Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (30 page)

Asked to expand on his view that Steve
Vai altered his original vision for the
Slip Of The Tongue
songs,
Vandenberg is completely gracious. “Yeah, but then again, he chose to. He made
a huge mark with his style of playing and he’s a fantastic player. And I would
probably do the same thing, if the same thing happened the other
way around. If Steve had written the music for one of his David Lee Roth albums
at the time, and they would’ve asked me to put my mark on it, I would’ve done
it in the way that I did with the
MoonKings
album, and that’s how it
would’ve sounded, to me. Steve and I got on great at the time — everybody
thought we didn’t, but we did. Because we didn’t feel any competition, since
our styles are so different. We had a lot of respect for each other,
and I think we learned from each other too. I definitely learned from Steve,
and he told me that he did from me as well, especially from my more economical
melodic approach. So, yeah, I think it was fantastic. I learned a lot in all
fields, also in the human department, because obviously, it was a very
disappointing situation for me that I couldn’t play on my own album. And so it
was definitely rolling with the punches, as they say, at the time.”

But Vandenberg is all over the
credits — very generous of David and the Whitesnake organization — neatly given
the music credit on every last song except for the re-do of “Fool For Your
Loving.” “That’s because I finished all the music, and David wrote the
vocal lines and the lyrics, and we started recording already. So Steve got the
basic tracks, and, you know, he put his guitars on there. He didn’t write any
of the stuff, but he put his signature guitars on there, as I say.”

One might conjecture or speculate from the
following (added of course to Keith Olsen’s curious comments), that perhaps
Adrian might not have lasted much longer as part of the gang because he didn’t
fit into the materialistic spirit of the band as it swept up stacks of cash at
points across America and then poured them back into the economy.

“Yeah, very much so, and I didn’t think
it was necessary,” laughs Adrian, asked about Whitesnake’s penchant for
spending. “It was of course the ‘80s and everybody was throwing money around.
And I’m a Dutch guy; the Dutch are supposed to be economical, you know? And
that’s why I never moved to Hollywood, although the pressure was very big from the
record company and from the management. They wanted me to move to the
States. And I just couldn’t really relate to the lifestyle. I’m very European —
I grew up in Holland, and spent quite a lot of time in England because my aunt
married a British pilot after the war, so sometimes I would go to England and
spend time with my family there, and that’s very much like I lived in Holland,
in the countryside. So, like, no-nonsense type of stuff. But the
whole Hollywood glamour thing was very far away from my personal lifestyle, and
so every time when I had more time off than five days, I flew back to Holland
and hung with my friends and my family, and kept my feet on the
ground instead of cruising around in Ferraris with silicon babes.”

“We were going to do a cover of my
Vandenberg song ‘Burning Heart’ on the
Slip Of The Tongue
album,”
continues Adrian, conjuring what for the band might have been that crucial hit
single to make this record sell beyond its precipitous drop to mere platinum
after the shock success of its predecessor. “But when I couldn’t play due to my
wrist injury, we decided it would be strange if we put it on the
album, when I couldn’t play it myself. You never know, maybe David and I will
do a version of it one day. Because David really wanted to do it. It would
really suit his voice, and his voice would really add an extra dimension on the
song.”

Adrian indeed counts “Sailing Ships” and
“Burning Heart” as two of the best songs he’s ever written, with the
latter as first choice. “I would have to say ‘Burning Heart,’ as a rock ballad,
because I never expected it to be that much of an evergreen song that it’s
turned out to be, because I wrote it behind a piano when I was with my parents.
When we got signed by the British version of Atlantic Records, by Phil Carson,
legendary record industry figure — who signed AC/DC at the time, INXS, involved
with Zeppelin — I thought ‘Oh, we’re going to need a ballad as well,’ and that
was it.”

And so ended
Slip Of The Tongue
—
without a true hit, “Burning Heart” or otherwise. And so ended, for all intents
and purposes, the shooting comet across the sky that was Whitesnake.
Benefitting from the leap-frogging nature of how these things work, the
record was one record past the very, very big record. But, given the
lag of tickets an’ concert-selling and the soaking of a band into pop
consciousness, that just meant that the tour could be the biggest, most
bombastic of the band’s career, more lucrative than the tour for
Whitesnake
,
which began modestly before it, in itself, blossomed. So, on
Slip Of The
Tongue
, the band played Monsters Of Rock, for example, for the
third time and the second time headlining. See the band live, with all this
firepower, and one quickly put aside that the new record was a pushed and
shoved version of the one before it.

“I listened to it recently, and I quite
enjoyed it!” says Rudy Sarzo, asked for a years-later assessment. “I really
did. It’s a very different Whitesnake record. I think actually, it’s more
acceptable today than it was in ‘89, ‘90, when we recorded it and released it,
because certain things were expected of Whitesnake. Again, it should’ve been
more bluesy. And of course Steve Vai brought in more of a guitar virtuoso side
to it, which I really enjoyed. I gotta say, working with Steve Vai, I learned
so much from him. It was tremendous. So yeah, I think the musicianship and
everything, it was a great record. It was a great band, great record.”

All told, in retrospect, Steve’s short
time with Whitesnake didn’t turn out to produce the creative satisfaction he
was able to find elsewhere. Of course, it all started with Frank Zappa, and then
ended up with a vast and productive solo career...

But again, what of this tendency to play,
at times, almost “humorously?”

“Ha! Well it comes in varying degrees and
intensities, you know?” says Vai. “My first record
Flex-able
was all
about humour because, at the time that I made it, it was a very innocent kind
of a project in that I recorded tons and tons and tons of stuff that was very
influenced by Frank Zappa at the time. Also it was really just a little secret
that I had with me and my friends. I would send them a track and say, listen to
how funny this one is. So there was a lot of humour in that, and I have tons of
stuff sitting on the shelf that’s just
really
silly stuff, ya know? But then
when I started to make records such as
Passion And Warfare
, I mean some
of the subject matter is very intense and there’s not a lot of humour involved
in it. But for the most part, you know, I like a light feel. I don’t wanna take
myself too seriously. So comedy is like a release if you’re doing something
that resonates with somebody on a comical level. So I inject it here and there,
you know?”

And through that ethic, Steve has found a
way to create comedy through melody... “Well yeah, you sure can! I mean, when
people laugh or when people create a humorous situation it can be represented
in notes because, if you take this interview we’re doing and you transcribe it,
there’s notes, inflections and dynamics to every single phrase, you know. If I
was talking to you in a humorous way, I could transcribe it, it would probably
come off melodically very humorous.”

But then again, a large chunk of what one
hears throughout
Slip Of The Tongue
’s often bizarre and irregular solos
isn’t so much humour as subtle homage to the guitar style of Steve’s first
immense mentor, Frank Zappa.

“Yes, well with Frank, it was
concentrated on his music,” reflects Steve, asked about those blessed years.
“And it was just playing the music properly and, you know, that was the
main focus for me most of the time, and just keeping my sea legs standing while
I was on tour. Because it was the first time I’d been on tour. I didn’t really
know how to handle myself. I was really out of balance, staying up very late at
night, being promiscuous, all sorts of stuff.”

“Frank would write all sorts of stuff,
and I was very young when I was working for him and very impressionable,”
explains Steve. “The thing that I got most out of Frank’s work — or from Frank
himself — was his independence. When he wanted to write a melody, he wrote what
he was hearing and it wasn’t based on anything else that was going on at the
time that might have been considered in vogue. He always was independent in his
approach to so many things. You know, his artistry, his business, the
way that he treated people, it was very inspiring. So when I started to
cultivate my own career, I just figured this is the way you do it. You know,
you hear melodies in your head and you just do whatever you feel. But Frank’s
melodies, a lot of them were composed. So they’re not just like something you’d
sing along and it repeats itself and it repeats itself. They were compositions
that went on and on, and wove in and out of harmonies. It wasn’t something that
you’d teach somebody. It’s something they have to be able to read and
understand. So, the compositional nature of Frank’s work was very inspiring to
me. I don’t think my melodies... my choice of notes are pretty different than
Frank’s, but some of the constructions are similar.”

“I enjoy trying to deliver good
entertainment and a show,” says Vai, as we circle back to the
flamboyant nature of the band’s acrobatic six-stringer, as demonstrated
sonically all over this record, and visually out on tour. “I’m really into theatrics.
I’m really a poser from way back. But by the same token, I like to have some
musicality in there. But if you get close enough to the stage, and you’ll smell
ham cooking [
laughs
]. Because I’m a total ham.”

“So I had great success with some of the
big rock bands,” continues Steve. “I developed a reputation for being this
alien guitar player with Frank Zappa. And then, you know, what was the
most coveted guitar position in the world? When David Lee Roth left Van Halen.
And you know, I got that gig, and I delivered. For some reason, there
was something there that worked. What I was doing just had the
right type of chops for the time. Come you know, the ‘80s, I loved wearing
sequined pants and all that crazy shit. But then when Whitesnake came along,
that was a pop band, a blues-based rock pop band, big hits. So David Lee Roth,
it was just focusing on the party aspect of it. And just getting on stage and
being a rock star and having a kick. And with Whitesnake, it was just a gig.
You know, I enjoyed playing it all, but it didn’t have the certain spark or
whatever that the David Lee Roth thing had. Dave had a way of keeping the
energy going. Any little thing that happened, was, you know, a good thing. And there
were bad things too — I’m not going to tell you there wasn’t. But with
Whitesnake, they’d just come off a record that had sold fourteen million, so
when this one only sold two million, they were like disappointed — and I was
excited. But it was good too. I had a good time. It was a wonderful tour. And
that’s it.”

“There are some great players out there,”
mused Coverdale, when I talked to him for his solo album more than a decade
after this surreal time. “I recently reconnected with Steve Vai. We talked
about the fact that he really didn’t have an opportunity. You know, he came in
and played on top of existing songs, and then I broke Whitesnake up. So we’ve
never had an opportunity. For instance, I would have most definitely presented the
song ‘The River Song’ from
Into The Light
, to a guitarist like Steve
Vai. He is just extraordinarily extrapolating. One of the things I would have
loved to have done, I would have made it a personal mission to have worked with
Steve. And I’ve discussed this with him openly. Technically, there
is nobody who can touch him, but emotionally, he doesn’t even tap into his
heart. And that would have been my mission, to have brought out an emotional
vibe — he would have been unbeatable. I mean, there’s nobody like him. He’s
like Paganini for God’s sake!

“And it’s interesting, he sent me out
some of his recent work, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying his compilation. I’m
actually on there. That’s me doing the ‘We may be human, but we’re still
animals.’ But yeah, I can hear the potential, but the circumstances, all of the
essence of what I do is emotional. But for instance, if I’m singing some blues
stuff and Steve goes into the solo, it’s incredible, but if it gets too wacky,
how do I bring it back to earth? It’s got to be something that is done together.
My favourite guitarist, of course, is Jeff Beck; when I hear the
incredible emotion and power and aggression that he has in his tone, just
breathtaking, I can see that as a marriage made in heaven. I don’t see that there
would have to be a mission there to try to tackle the best out of somebody. He
is that and he has that. All I would have to focus on is getting appropriate
songs that could manifest the true potential of that kind of partnership. It
would have to be a big blues rock element...”