Unless you were an uber-fan of the band, little did people know the hard rock band Whitesnake had been together since 1978. As a matter of fact, the band recorded six albums before their self-titled 1987 album and CD that pushed the group over the top.
Still, it took a song they had recorded five years earlier to make its way to not only be the band's first Top 40 hit, but their first No. 1 hit.
It was on their 1982 album "Saints & Sinners" that lead singer David Coverdale and guitarist Bernie Marsden wrote "Here I Go Again." The band did a performance music video for it, nothing spectacular really, just to put the product out there. And while the album it came from went to No. 9 on the British album chart, it never dented the Top 200 album chart here. The song peaked at No. 34 in their native land, but never charted here like the album.
And so Whitesnake trudged on. There would be numerous lineup changes in the band and by 1987, Coverdale was surrounded by a whole different band compared to the one who made "Saints & Sinners" five years earlier. In between, the band's 1984 album, "Slide It In" got as high as No. 42 on the album chart here.
So with nothing to lose, Coverdale, guitarist John Sykes, bassist Neil Murray and drummer Aynsley Dunbar went back into the studio to record "Whitesnake" with power producer Mike Stone.
Now as stated before, Coverdale had nothing to lose with Whitesnake. Why, you wonder? He was ready to disband Whitesnake after they finished the "Slide It In" Tour in 1985. That's how disillusioned Coverdale was feeling about the business. But his new record label, Geffen Records, wasn't going to allow Coverdale to go off easy. In fact, they asked Coverdale to work with Sykes to see how the project would work for the two of them.
Turns out it was awfully good. In the spring of 1985, the pair flew to the south of France to begin work writing songs for a project. Two songs they immediately jammed out were "Still Of The Night," which Coverdale actually had started a decade earlier when he was lead singer of the heavy metal band Deep Purple with guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, and a ballad called "Is This Love?" which Coverdale had Tina Turner in mind when he was writing it.
From there, the pair and Murray connected and moved on to Los Angeles to look for a drummer. That's where they found Dunbar, who reportedly got the job over 60 others auditioning for the job. With the band settled in, they flew up to Vancouver to begin work on the new album in September 1985.
Immediately, though, there were problems. Though things had gone great with Sykes in putting the songs together, the "sound" he was looking for in the studio they were cutting the "Whitesnake" album was not right to him. Sykes was frustrated and to the rescue went Coverdale, who placed a call to a guy who was already in Canada working on another album – Bob Rock, who was producing Bon Jovi's new project that would become "Slippery When Wet." Rock worked with Sykes to find the sound he was looking for and ultimately, he got it in the studio because of Rock's familiarity to it.
One problem down, but another to soon crop up. This one, though, involved Coverdale. He came down with a sinus infection and it was so horrible that he needed surgery to fix the problem. Coverdale began a six-month rehabilitation and Sykes became so frustrated with being held back from recording that at one point he suggested bringing in a totally new lead vocalist.
That was not a wise thing to do. Coverdale reportedly got so angry with both Sykes and Stone that both eventually left. Coverdale recovered quick enough to begin doing vocal tracks with another veteran of the rock business, Ron Nevison. Ultimately, Nevison turned the tracks over to Keith Olsen. Olsen had worked with such acts as Journey, Rick Springfield, Ozzy Osbourne, Fleetwood Mac, Heart and Pat Benatar, so he certainly knew his way around a recording studio.
Meanwhile, Bill Airey and Don Cuomo were brought in to add keyboards to the work and Adrian Vandenburg was asked to add the guitar solo on the song Coverdale and former guitarist Marsden had written five years earlier, "Here I Go Again." Coverdale liked the Dutch-born guitarist's work so much, he even discussed him staying on as a Whitesnake member, which he would for the next five years.
So the band re-recorded "Here I Go Again" as well as "Crying In The Rain," both originally on that "Saints & Sinners" album from 1982. On "Here I Go Again," the only difference was that the 1986-87 version of the song was "heavier" than the original and unlike the original with an organ playing behind Coverdale's opening verse, a synthesizer is playing in the backdrop behind Coverdale's opening salvo. Otherwise, the two versions sound similar with the 1986-87 version sounding "richer."
And there was one other thing, too. On the original version, Coverdale sang, "Like a hobo I was born to walk alone." On the re-recorded version, he sings, "Like a drifter I was born to walk alone." Why the word change? Because, according to Coverdale, when he sang "hobo," he believed people thought he was singing "homo."
The things people believe, I guess.
Meanwhile, Geffen Records, knowing they had a winner in this new re-recorded version of "Here I Go Again" asked to make a "radio edit" version. Unlike the album version that features Coverdale's opening solo with the heavy synthesizer in the backdrop, the single version features guitars and drums going right into that solo. The single version also doesn't feature Coverdale scaling that high note when he sings "Here I Go Again" for the third time in the middle before Vandenburg's guitar solo. Heart drummer Denny Carmassi and future country music producer and guitarist Dann Huff were asked to provide extra help on the radio version.
But there was one little thing left to do – the music video to promote the song. So Coverdale called in good friend Marty Callner, a veteran of music videos who made other Whitesnake videos as well as Twisted Sister's famous videos for "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" in 1984. Callner was looking for something eye-catching to get everyone's attention to the song.
And Coverdale had the "eye-catching" standing right next to him in his beautiful 25-year-old redheaded girlfriend. Tawny Kitaen was asked to "act" in the video, doing everything from splits to lying down and performing cartwheels on the Jaguar XJs in the video to hanging out the passenger-side window to even making out with Coverdale while he's driving.
That certainly will get anyone's attention.
This time around, "Here I Go Again" had all the ingredients to be a bona fide hit. And on the week of August 8, 1987, seven weeks after it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. xx, "Here I Go Again" debuted at No. 34 within the Top 40. Within two weeks, the song had climbed to No. 26, then to No. 20. On August 29, it had gotten to No. 15 and on the week of September 5, it climbed seven notches to land at No. 8, giving Whitesnake a Top 10 hit. A week later, it was in the Top 5 at No. 4.
After two weeks at No. 4, things began to get serious again as "Here I Go Again" went up again ... this time two notches to No. 2. It seemed like No. 1 was inevitable. But the song would have to wait a week as Whitney Houston's "Didn't We Almost Have It All" stayed first at No. 1 for the second straight week. But on the week of October 10, 1987, there was plenty of "go" left in "Here I Go Again."
It knocked Houston out of the top spot as it became the band's first – and to this day only – chart-topper. It would spend one week at the top as Lisa-Lisa & Cult Jam would dance "Here I Go Again" out of the top spot the next week with "Lost In Emotion."
And it was a triumph for the perseverance of that 5-year-old song finally making it. But in the case of both versions, only Coverdale remained at the end of the day. By the time the "Whitesnake" album was finished, and the first song was a smash, Coverdale fired everyone in the band with the exception of Vandenburg. He brought in new people to play on tour, one of those being future Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell.
"Is This Love?" the song that was originally set for Tina Turner to do, became a No. 2 hit for Whitesnake as the follow-up to "Here I Go Again." And the album it came from, "Whitesnake," went all the way to No. 2 on the album chart, a triumph there at long last.
The band would have only one more Top 40 hit in 1990 with "The Deeper The Love" from their 1990 CD/album "Slip Of The Tongue." By the end of 1990, Coverdale was exhausted and made the decision to take a break, especially with his 2-year marriage to Kitaen crumbling and ultimately ending. He had "retired," but a year and a half later, he teamed up with legendary guitarist Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin to make the "Coverdale-Page" CD in 1993.
And a year after that, he reformed Whitesnake, but after recording the "Restless Heart" CD in 1997, Coverdale disbanded the band again and went solo for a few years. Then in 2002, he reformed a new version of Whitesnake, which is still out there performing today and just finished the American portion of their 2015 tour, still having dates in Japan and Europe still ahead, all promoting the band's latest CD, "The Purple Album."
At 64 years old, Coverdale is still rockin' out night after night. The uber-fan still enjoys Whitesnake.
So does the regular music fan, too, even if he or she hadn't known Whitesnake was a band nine years before they broke through in 1987.
No comments:
Post a Comment