Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage

by Martin Popoff

  “There are three ex-Purples in Whitesnake,” continues David. “So it’s impossible to deny that some of the things are going to sound like Purple, because I wrote a lot of songs for Purple, and I’m doing a lot of the songwriting now. And of course, with Jon Lord and Ian Paice there, it’s gotta sound like some of the Deep Purple stuff. I like to think that the only thing that I’m using that’s coming from Purple is the experience. There’s no conscious artistic motivation to carry on where Purple left off.

  “In fact, with Whitesnake, it’s a much more open situation as far as writing is concerned. Under the creative umbrella of Whitesnake, we can write anything, soul, rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll. Whereas with Purple, my writing was getting so fucking small, because it was only hard rock heavy metal. There was no way you could change that, because people who picked up a Purple album were picking it up for one kind of music. As a writer, it was frustrating, whereas with Whitesnake, we can do what the fuck we want.”

  Whitesnake had now become a sort of comfort food for the powerful UK music press. Wrote the esteemed Geoff Barton in Sounds, “Ready An’ Willing breaks little new ground, springs few surprises, but it’s a ‘good’ album nonetheless, upstanding and steadfastly true to the time-honoured Whitesnake tradition.” He continues, mischievously: “Although the album cover’s no Lovehunter, there’s enough sexist action on the lyric front to keep your feminist friends frothing at the mouth for some time to come, I’d say.”

  Dante Bonutto, another legendary metal journalist, wrote: “With Ready An’ Willing, what you expect is what you get: an album of diamond-hard rock (not HM) played with skill, verve and, above all, feel.” He also notes that, “The production is spot on, successfully capturing the power of Whitesnake live without losing the subtleties and refinements that make this band a bit special.”

  Keith Sharp, from Canada’s Music Express wrote, “Sounding not unlike a good Free album, Whitesnake run the gamut of R&B rock with Coverdale occasionally winding the pace down with a couple of powerful mid-tempo numbers. Coverdale has the power to generate a strong vocal presence and the experience of people like Lord and Paice ensures that the arrangements are tight.”

  In March of 1980, Sounds magazine published the results of their 1979 reader’s poll and Whitesnake popped up despite not having a new album to place the band prominently in minds (Ready An’ Willing was still a couple of months away). Nonetheless, Jon Lord won top keyboardist, Ian Paice hit No. 5 in the drummer category, Coverdale made No. 6 as top vocalist and then a rousing No. 3 as best male sex object, after Sting and Lemmy! A year later, Coverdale would take top spot for this coveted prize, second as best vocalist (after Peter Gabriel), with Whitesnake showing up as seventh best band. Ian and Jon dependably popped up again in their chosen professions with the guitarists of the band remaining noticeably absent from any Sounds accolades.

  In any event, quite clearly, over the years it’s become gospel that Ready An’ Willing is a magical Whitesnake record to the band’s fanbase, but this is also one of those occasions where the makers of a record themselves recognize that there’s some sort of abstract, ethereal vibe within the grooves of a certain one of their albums over any other, by consensus. The happenstance restores one’s faith that there is indeed a sort of Platonic ideal as to what art is, floating around the ether, and that those attuned to it will agree that it’s there, irrespective of whether they are makers of it or watchers and listeners from the outside.

  “That is probably my favourite Whitesnake album, to be honest,” votes Moody. “The following album, Come An’ Get It was more commercial. The Ready An’ Willing album was my kind of album. I loved the song I wrote with David called ‘Ain’t Gonna Cry No More’ with the acoustic guitar thing. We did a blues called ‘Love Man’ and we did ‘Fool For Your Loving.’ I felt the most comfortable with that album, more so than I did with all of the other Whitesnake albums. There is really something special about that album. That album just has something that I felt a bit more than the others. The core of most of my music is a lot of blues in there. And Ready An’ Willing had that bluesy rocky soul about it, which I love. It’s the album I wanted to do with Whitesnake.”

  “Ready An’ Willing is probably my favourite,” seconds Marsden. “The live album I think is great, because it functions very well as a greatest hits. But probably Ready An’ Willing is my favourite and Lovehunter is probably my least favourite, but that’s not to say I don’t like it. I think there are some great songs on there that we could probably have improved on a year later. ‘Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues’ for instance is fantastic on the live album, with Ian Paice playing drums.”

  Ultimately the record did good UK business, having vaulted to No. 6 in the charts, but only middling work in the States, where it stalled at No. 90. To all intents and purposes, Ready An’ Willing sounded like old news in the rapidly ramping metal environment of the day. But it was old news with classic rock swagger that is only now becoming noticed, appreciated, cherished.

  “I wouldn’t think it would have amounted to much in America,” verifies Murray, “although ‘Fool For Your Loving’ got some sort of airplay. Let’s see, we recorded that in the beginning of 1980. In the fall of 1980, we toured the States with Jethro Tull and that really didn’t seem to do us much good. We did a couple of months with Jethro Tull, which really wasn’t the right thing to do and then the following summer we did a couple of weeks with Judas Priest. We were in the middle between them and Iron Maiden. And we kind of came off that tour because it wasn’t really happening. So we didn’t make a big impression on the States around that period.

  “In the UK, certainly around that time, there would be two or three nights at something like the Hammersmith Odeon, so that’s like 10,000 or 12,000 people altogether, and then reasonably-sized theatres all around the UK. And then the same kind of thing, although maybe not at that point around Europe, but starting to build, up to that point, in Germany in particular. And at the end of that year we toured supporting AC/DC in much bigger places and that helped us a lot.”

  Referring to the Tull tour, Coverdale told Rockography: “It was not a rock ‘n’ roll audience. You had me masturbating all over the stage, and there were all these Wall Street Journal types with pipes who were expecting a freakin’ flute player!”

  Much more satisfying was the band’s experience playing in Japan, which the classic line-up visited on three occasions.

  “Well, a couple of things there,” reflects Murray. “For one, they have great sounding concert halls there, for the most part. And you get there and suddenly everybody can hear what they’re playing, because you’re not in some gloomy sports arena that wasn’t designed for music at all. Or some, you know, 100-year-old theatre in Britain that isn’t really suitable. And also, the combination, particularly if you go there when you’re a young band, and suddenly, instead of having a bunch of 17-year-old guys following you around, you get 17-year-old girls. Certainly in those days, and maybe still now, I don’t know, at least for a certain period of their lives, Japanese girls seem to treat rock bands as teenybopper idols. So, we would have a typical thing — which happened to every band — hordes of girls crowding the hotel foyers and then following you to the train station and then getting on the bullet train with you and coming to the next show and all that stuff.”

  “But, coupled with that, you’ve also got the fact that when they’re at the show, the audiences are really listening, and very appreciative of what you’re doing musically and technically. It just seemed a more attractive combination, at least, for a couple of weeks a year. You were having a quite different sort of experience than everywhere else you were. So it can be a very satisfying place to play. Although the cliché is that they clap for fifteen seconds and then stop dead, and then it’s dead silence until the end of the next song. But you felt that because of that, they were actually listening.

  “Now the difference is, for example in America, the audiences will be very wild and crazy, an
d that can be very encouraging too. In amongst that, you probably will have people who are very appreciative of the skill of the musicians, as it were; they’re not just kind of wildly going nuts. And so that enthusiasm really makes the band play better, any band. You take that a bit further and you’ve got South America and the kind of Latin countries; well, Spain, Italy, even Russia, to be honest. Same kind of mentality. Where they just go completely crazy, you think, well, it wouldn’t matter what you do. They’re just kind of out of control. It’s like they’re not really listening, you see what I mean? So you’ve got the extremes. And then you go to the extreme in the south of England where they’re kind of sitting there and showing very little enthusiasm. They probably might think that they are, but compared to other countries they’re not. And the further north in Britain, go to Scotland, they’re really wild, mad, and great audiences to play to, but a little bit scary [laughs]. Everywhere you go is different, so it’s nice to be able to play all sorts of different countries and situations.”

  Two months before Ready An’ Willing hit the streets, the band had issued a Japan only Live At Hammersmith, on Sunburst/Toshiba. The album would become sides three and four of the double LP version of the widely issued Live… In The Heart Of The City, which was released on November 1st of 1980. A single record version was fashioned for North America. Onward and upward, the live album reached No. 5 in the UK charts but only No. 146 in the US.

  Record one featured the band just into their Ready An’ Willing tour, the classic line-up rocking their way with both barrels through a rock-solid, dare I say, heavy metal set list on June 23rd and June 24th of 1980 — eight tracks, minimal jams, everything up-tempo. Snakebite is represented by the happy, riffy “Come On,” and Trouble by speed metaller “Take Me With You.” Lovehunter’s heaviest track, “Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues,” is here, as is the thumping title track. Of note, within weeks of this gig, Bernie would be getting married to one Mary Plummer. Best man on the blessed occasion? None other than long-time Marsden collaborator and future Whitesnake drummer Cozy Powell, who had also been instrumental in getting Bernie the Paice Ashton Lord gig.

  Record two of the live album features the band in concert just a month after the release of Trouble, November 23rd, 1978, and thus Dave Dowle is the drummer and not Ian Paice. This is the set issued in Japan. For curious contrast, there’s another version of “Come On,” slightly tighter and punchier, but just as brisk. Also fast, is the band’s version of the Purple classic “Might Just Take Your Life,” with Dowle keeping the beat moving during the verse rather than the change-ups Paicey had written. “Lie Down,” from Trouble, is played at nearly punk pace, punk keyboards from Jon Lord included. Closing the first side is a straight and competent “Ain’t No Love.” Side two represents the type of snoozer live display turned in by the likes of Rainbow, Gillan and Deep Purple, namely one tight rocker (in the present case, “Trouble”), and then a way-long version of Purple’s leaden “Mistreated.”

  “(Whitesnake) have fashioned an excellent live album that should do well anywhere,” said Music Express. “Coverdale’s R&B rock roots are well projected on lengthy lyrical excursions like ‘Lovehunter,’ ‘Come On’ and ‘Fool For Your Loving.’ The fulcrum, though, is the title track, a funky number that’s laced with Coverdale’s sultry R&B voice, effective enough to induce their British audience into a lusty sing-along. Aurally and musically as effective as Deep Purple in its prime, Whitesnake have all the chemistry to crack the States and this album should help them.”

  Add it all up, and Live... In The Heart Of The City does indeed make the point that Whitesnake could be legitimately viewed as one of those mid-guard acts — not old guard, and not kids taking over, like Tygers, Maiden, Holocaust or Fist — fully participating in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, disdain for that idea from every last member of Whitesnake notwithstanding.

  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.”