would be named and blamed
Slip Of The
Tongue
. Issued November 18, 1989, the record would take a place in history
as a collection trying too hard, standing in the shadow of its robust older
brother, off to college and on the football team. It’s not a surprising result,
given yet another chemistry-killing shuffling of roster at the hands of the
puppet-master, Sir David.

“The problems came later, in a sense,”
says Neil Murray, now watching in bemusement from the sidelines. “Whitesnake
was being tarred with this glam metal, hair metal brush, because of the
videos. And then when the next album,
Slip Of The Tongue
, was done, the
band at that time really kept that hairspray blonde highlights glamorous image
far too long, when they should have been looking out and seeing that Guns N’
Roses are coming out and it’s time to dress down. Stop wearing all the
glittery stuff, guys. But there again, that’s a good example of David becoming
used to a certain way of doing things and being not very good at changing with the
times.”

And then at the guts of why all this is
supposed to be done in the first place —  the music, the records, the
songs — out goes Vivian Campbell, replaced by another journeyman, one with a
much stronger personality and sonic identity, in fact, too much of both for the
Whitesnake brand to support, one Steve Vai.

“When it came time to write the
record,” says Campbell, “David and Adrian had a good relationship, onstage and
off, and they wrote a bunch of tunes. Then, again, Coverdale came to me and
said, ‘Look, I’m happy working with Adrian and we’re going to write the
record and that’s the way it is so thanks but no thanks.’ And I thought, all in
all, what future is there going to be in a band where you’re not allowed to
participate? And when the singer’s wife is omnipresent and I’ve been told not
to bring mine on the road. When the other guitar player doesn’t want me to be
in the band. It was all those things, and we talked about it and I talked with the
management and I talked to David about it and I talked to Adrian about it and
we all just decided it was time for me to move on. It was nothing dramatic or
heavy. We just sort of reasoned through and said, the situation is a little
uncomfortable. I don’t really see a future in it, if I’m not allowed to write.”

“As far as lay people in America are
concerned,” said Tommy Aldridge, with his back up, back in 1990, to Karen
Bliss, “there’s been three records out, and only one personnel change and that
was Vivian. And that doesn’t have anything to do with us or the
music; it was more personal problems — his wife, in a word. The situation
became intolerable, but it was mutual on both sides that he left. As far as the
history of those personnel changes, David was the only one present during that
time. It doesn’t affect us. And no disrespect to Steve Vai, he’s a great guitar
player, but it wouldn’t matter who was playing guitar, or who was playing
drums, or who was playing bass. As long as David was up there, people would
still come to see Whitesnake. The press are the only ones who keep dwelling and
dwelling on the fact that David is the only original member.”

“A lot of people thought we took a lot of
time between the last album and this album, which is not the case,” continues
Aldridge. “We had a few weeks off; then we started rehearsing and went in to record
it. Very few people know, but I finished all my parts on the album in two
weeks. There was a long delay because of Adrian’s hand problems. And then
there’s another ten months trying to get the guitar parts recorded. It took
almost a year for the album to be recorded. I didn’t know I was going to have a
break, otherwise I would’ve done some other things. I got my break in one month
instalments instead of one ten-month chunk. Everyone said, we’ll know this
month. Then that month would come by and they’d say, we’ll know in three weeks.
Basically what I did was blow six to eight months of my life, waiting for these
people to get through their parts. No one knew what was going on, including
management.”

“Well, let’s see, we sold twelve million
copies of the one before, in fifteen months. Wow!” laughs Keith Olsen, picking
up the tale. “Then we go in to start work on
Slip Of The Tongue
, and
Kalodner says, ‘I want to do it a similar way that we did the
other one. That means Keith, I want you and Clink — because Mike is a good
buddy — kind of do it together, the way you did the last record with Mike
Stone.’ And I said, ‘Okay, but you do realize it costs twice as much and it
takes twice as long.’ And, Kalodner says, ‘I don’t care. We made more money
than God on the last record!’ Well yeah, if you’re looking at it that way, if
you’re looking at CDs, and albums at the time, what were they, $14 albums?
$13.98, and CDs were $18.98? Wow. Cassettes were like $13.98 for a cassette,
and they’re whipping this stuff out as fast as all these things could go. I
mean, it was amazing numbers.”

“So they went up to Granny’s House, up
into Nevada, to a rehearsal place, and they rehearsed everything, and they’re
writing as they were rehearsing, and I had other projects to do and Clink had other
projects to do, so we kind of left them up there to write. Well, Adrian and
David wrote twelve songs, or ten songs, all in the key of A [
laughs
].
And so then Clink goes up to cut the tracks, and he cuts all these
things and then I come up to check all these things before going into overdub
mode, and I’m listening to things, and I’m going, ‘So, Mike, you do know that all
these songs are the same key, right?’ And he goes, ‘What?! Oh no!’ ‘So which
ones are we gonna do? Which ones are we gonna change?!’ And so then,
we’re trying to do the guitar parts, the first guitar overdubs, and all the
guitars were going to be hard to do.”

“So I’m working with Adrian,” continues
Keith, “and it’s weeks and weeks, and Mike and I, we’re staying at the
Pepper Mill Casino Hotel there in Reno, and it’s not cheap. This thing is
cha-chinging away,
per diems
and all this, food, because they
took us away from home to put us in a studio that’s ka-chinging away. And it
just got to the point when all of a sudden David, you know, he was so in love
with Tawny at the time, spending all this time in Incline just drooling over
Tawny, in Incline Village, and it’s just one of those things that after about
three weeks he came down to listen to the stuff, and it just wasn’t good
enough. And we told him. We said, ‘David, you’ve got to listen to this. It’s
not good enough.’ And that’s when Adrian had his awful carpal tunnel episode,
in both wrists, at that same instance!  Oh, did I let the cat out of the
bag? Did I let the cat out of the bag? [
laughs
]. Adrian, why he was sent
home, was because the parts just weren’t good enough. Not carpal tunnel
syndrome, as it was said in the rock press. Diagnosed with carpal tunnel in
both wrists.”

“Then Kalodner said, ‘Well, there’s
just three possible guitar players you could use. He gave me this list, and
Coverdale went, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, this guy looks better, he plays
pretty good’ [
laughs
], talking about Steve Vai, and Vai is just… he’s
stunning, he took those songs and twisted them around until it was pretty good,
and yet, the songs didn’t have the class of Whitesnake
1987
. But it had
two really good songs on it.”

So yes, Dutchman Adrian Vandenberg is
also ushered out, replaced by Steve Vai. Explains Adrian’s predecessor, Viv
Campbell, our first character to tow the party line on Vandenberg’s disability,
“I left right after the tour for 1987, and Adrian, yeah, well, what happened
was he injured his hand. Something happened between after I left... you see, the
real irony is, Adrian didn’t want to work with another guitar player. So they
ended up getting rid of me but they still got another guitar player, and they
got Steve Vai. It’s like... so after Steve Vai joins the band Adrian was sort
of relegated in many ways, because Steve Vai is such a showman and technician.”

“So the old saying, the
devil you know [
laughs
]... he should’ve stuck with this devil,” continues
Viv, meaning that not only did Adrian get a second guitar player, he wound up
with a friggin’ force of nature in Steve Vai, a shred technician with a
trademark sound, and one that yelled for attention through the
use of near comedic melody lines. “And he also had, I don’t remember the
details, but he had some sort of condition, tendonitis or something, and he
actually couldn’t play a lot. And that coupled with the fact that it was Steve
Vai, and Steve wanted to play all over everything. So Adrian was on the
record but I’m not sure he played a lot of guitar on it. I don’t know, it’s so
water under the bridge, it’s so long ago.”

It is of note that Keith Olsen is the
only one who refutes the assertion that Adrian, in fact, had injured his hand
and/or hands. Our other characters seem quite sincere in their statements that
Adrian did, in fact, injure himself, one more detailed explanation being
circulated suggested isometric exercise for piano playing gone wrong. In any
event, it seems clear Vandenberg wasn’t proving to be a fit for the situation,
and a change was imminent. Clearly, his playing or technical ability cannot be
called into question.

Steve indeed has said that central to his
process is a building of the guitar parts up from scratch, note for note. With
that mindset, he had to be allowed to remove all of Vandenberg’s work and
create all his own riffing and soloing, as a meshed totality. Vai had no
animosity toward Vandenberg and had never even met him by the
time he was laying down his tracks with Mike Clink, in fact, at Steve’s home
studio. The first time Vai was to meet Adrian was during the publicity photo
sessions to introduce the new band. Vai had actually turned down overtures
initially to join Whitesnake due to not wanting to work with another
guitarist, along with a desire to relax after ten crazy months on the
road with David Lee Roth. It was only after being charmed by David over the
course of three days — plus hearing Adrian’s songs but with no guitar on them
— that he relented.

As for John Kalodner’s assessment... “I
like the record, but you know, when a band has sold that many records... first
of all, David Coverdale obviously became very full of himself, which I can
understand. There were two gigantic problems. Tawny Kitaen was whispering in
his ear, who, by the way, I always got along with. So it’s not like I had some
outward problem with her. Anyway, the two gigantic problems were her and no
John Sykes. And David wouldn’t work with a lot of the writers that I used with
Aerosmith. So it’s mostly him and I guess the other guys in the
band. So what it boils down to, you had this great now road-seasoned band, and
he had Keith Olsen, who was stronger than ever. And the same thing that happens
to all great bands — no great songs. Just good songs. And the
pressure on me was so intense, in the fall of ‘89 to get that record out, that
I let... you know, it’s something that I would redo, and I wouldn’t have let it
out without a single.”