Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage

by Martin Popoff

  The track’s video, plus the aforementioned others from the record, become some of the most iconic rock videos of this plush and pricey era. “You mean the MTV years? That’s one of the perceptions, that it was so vast,” muses Coverdale. “My ex-wife was the video vamp and all over the world I would see women in the audience with her hair and hair colour. She was responsible for more hair styles than Jennifer Aniston ever was. It was breathtaking. She could have made a fortune being a model for hair products. But it was so vast, so big and so successful — it still resonates and I still make a very good living from that period of time. But that’s one of the problems; that is the image that is still perceived by Clear Channel and bigger promoters. I got to a period in the early ‘80s where I knew it was time to take Whitesnake to the next level which was going to be more the style that Hendrix created for the blues. He made the blues more electrifying. My colleagues at that time weren’t of the same vision which is why I moved on to players like John Sykes, who could assist me in going to that next level.”

  Told that the song remains huge in Quebec to this day, Coverdale says, “I’m familiar with that song always doing very well, but I swear to God when I came with the Scorpions to play Toronto, Montreal and Quebec... I swear the response to that song was as if Zeppelin had just gone on and played ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ It was immense to the point where I’m standing there enjoying it, thinking, keep it coming. The response at the end of the song was breathtaking. It was like everyone in that arena had been married or met to that fucking song. It had some immense connection there and I couldn’t define it. It always does well — don’t misunderstand me, but this was beyond.”

  “I had to have four tracks that could be played on radio,” says Kalodner, asked about this cookie-cutter ballad from the hair farm. “And it was the artist’s record, so the rest of the record was whatever, within reason, they wanted. So obviously I made sure they were recorded and played right. I only concentrated on four, at the most, five songs. ‘Is This Love’ is one of the songs I insisted on and spent a lot of time on. That’s why, maybe you can understand, you can only do that with so many songs. You can only have them fix the guitars, fix the background vocals, have him sing it. You know, he’s such a great singer, he can sing different ways. You can only harp on these people so many times. There’s two albums I really learned that with, the Whitesnake record, the ‘87 record, and Permanent Vacation. And then I really honed it down, with Aerosmith, when they did Get A Grip. I got five commercial songs out of them, and that record was one of the biggest selling rock records ever.”

  “Children Of The Night” was an additional chunk of gleaming hair metal, although in Whitesnake’s world, at least sonically, their approach was not nearly as thin and high as was the norm from any of the native Californians. This was a thumping hockey barn metal that positioned the band worlds away from Hollyrock as well as their own academic blues rock past.

  “Straight For The Heart” picked up the pace, the band going full-on melodic, keyboards prominent, for a brisk pop metal rocker that served as the record’s “Guilty Of Love.” The keyboard pattern was a travesty and light years beyond what Jon Lord would have done in this situation.

  Whitesnake closes with more of the same arch-‘80s keyboard washes as power ballad “Don’t Turn Away” comes to life, if living a life as a song that could have been popped onto any Bon Jovi record is any sort of life at all!

  The European version of the record featured two additional tracks of little consequence. Still, “Looking For Love,” over-worked ballad that it is, nonetheless pulsates with some of the blues that distinguished Whitesnake in the first place, through the chord changes and Coverdale’s Paul Rodgers vocal contemplations. Its break drives the point home further, David playing the spurned and lonely with the aplomb he’d practiced many times since going solo. “You’re Gonna Break My Heart Again” is a pounding hair metal rocker with more pop than blues, its chording down the lines of a Dokken or even Kiss at their creative low point in the late 1980s. Still, the writing is immersed, drowned and coated in the singular production crucible in which the rest of this gauzy record is built, making the track a song that indeed sounds finished to the album’s insane standards, Coverdale singing like a star, John Sykes loading up like an offensive line in a crucial playoff short yardage situation.

  “I stayed awake at night dreaming of a chance to get on stage in America again,” reflected Coverdale to writer Rick Evans, emphasizing the significance of the band’s Atlantic crossing that had put them in Los Angeles on the verge of rock immortality. “Considering how long Whitesnake has been around, we really haven’t spent much time in the US. But all that will soon change. America is the biggest and most lucrative rock market in the world, and on top of that, the fans are the most knowledgeable. They know what great rock ‘n’ roll is all about. That’s why I’m so convinced they’ll instantly fall in love with Whitesnake.”

  While the smoke was clearing — and out of it emerged a Frankenstein of a record — it was the videos, as discussed, that shone a light on who was going to be touring the record.

  Says Murray, “At that point you’ve got a band for the video, and it’s like, okay, let’s keep this band. Amusingly, eighteen months before, because Tommy Aldridge was John Sykes’ favourite drummer, he was desperate to get Tommy into Whitesnake when we were looking for a drummer. I suggested Tommy before Ian Paice joined Whitesnake in ‘79. ‘Who? Never heard of him.’ So this time around, obviously David did know who he was, but he wasn’t going to submit to doing what John wanted him to do, so he almost gave him the brush-off. And it was quite amusing that once John’s out of the picture, then Tommy gets the call. Now it’s on David’s terms, as it were. So we, in ‘84, we’d done pretty well on a tour supporting Quiet Riot. And Rudy Sarzo was their bass player, and very visual and very good-looking guy, so he was a very obvious person to get on bass.”

  Backing up a bit, Murray sows the seed of his own removal from the band, ceding way for one Rudy Sarzo. “Fall of ‘84, we did about six weeks through the West Coast, Canada, and then the audiences were really dropping off, so we left the tour before it got to the East Coast. In the summer we’d done some shows with Dio. Not a proper tour. Just to get ourselves seen, really. And in the middle of that, we’d gone to Japan and played enormous stadium gigs with the Scorpions and Michael Schenker and people like that, with Bon Jovi opening. So the Quiet Riot tour really helped us, but it also did introduce David to Rudy Sarzo and the bass player was an easy person to replace. Image-wise he certainly wanted everything to be very LA by that point, in early ‘87. So that was that, for me, really.”

  “Coverdale was an impeccable dresser, and also the impeccable gentlemen,” laughs Olsen. “And as it was put together, it was all about David, because Whitesnake is really just David. David owns the name and everything else. And so when he put together the touring band for the Whitesnake 1987 tour — which was I think the Snake, Rattle And Roll tour — he put together the band with people that looked great, that looked the part, that knew how to move onstage and everything else. And that’s why Rudy was brought in, and that’s why Viv was brought in — it was, wow! They were really good.”

  “We had a lot of problems as time went on in terms of his attitude,” Coverdale had told me, summarizing the shocking shuffling of the square-jawed Sykes out of the Whitesnake equation, to be replaced by two guitarists, Viv Campbell and Adrian Vandenberg. “His attitude I felt was very disrespectful to a lot of people I was working with and I also found out it was going on behind my back. And it got worse and worse and worse. There was a kind of resentment that he wasn’t as well-known as I was at that particular time. Instead of having the patience to realize that he’s going to get the keys to the treasury down the line, it was just intolerable to work with him in that atmosphere. Actually, in the last two years I’ve been receiving a lot of calls to bury the hatchet with John and I don’t have a hatchet. That’s one of those opportunities, if you blo
w it, why go back? That’s it, you know? And I don’t want to get into a situation; I have an incredible private scenario. There’s no way I want to be calling my wife from the road and say I’m so unhappy, this is not what I wanted, the old problems have manifested themselves, you know? So who knows? As Sean Connery used to say, ‘Never say never again.’”

  So John and David’s working relationship had been deteriorating rapidly, although Olsen says that it wasn’t that David was afraid of John, as had been intimated through period interviews, especially from Sykes. “No, he was hurt, and he wasn’t listened to, by John. John hurt him deeply, and so it was one of those things. John has reaped the benefits of writing and co-publishing all those songs, on an album that sold 22 million copies. You know, it’s one of those things… the first thing I would do is say, ‘Thank you, David, for allowing me to write with you. Want to do it again?’ [laughs]. But egos were huge.”

  “I never recorded an album with Whitesnake; I just did the one tour,” says Vivian Campbell, briefly passing through Whitesnake from Dio on his way to Def Leppard. “We did the one very big tour and several videos for that 1987 album, the big album. And you know, the only thing I actually ever recorded with Whitesnake was I went into the studio with Keith Olsen and we did a solo on ‘Give Me All Your Love’ which was a late single from the record and video. It was like single number four or five or something. And that was it. And then I basically got edged out of that situation, when we were in preproduction for the next record.”

  So summarizing, the tour in celebration of the Whitesnake album featured as Coverdale’s essentially all-new band, first, as its rhythm section, Rudy Sarzo on bass and Tommy Aldridge on drums. Both players had storied histories, but as timing would have it, they had arrived as a bit of a package, having recently joined forces as MacAlpine Aldridge, Rock, Sarzo (or M.A.R.S.) for a shred record called Project: Driver (they had previously played together as well, with Ozzy Osbourne).

  “I met David years and years ago when I was in Black Oak Arkansas and he was in Deep Purple,” Aldridge said back at the time. “We played together over in England. I’d been talking to David off and on for about two years. At the time, Rudy and I were working on an album called Project: Driver, but after that came together, it was just a matter of priorities and Whitesnake seemed the right thing to do.”

  “How I joined Whitesnake,” says Sarzo, “was because Whitesnake was the opening band for Quiet Riot in ‘84. We would spend like three or four months on the road, hanging out, so yeah. Incredibly talented composer and performer and guitar player and a singer too. He’s a hell of a singer.”

  “Having seen what was going on between Sykes and Coverdale, the push and pull it… I was questioning it,” noted Sarzo speaking to Rock Beat in ‘88. “I just left a situation which was not ideal, and things were not as steady between those two as it should have been. So Tommy and I decided to wait on it and see how things evolved. The turning point was when we did the video ‘Still Of The Night.’ I went there and saw Adrian and Vivian and how well everyone worked together and I thought, this is great.”

  O’er to guitar, no more Sykes and/or Mel Galley; the new six-string team, to reiterate, was Vivian and Vandenberg.

  “The first time I met David was quite a few years ago,” notes Vandenberg in the same Rock Beat piece quoted above. “I must have really impressed him because he would call me every other year asking me to be in his band. He would say, ‘Have you made up your mind yet?’ Each time he’d ask I’d say, ‘Yes, I’ve made my decision. I want to go on with Vandenberg.’ When he last asked me, it was the best time to actually say yes. Now I feel like I made the right decision. Working with someone else’s band as opposed to my own has a lot of interesting sides to it. It’s given me much more time to practice my guitar, which is nice. I’m supposed to be a guitar player but I haven’t practiced since I formed Vandenberg. The lyrics and the songs and the business and the interviews and everything took all my time, so I couldn’t practice my guitar.”

  “It’s good that all of us are different nationalities because we can all tell stories and exaggerate them and no one knows that we’re lying,” added Campbell. “We’re all very professional about what we do in Whitesnake. It tends to be a creative environment, much more enjoyable than Dio ever was. I like that I can speak my mind about something. If David sings flat I can tell him. I don’t have to worry about getting fired. Ronnie and I never got along from the start. There was a huge personality difference. David had said he wanted a two-guitar band and he specifically wanted Adrian and myself because he knew that we were both available, but he first made contact with me through his record label. David’s great to work with. Due to his attitude, there’s a great communication in the band. Everyone is very open about what they are doing and what they want to do. It’s not like Dio at all. The Dio thing was very closed shop. It was worse than going to school.”

  As for the exit of John Sykes from the band, well, here’s how the blonde bomber himself framed the breaking up of the dream team back in 1989... “David sent me to London to do the lead solos, which I thought was a bit strange, but I finished up the guitar parts there. Then things got funny. Halfway through the guitar parts, our producer, Mike Stone was fired. So I phoned up the record company to find out what was going on and they were not very open about the situation. So I carried on recording. I tried to phone David, and he wouldn’t come to the phone or return my calls. Then I got a message from our management that they wanted the tapes by that weekend. I tried to contact David and the management again with no reply, so I phoned the record company to ask where I stood, and they said it looked like I was fired, also. Apparently they pleaded with David not to fire me, but he steadfastly refused. So basically, David just waited until I finished all the parts and then he dumped me. I flew out to LA when he was mixing it, but he wouldn’t talk to me and locked himself in his car — I figured I’d frightened him a bit. That was the last time I saw him.

  “With Whitesnake, it was the first time I’d had the opportunity to write like that on such a large scale and as a full co-writer — especially with David; it was a big thing for me. I was pleased with the response to the album, because it was mostly my material, but I’m still a bit pissed-off. When the royalty checks came in, it softened the blow. I still only got a third of what I felt I should have, but you live and learn. I can’t deny that I probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my involvement with Whitesnake.”

  Where “here” was for John was a promotional tour in support of his new band Blue Murder, who had on their hands a much hyped self-titled supergroup record, John being joined by veteran bassist Tony Franklin and even more veteran drummer Carmine Appice.

  “Honestly, I’ve been so sheltered in the studio and out of the public eye that I thought that I was pretty much gone and forgotten about,” mused Sykes. “I mean, I’ve met many people who thought that Vivian and Adrian played on the Whitesnake album! I resigned myself to the fact that I have to drag myself up from the bottom of the barrel. It’s really nice to know some people know the true story — especially the musicians. I don’t want to do all that work and not receive any acclaim for it. So I’m just dying to get out and play!”

  “I’d like to think that this is the strongest material I’ve ever done,” continued John, bigging up Blue Murder, “because, to me, this is the most I’ve achieved in music as far as writing, arranging and everything. I’m pleased with this band — on a personal basis I’ve achieved quite a goal.”

  The back story of the Blue Murder record intersects with the story of Whitesnake at numerous points, so we offer it here with considerable eye for detail.

  “Basically John had this deal on Geffen,” begins drummer Carmine Appice, “and we were supposed to go to Vancouver and work with this new producer named Bob Rock, who was known for engineering a lot of big records, but had never produced any, and this was like his first production deal. And believe it or not, we got Bob Rock for like $30,000. A
nd we had this other guy named Mike Fraser who was same thing, big engineer, and here he was working for $2500 a week. Making more than Bob actually. Tony Martin from Black Sabbath was supposed to be the singer, but to cut a long story short, based on John’s singing, they gave him the deal, because he was fresh out of Whitesnake and I was on that Pink Floyd record, and we were side-by-side with each other on the charts, at that point in December ‘87.

  “It seems like yesterday. I remember when I first heard about Blue Murder, Cozy Powell was going to play in it. And I always said, Cozy gets all these big gigs and I would love to play with John Sykes and Tony Franklin because I loved the way those guys played. Sykes on the Whitesnake album, Slide It In, and the big one in ‘87, which I was actually asked to do but I couldn’t, because I was in King Kobra. But I loved Sykes’ playing, and Tony with The Firm; I just love the way he played so I thought this was going to be a great band. So when I heard that Cozy Powell was going to be in the band, I thought I’d take a trip over to England and try locate where these guys were and let them know I was interested in checking it out.

  “So I went to England in December, 1987. My brother, Vinny, was playing there with Dio and they were doing like three nights at the Hammersmith Odeon, and I felt that anyone I wanted to talk to about a new band or to locate Blue Murder is probably going to be at the Dio show. So sure enough, Chris Welch, the writer, told me where to get hold of John Sykes and where the band was. He gave me some phone numbers that I called and basically I talk to John and Tony and said, ‘Look, I’m in England, and have you got a drummer? I’d love to come down and check it out.’ And they said, ‘Great, because we just had Aynsley Dunbar down here, and we don’t know if he’s going to be the one, so we’re still looking.’ So I said alright, and I had a rent-a-car and I drove up for about two hours to this place called Blackpool, and that’s where John’s stepfather had his studio in his house. So I went in there, and there was a Cozy Powell drum set in there and I knew me and these guys were going to click, because as soon as we got in there we started smoking hash [laughs]. I thought, these guys are cool, and we started jamming and we just created magic.”