Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage

by Martin Popoff

  “And I wanted to catch up with my painting. I was an artist, painter, before I became a professional musician, actually. And all those things together delayed my being in the music business again. So David was pushing me all the time, and a year and a half ago I told him, ‘David, you’re getting your way; I’ve finally started to work towards an album again.’ So he said, ‘Oh, great, it would be an honour for me if I could sing a track on the album.’ I said, ‘Well, the honour would be completely mutual, you know. I would love it.’ So since David was on the road last year, all the time, I realized there was not going to be any time to record or write a new song together.”

  “But I always wanted to do another version of ‘Sailing Ships,’” continues Vandenberg, “and as a lot of people may know, due to a problem with my wrist at the time, during the Slip Of The Tongue record, I couldn’t record the guitars on the album, and we got Steve Vai in to finish that album. And obviously, since our styles are quite different, it didn’t really turn out the way that I was having in mind when I wrote the music for that album. Which doesn’t say that it isn’t, you know, good or something. Because Steve is an amazing player. But it’s just like, I had more of a blues rock vibe in mind. And ‘Sailing Ships’ has remained one of my favourite tracks, so I thought I would love to do another version of it.

  “And David was very excited about that idea, so I recorded all the stuff in Holland and I wrote a new arrangement for it and brought in real strings, including my niece playing violin, daughter of my sister — she’s been a classical violin player since she was 5. And I wrote a little instrumental bit in the middle that I thought could enhance the more melancholic, kind of introspective or reflective type of vibe that I had in mind. And it worked out really great, and David, fortunately did some of his great signature Coverdale soulful vocals on it, you know? So it really moved me a lot.”

  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...”

  Slip Of The Tongue reached No. 10 in the charts and quickly became known as one of them huge-selling bombs you see after a crazy-selling record outta nowhere. So David, knackered, too proud, out of ideas... whatever the reason or combination thereof, decided to knock it on its head. In essence, it very much felt that if America didn’t want a Whitesnake as powerful as the White House, then David Coverdale would be content with leaving office.

  “With Aerosmith, there was Permanent Vacation, Pump and then Get A Grip,” says the man in the white suit, John Kalodner, when asked to provide a post-mortem of this crazy trip across the ocean to the land of riches. “If Coverdale would have had a succession of records like that, he’d still be playing indoor arenas and sheds in the summer like Aerosmith does. And Coverdale did have it in him to be a front man at this age. I mean, definitely, given his looks, his voice and his presence. Just like Steven Tyler. But, he thought he was always right, and once he had any kind of success, he just didn’t want to hear my criticisms. They were not listening to me at all. It was like... it’s what you said. Remember, bands make most of their money from touring. So it was driven then by their managers, not by the record company. The record company — stupidly — made no money from their touring. They never did. In that era.”

  What John is referring to there is a supposition on my part that given the massive scale of the Slip Of The Tongue tour, it might have been hard for the band to ascertain that there was much dry-rot in the hull of the good sailing ship Whitesnake. In essence, when it came to the money-making machine that is touring, two things are happening here. One is that, to all intents and purposes, the
band was promoting and representing the Whitesnake album as much as they were Slip Of The Tongue. In fact, given the blow-up success of the former and the vagaries of record-selling math, playing live probably had a more positive effect on sales of the old album than the new one. Two —and granted, tied up in the first point — there’s a twelve to eighteen months lag in the death of these bands’ careers, where record sales dry up, but no one has bothered to tell the concert ticket-buyer. In any event, despite touring glory — it was a dead cat bounce, as it were — appetites all round for this band to stay together and make another record had dissipated.

  But John Kalodner was trying every trick he could think up. “I approached him to do another record where I wanted him to write with all these great writers that I had found with Aerosmith, all these great rock writers. And to maybe change from Keith Olsen to Bruce Fairbairn or Bob Rock or whatever — he didn’t want to fuckin’ hear about it. It’s just exactly what you said. He’d just come off this gargantuan tour... he thought what I said was irrelevant.”

  So was that the expression of some sort of British pride, as in, “Song doctors?! Are you kidding me? I was in Deep Purple!”?

  “Every artist has that.”

  But you couldn’t break through his armour?

  “No, but Steven Tyler still criticizes me in articles for killing his babies, which means his and Joe Perry’s songs. Bastardizing his music. So that’s not British, that’s musicians who are... that’s extremely talented musicians. They’ll never feel okay about an outside songwriter working with them.”