Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage

by Martin Popoff

  “We did three days of playing, and by the time I left, I knew that was it — the three of us were a trio,” continues Carmine. “So I remember, the day I was leaving for Vancouver, I got a call the day I was leaving (actually I got it the night before), because it was a little later in England. I got it like about midnight, a call from John’s stepfather, who was part of the management team at the time, saying that Tony Martin didn’t want to come over. He said, ‘Tony’s decided not to do it’ and I thought Tony... I was thinking of Tony Franklin. And then he said no, Tony Martin. I was almost freaked-out there for a minute because I really wanted to play with Tony. So I was sort of freaked-out and I said, ‘Look, what are we going to do?’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re going over anyway and we’ll go finish what we’ve got to do and maybe by the time we finish the tracks, we’ll have a new singer.’

  “So we went over anyway and we worked with Bob Rock, and I remember, when the demos for the band were done, and John got the deal, John took over the singing. So based on his singing, they gave us the deal. Like I say, Whitesnake was still up there and I think Pink Floyd was right next to them. And I remember John and I laughing how we were side-by-side on the charts. So basically, we did all the tracks and then we decided to take a break, because we didn’t have a singer. And it took us about three months. I mean, it was an amazing experience. And I remember, we did the drum tracks twice actually. Once we finished them, Bob and Mike came up with a tremendously better drum sound, by moving some mics around and fooling around a little bit. So they said, you know, we can either use what we’ve got or do it again so we said, let’s do it again. We want to make this album tremendous. And we did.”

  “John Sykes is a brilliant guitar player,” says Appice, asked for a psychological profile of the troubled ex-Tygers twanger. “And I think a lot of the guitar players that are happening now, like the guys in Avenged Sevenfold, all those kinds of bands, with their heavy kind of guitar… I think a lot of it came from John. Even Metallica, like when Metallica had their huge album with Bob Rock. Bob Rock had all our sounds sampled, Blue Murder sounds. And we had a tremendous drum sound. He never got a tremendous drum sound before like that, because it went from analog to digital. But the analog drum sound on the 24 track is just unbelievable! It was really amazing. And I think he took those and sampled them and used them on all the albums after that, Mötley Crüe, all that stuff. That’s my personal feeling. Me and John felt the same way. John had a certain big giant sound that he could get, and I’m hearing that sound in a lot of bands. Zakk Wylde has it, and you know, I found out on the Michael Schenker side, I think he got some of that idea from Schenker, to be truthful. I heard some of Michael’s old stuff that predates John Sykes — that sounded like Sykes to me. I know Schenker was an influence on Sykes, without a doubt.

  “But Sykes had a great songwriting style, you know, riffs and songwriting. He was great at that. Melodies, lyrics, and you know, when we were doing Blue Murder, like I say, we had a singer, Tony Martin, who flaked on us. So we didn’t know what to do. So Bob said, ‘Look, come over and let’s work on the songs; we’ll find a singer. Do the tracks and we’ll find a singer.’ We never found a singer that we all liked, Kalodner liked, Geffen liked, Bob liked, we liked, and John did some of the demos that Kalodner liked and I said, ‘John look, let’s just do the trio! We could be a cool trio like Cream.’ So we persuaded John to do it, gave him his confidence to sing, and he did a tremendous job. But he’s a strange guy — he’s a guitar player, very introverted, does everything his way.”

  “We were supposed to get Blue Murder together again over the past ten years, I can’t tell you how many times,” continues Appice, “and it never happened. Something happens with John. Either he can’t get a manager together, and he’s worked with a bunch of them, stuff happens between them, I don’t know. It’s just always a problem. Wherever I go, people love that band. People love it, and we never really gave it a shot. Because by the time we did the album in ‘89, we were so sure that that it was going. I would’ve bet my house on it, if somebody said this album was going to fail. I mean, it failed because it sold 400,000 worldwide, but it was supposed to sell like a couple million in America, because it was good enough to do that, and we had no manager at the time. You have to have everything running perfect. You have to have the manager, record company, PR, radio PR, you know, the band, everything had to be in sync. If you had one thing missing, you’re screwed. So we had the management part missing. Because John had a management team that was bad. He had some guy that was a marketing guy from Capitol, and he had his stepdad, and some lawyer. There wasn’t like really one guy manager with a plan. And they listened to John too much. And they didn’t have a plan. It’s like this is what you guys are going to do.”

  What was John Kalodner’s input? What did he want the band to be?

  “There was no manager in charge... like if we had a big manager like an Irving Azoff or a Rob Stone who was big at the time, and they would say, ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to go with Bon Jovi, we’re going to release this ‘Valley Of The Kings’ as the first single, we’re not going to push too hard, we’re just going to get a buzz going, then we’re going to hit the song at radio, and then we’re going to release ‘Jelly Roll’ at radio and MTV at the same time, and have a big push and go for it’... there was no one there who said that. It’s like, ‘We’re going to go on tour, we need a tour, we need a tour. All right, Bon Jovi tour, twelve days with Bon Jovi, fantastic.’”

  “And what does John do? He fires the manager,” says Appice. “Okay, so now we have no manager on tour. And instead of pushing, doing the plan that Kalodner had, for letting ‘Valley Of The Kings’ go on MTV at either medium rotation or light rotation, just to get the band going, we wanted to see it more often because we spent $150,000 on the thing at the time, which was big money. So we wanted it on MTV, and we sort of pushed Kalodner to get it on heavy rotation, even though he knew it wasn’t going to be the song. ‘Jelly Roll’ was going to be the song. And then ‘Jelly Roll’ went to radio, and it went top four, request, top four airplay, and then MTV wouldn’t play it because the first one didn’t make it. Yeah, so it was a mess. We had no manager, and then we got this guy Bruce Allen that managed, you know him, up there, got him to manage it.

  “But by the time he got in, it was all too late. So we sort of blew it, and so the album didn’t do what it was supposed to do, and we were so shocked. John was so shocked, because he was in competition with Coverdale too. John thinks that Geffen pulled the cord, pulled the button, because of Geffen, because of his wife, because of the album that sold twenty million albums. And John was in a lawsuit with Coverdale. It was a big mess. But in Japan we were huge. We went there and it was amazing. Because we did like cover stories in Burrn! magazine, and we were the trio of the ‘90s. They said, ‘Other great trios, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Beck, Bogert & Appice [laughs].’ I think that was cool that I was in the new one and the old one.”

  And to raise the drama, future production superstar Bob Rock was part of the high-powered team. “Yes, and Bob’s input was all in the production area. You know, we had all that stuff going, before Bob Rock. I mean, Bob was just brilliant at bringing out performances in everybody, getting this great, tremendous sound and mixing it. I remember when we did the transfer from analog to digital, it didn’t sound as good. So me and John were going to go into the mix and tell Bob that we insist on doing it on analog; we don’t want to do this digital thing. Bob looked at us and said, ‘Look, get the fuck out of here or I’m not going to mix it.’ And that was the end of that [laughs]. Me and John were pulling the power play.”

  So did John really feel that he wanted to get revenge upon David for what went down with Whitesnake?

  “Well, he just wanted to show Coverdale that he – because John wrote all the songs, ‘Still Of The Night’ – he wrote all the riffs, all of the music, and he wrote some of the lyrics, sang on it. He really had a lot to d
o with that. Difficult to get along with, but you know, he’s no more difficult than Jeff Beck, Michael Schenker or Ted Nugent or any of the other great guitar players. But we got to be close friends. He knew nothing about the business, and when we joined together, he was the captain, I was the co-captain, because I knew a lot about the business and royalties, and how things worked. He didn’t really know. He’s always just been an artist, you know? He’s always had a manager person taking care of the stuff. But now he’s changed. Now he’s more into it. He got out of Thin Lizzy last year and I thought we were going to do Blue Murder again, but it never happened — again. He called up a few months ago, and I hadn’t talked to him in three or four months. But before that we were trying to talk every couple of weeks to try get a manager, but we just couldn’t get anybody on board. For no reason.”

  “Yeah, Coverdale was pretty mad at me,” says John Kalodner, asked to comment on what one would think was a conflict, a point of aggravation. “But I said to him, you know, if you want me to be the A&R guy that I was to you, I will put Blue Murder on hold until anything’s done with you. I said that straight to him.”

  But the big stipulation was that David had to write with John Sykes again? “Yes, that was the big problem. I really forced that as much as I could. And he wouldn’t consider it at all, never, in any time that I would see him in subsequent years. I might see him at a show. I might go see him and see how he was. He never would consider it. But even though John felt he was disrespected by Coverdale, he absolutely said he would have done it. He really wanted to work with Coverdale again.”

  Asked what the flaw was in the Blue Murder game plan, Kalodner says, “That he’s not a star lead singer. He’s a star guitar player, he’s a star songwriter — he’s not a star lead singer. And he also needed a songwriting partner like most people do. Steve Perry and Neal Schon, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Johnny Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. I mean, it usually takes a pair of these people — John Sykes and David Coverdale. You know, there’s a magic, if you’re an A&R guy, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, to how these songs were written. They were written under a model that Lennon and McCartney set up. There’s just enough input from the other person to regulate the writing.”

  “It’s of no interest to me,” Coverdale told Bob Garon, asked about Blue Murder. “Last week, a journalist called me to read what one of them said, and it was impossible for the hairs not to stand up on the back of my neck. It was incredible, the bitterness. It was hard to believe that anyone could exist with such bitterness and still be a millionaire at the same time. I have the choice of who I want to work with; it’s as simple as that. Out of professional courtesy, yes, I listen to what former colleagues are doing, but it would sound petty and I’d be in their corner if I started giving my musical critique of what they’re doing now. But everything’s for the best. The last chapter of Whitesnake — and the one before that — would never have been able to handle the success we’ve now achieved. There’s no way! No way! But it’s a pleasure, now. Simply a pleasure. It’s great to be working with a band that’s secure as musicians and as people.”

  Back on the big stage, it was time for this week’s version of Whitesnake to cash in on the success of their gleaming new smash hit album, bookended by a couple of hotshot replacements for the anchor that was Sykes. And to put it in some sort of context, outside of Whitesnake, who is doing brisk business at this time? Well, that would be the likes of Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Mötley and Cinderella, and then from the old guard, AC/DC, Ozzy, Alice Cooper and, most resoundingly, Aerosmith.

  “For twelve years I have not played anyone else’s songs,” mused Adrian Vandenberg in Hit Parader, talking guitar solos with bandmate Viv Campbell and journalist Elianne Halbersberg. “But the solo should take people along with me, make them enjoy every note I play. With my band, Vandenberg, I sometimes played complex classical chord progressions. In Whitesnake, the music is rhythm and blues/heavy rock. Right now, I’m working on alien ground and it gives another dimension to my playing — more inspiration and a little rowdier style. I think the next album will show a serious difference, once we are working as a band on the arrangements. On stage, my playing is a combination of my mind and hands. During a solo, I’m conscious of what I do because I want to play interesting melodies. I try to be a melodic player, and I hope people agree. I don’t want to play just an off-the-cuff flurry of notes. A solo should creep into the listener’s mind. It should be a memorable part of the song, something you can sing, not just notes going on and on. The mind starts the fingers, so there is concentration involved. At the same time, I’m careful not to be overly conscious of the hands alone. David is very open to giving everybody the creative room they deserve. Had this not been the case, he would not have been able to keep the group together. As we get more familiar with the material, we reach a freedom to experiment. David has encouraged everyone to bring in ideas.”

  “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 wo
rldwide 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.”