Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage Read Online Free Page A

stand together; that’s when I first came up
with the expression ‘The Unrighteous Brothers.’ So, I’d flown over to England
for Ian Paice’s wedding, and Glenn was going, ‘Oh Dave, I’ve got all these
great ideas; we’ve got to use our voices more’ and all of this, and I go, ‘Glenn,
hasn’t anybody told you? I’m out.’ And he was utterly shocked. And I was like, ‘We
blew it. It could have been incredible, but we blew it.’ Which is one of the
reasons now, if I feel that kind of negative energy creeping into any scenario
– even private ones, let alone professionally – I change it. If I can’t see the
light, I change it because there is too much compromise. It really is a
difficult pill to swallow.”
    “Initially it went very well and then
it tended to go south somewhat the more peripheral indulgence that went on,”
sighs Coverdale. “It was actually a very, very tough time. I left Deep Purple,
which was pretty much a well-kept secret out of respect for Jon Lord and Ian
Paice, but it was really degenerating very badly in terms of the
shows and attitude. A lot of drugs and alcohol were rearing their
ugly heads. And there was a great deal of disrespect for the legacy of Deep
Purple, which I still maintain.”
    And then, says Coverdale, well, there
might not have been a Whitesnake had David joined... Rainbow!
    “I think what alienated Ritchie from me
is that I didn’t do Rainbow,” says Coverdale, a pretty unlikely candidate for the
role given the baggage of the previous three years. “Initially, he presented me
with these songs. And I said, these seem like Machine Head songs. You
know, if you listen to, other than Ronnie’s vocals, they are very Machine
Head songs that could have easily been Gillan-era, Mk. II as it’s called,
and I felt it was going back. Like I said, the climate at the
time was about moving forward. And, of course, I was getting me licks, in doing
the blues and soul elements. It wouldn’t have worked.”

 
    -2-
    White Snake / Northwinds – “I’m Not Sure You’re The Right Bass Player To
Play With Cozy”
    When Deep Purple imploded, David
Coverdale found himself taking stock. Married in 1974 to German Julie
Borkowski, a child on the way, having been living in what he described as “a
beautiful big cuckoo clock of a house in Bavaria,” all he wanted to do now was his
Wilson Pickett-styled songs, as he dubbed them, but louder. By his own
admittance, he went from a “boy” in awe of Purple to a classic case of LSD –
Lead Singer’s Disease. And not to be negative about it, the point is that David
Coverdale had grown into rock star britches, with the confidence and resources
to establish an act based on himself as its centre.
    The naming of all this would be a mess.
Coverdale has said that he’d always wanted his new thing to be a band
situation, and the name of the first record, White Snake , seemed to lean
that way. Think about it. It’s a debut solo album, and yet you give it a
provocative flashy name, and one that could be a band name.  And yet talk about
fence-sitting: it’s debatable or arguable from both the logo and the
spine of the original vinyl whether that title is supposed to be one word or
two.
    Second record, Northwinds , is credited
again to David Coverdale, even if debate still rages deep into the
night whether it’s called Northwinds or North Winds ! Then there’s
a four-track EP called Snakebite , credited to David Coverdale’s
Whitesnake, which, to confuse matters further, becomes a hodgepodge of an LP
(for outside the UK) credited to Whitesnake called Snakebite — the
four tracks of the EP combined with four tracks from Northwinds .
    Finally, there’s a “first” LP called Trouble ,
and the neat freaks can all relax. Musically speaking, there’s a direct line
through all of them from lots of funk and blues and balladry and experimentation
at the beginning, to something up into Trouble that might be described
as closer to what came