Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage (8 page)

Above:
A persuasive, NWOBHM-styled sell-job for
the
Snakebite
EP. (
Martin Popoff collection
)

Above:
Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody
demonstrating to the punters the proper way to trade blues licks, at the
Hammersmith Odeon in 1981. (
Andrew King
)

Above
: Ian Paice, ex-Purple and the backbone of
the classic Whitesnake line-up, weaves his magic at the Hammersmith Odeon in
1981. (
Andrew King
)

Above:
Were you at either of these Hammy Odeon
gigs? (
Martin Popoff collection
)

Above:
Whitesnake circa 1983: L-R: Colin
Hodgkinson, Mel Galley, Cozy Powell, Jon Lord, David Coverdale, Mick Moody. A
fleeting line-up that was shattered by American interests and an interest in
America. (
AF Archive/Alamy
)

Above:
The consummate and storied Neil Murray in
1984 at the Veterans Memorial, Columbus, Ohio. The rest of Rod Dysinger's
photos are from the same gig too. (
Rod Dysinger
)

Above:
The one and only Cozy Powell. (
Rod
Dysinger
)

Over the page:
David Coverdale and John Sykes rocking out in 1984.
"If you're lookin' for trouble…" (
Rod Dysinger
)

-5-

Lovehunter
– “It’s Not Shakespeare”

Lovehunter
, issued October 1979, was, like
Trouble
, a further
step in the “right” direction for Whitesnake, or the direction of an audience
anyway, on its way to various forms of straight rock and then stadium rock, but
still with one foot in disorienting diversity.

Not so the album cover. What was written
on the tin, in this case a dramatic Chris Achilleos illustration of a buxom
naked girl straddling a snake, screamed heavy metal. Indeed the
artwork caused hoots of derision, which didn’t stop it from getting stolen in the
1980s (as well being reproduced in exquisite and skilled ballpoint pen detail
by the author on his Grade 11 math book, as I’ve proudly trumpeted now for a
second time). A huge fantasy and sci-fi-related career ahead of him, Achilleos vowed
he would stay away from album covers henceforth, his only other
famed piece being a similarly fantastical and sexy set-piece for Uriah Heep’s
Fallen
Angel
, along with by-default album art for the
Heavy Metal
movie and
a later offering for Gary Hughes.

Marsden, however, doesn’t remember much
complaint. “No, not really. The one that got more trouble was
Come An’ Get
It
. That one was sanitized in America. We don’t need to get into why, but
if you looked at the cover, you probably realize why. But it’s not to be taken
seriously. But at the time, there were some journalists with axes to grind, who
were treating the lyrics seriously, and we weren’t taking ourselves seriously.
It was all a bit of fun. ‘Lie down, I love you;’ it’s not Shakespeare. You
know, if somebody’s going to say that, it’s like, seriously, what do you think?
No, of course I’m not being serious.”

Back to
Lovehunter
though, and “Long
Way From Home” is a strident, accessible rocker, not too blues and not too
heavy metal, more like confident, relaxed stadium rock. Its commercial push
forward was so effortless that the song was issued as the album’s first single,
achieving a middling No. 55 in the British charts, with its b-side, “Walking In
The Shadow Of The Blues” becoming much more of a Whitesnake classic over time.

“That was David’s song,” says Marsden of
“Long Way From Home.” “That came in as pretty much a finished item, and I just
dubbed the guitar parts on it, and I was pretty much done. David always did
very good demos. Well, him and I did most of the demos between us, and that was
one of them he had done, more or less on his own. The first time I heard that
was a couple days before we recorded it. Good song, very good song.”

Amusingly, even though the
chorus finds David singing “long, long way from home,” the title of the
track contained just one “long,” to avoid confusion with the anthemic
heavy rocker from Foreigner’s self-titled smash issued in 1977.

Lovehunter
was recorded in April and May of 1979 at Clearwell Castle, Gloucestershire,
using the tiny Rolling Stones Mobile (nicknamed Café Mobile), with mixing done
at Central Recorders. “Yeah, only how cold it was,” laughs Marsden, when prompted
for a memory of Clearwell, famous for hosting Sabbath, Purple, Bad Company,
Sweet and Led Zeppelin. “But it was a great place to work. Because it was a bit
cold and little bit soulless, it made you work harder. It made you drink harder
as well. The banquets in the evening tended to take a bit of a toll on you. But
again the work was done, and we did that with the Rolling Stones mobile, which
is great, an interesting process.”

“A lot of stuff went on at Clearwell,”
notes Marsden, when asked about any shenanigans that took place during the
band’s multiple ensconcements at the castle over the years. “We put a big board
at the front desk, saying the castle is closed for the next month, because John
Travolta is making a new film here. This was just after
Grease
. Of
course, the locals went mad. They were trying to get in all the
time. It was just crazy stuff like that. But you do these things. We’d play in the
local pub. People, to this day, come to gigs and say, ‘I was in the
local pub in Clearwell that night, when you played.’ We played on a cold
November night. It was either Jon or Ian wasn’t there, but it was five of us
out of the six. And I think Jon wasn’t there; I think there was a local
keyboard player or we played as a five-piece. We were the local band that night
in the pub. A recording of that would’ve been worth having [
laughs
].”

“We did the first EP there,”
recalls Marsden, when asked about Central. “The first Whitesnake sessions ever,
that was out of Central. And then we did
Trouble
there as well. But
Lovehunter
,
I don’t remember that! It’s listed in the credits, is it? Maybe we did mix
something there. Possibly a couple of overdubs. As I say, we recorded with the
mobile, out at Clearwell, so maybe there were a couple things left to do. But I
didn’t know that. It’s good to find out new things 30 years later! [
laughs
].”

There are no stories of Plant or Page
watching on at the castle, unfortunately, but, as Marsden recalls, “I know that
Billy Connolly came down when we were at Clearwell Castle. He came down, not to
see us, but we happened to be there, and there was some private function in the
grounds. I bumped into him. I knew him then, and he said, ‘What the
hell are you doing here?’ ‘We’re making an album.’ And he said, ‘Oh, I wish I
was with you.’ He really didn’t want to be there.”

If Status Quo had perfected a post-blues
boom boogie gallop, “Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues” found Whitesnake
crafting something closer to a heavy metal gallop. With this track, the
band were now in a zone that would find them entangled with the
idea of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal — for better or worse.

“‘Shadow Of The Blues,’ I still think is
one of the best songs we ever wrote together,” figures Marsden. But when asked
about it and the band’s nearing association with heavy metal, he says, “We didn’t
get caught up in that. Because we’d already been there. And because of the
Deep Purple connection, we were never going to be an addition to that new wave
thing. No, I don’t think we were ever really aware of it. You know, Whitesnake,
I’ve said it before, we were really a closed shop. We were pretty tight between
us, and we were always very reverent about other musicians, other
people we liked, and stuff like that, and never stepped on their
toes or said anything negative.

“But not many people got inside the
Whitesnake office, shall we say. So that whole thing, in the press about new
wave... in fact, punk to me was like a Clint Eastwood movie, you know, ‘Well,
tell me, punk.’ That’s what I thought a punk was, when I was living in Munich
at the time. I didn’t even know what a punk was. I thought, oh, that’s really
nice, play on stage, and the audience spits all over you. I don’t think I want
to do that anyway.”

“No, not at all,” says Moody, seconding the
curious vibe of Marsden and Coverdale — and the likes of Ian Gillan and Rick
Parfitt when I ask them about this — on whether there was a cognizance or even
a pondering of the concept of a NWOBHM. “No, when Whitesnake started, it was the
punk era going on. Probably the worst thing to do was to try put together
a hard rock band. But David was the catalyst of course. He wanted to do this,
and he wanted me to be involved. I didn’t think about it. We were just doing
what came naturally.

“We wanted to go out and rock and have
some fun. The kind of bands I would listen to were more like Bob Seger &
The Silver Bullet Band, nice rock ‘n’ roll bands with a good live show. I wasn’t
listening to anything heavy or heavier than that, really. So we just went out
and rocked and had a good time. Simple as that. We didn’t even know if we would
last, to be quite honest. I just enjoyed it. We were partying and had a lot of
good times. I thought I would keep on doing this until it either
happens or it doesn’t.”

Moving past “Walking In The Shadow Of The
Blues”— ersatz anchor to the record, the love hunter itself, things lighten up
considerably, throwing the listener back to the early Whitesnake material. “Help
Me Thro’ The Day” is a blues cover, albeit a modern one from Leon Russell, and
its sombre groove would have made it a perfect fit to
Stormbringer
,
something Coverdale and Glenn Hughes might have proposed much to the
chagrin of rocking Ritchie.

“‘Help Me Thro’ The Day,’ that was a
transition thing,” says Marsden. “That was a follow-up to ‘Ain’t No Love In The
Heart Of The City,’ really, which is a song I always wanted to do. I was the
one who said, ‘Hey, “Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City,” Dave, you could
sing this great,’ because I was a big Bobby Bland fan; still am. And the
next thing is, I suppose, I was always a big follower of Leon Russell as a
writer, also as a performer, but especially as a writer. But always loved ‘Help
Me Thro’ The Day,’ and I said, ‘Look, what we did in “Ain’t No Love;” I think
we could do to this.’ And I think everybody agreed, and I think it’s one of the
best versions ever. It’s good to think out-of-the-box sometimes, and I think it’s
just great that we did that.”

“Medicine Man” was another
strident rocker on the album, full up with Coverdale swagger and rich tones of
Purple. No surprise, given that the esteemed Martin Birch was on board
producing, re-generating the great guitar and keys alloy he had helped bring to
fruition along with Jon and Ritchie.

“Back in the day, you took those things
for granted,” reflects Marsden. “We were all young men, and Martin did my
And
About Time Too
solo album with me as well in that same year; he was
producer, and one of the greatest engineers. Funny, the other day, I was
listening to a reissue of a Jeff Beck album, and Martin engineered it:
Beck-Ola
.
I was always enamoured with Martin because of his connection with Peter Green
and Fleetwood Mac, so anytime I was in the studio, I would say, ‘Well, what
would Peter do here?’ And he was very canny, he was quite clever, and he said, ‘He’d
probably do something like this.’ And then he would go, ‘Well, what would you
do?’ I’d try to talk about Peter Green, he wanted to hear Bernie Marsden. He
was great like that. Great producer. Doesn’t do much these days; hasn’t bothered
for a long time. Since his relationship with Iron Maiden, I think, he hasn’t
done much. But he’s got a record that is second to none. He’s on some of the
great guitar tracks of all time. But yeah, ‘Medicine Man’ I think is a really
cool track.”

“Martin is great, a really strong
character,” seconds Moody, on Birch. “I mean, really positive. Martin was an
engineer who became a producer, and he was a great engineer. Latter part of the
‘60s, recorded with the early Peter Green Fleetwood Mac. He came from being a
great engineer, and he said, ‘Well, I can produce as well.’ He could see the
qualities in each person in the band and he could bring the best out. Of
course, he got me the best sound you could ever get. Very, very positive man,
Martin. A bit of a man’s man. Very strong character, someone you could rely on,
someone who was very, very together. And, the fact that he produced so many
top-quality bands, I’ve got nothing but praise for Martin.”

Adds Murray: “He was very much in the
background. He’s very much a laid-back kind of guy. His thing was to be
encouraging and not let any kind of real bad mistakes go by. But mostly to get
really good sounds, so that you were inspired to play. I mean, I know that on
Trouble
,
we recorded five backing tracks in one day, which is pretty unusual. I mean, Okay,
we’re in a small studio, small budget, and at that time, obviously we had the
fire in our bellies and we weren’t sitting around analyzing it trying to be
absolutely perfect. I know I can hear a wrong note on the bass in ‘Day Tripper,’
[
laughs
] where I go to the wrong chord. Nowadays you would never let
that go past, but back then it was kind of, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’”

Closing side two of the
original vinyl album is a boogie-woogie rave called “You ‘n’ Me,” standard for
Whitesnake, blessed with a certain
Come An’ Get It
or
Saints &
Sinners
vibe. Explains Marsden: “There’s a bonus track on the
reissue of
And About Time Too
[his first solo offering] called ‘You And
Me,’ which was actually on
Lovehunter
as well, and we just developed
that later on. David had said, ‘Yeah, the band should do that.’ And I said, ‘Okay,
so that’s why there’s two versions of it, different writers [
laughs
].’
It’s just the usual kind of rhythm and blues, girl meets boy, girl loses boy,
man loses girl, kind of thing. Nothing too deep, really.”