Back in the 80’s, the English hairband Whitesnake broke through in the US in a huge way. I was pretty uninterested. Hair bands did nothing for me, even those who have lead singers who used to be in one of my favorite bands.
Whitesnake’s frontman was David Coverdale who from 1973-1975 or so was the frontman and co-lead vocalist in Deep Purple. He made three records with them. The first is an all time classic, Burn. The second is crap, mostly, other than the title song, Stormbringer, which was also the name of one of the bands I played in back in high school. The third record, Come Taste the Band is nowhere near as good as Burn, but it’s still pretty fantastic.
I don’t know the timeline following that very well, but I think David Coverdale made a couple of solo records, one of which was called White Snake… gee… what was he thinking of when he came up with that name? From there his solo career morphed into the band Whitesnake. Other ex-Purple members, John Lord and Ian Paice, played in that band. I guess they were sort of similar to Deep Purple in a bluesy rock kinda way. At some point Coverdale started firing band members (that’s how I heard it at least) and replaced them with people who were more in tune with 80’s corporate rock and eventually that lead to the self titled album that had a ton of hits on it and that was that.
Bernie Marsden was one of the guitar players in Whitesnake before the corporate shuffle happened. I knew him by reputation but I never gave the band a chance. Well, never until the pandemic when one day I found myself on Apple Music listening to Burn and saw Whitesnake as a suggested listen and I gave an old live record a spin. It sounded Purple-esque. It wasn’t bad. I didn’t take to it the way I once took to Deep Purple, but I had to give it credit. It was a good record.
There was one song in particular that I really liked. I didn’t realize it was a cover song until later, but it’s a good song so what can you do?
There were two guitar players in this band so I don’t know for sure which parts were Bernie Marsden, but they both sound pretty good to me. The thing that I really knew Marsden from was actually not his music, or his playing, but it was his guitar collection. Specifically his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard, which has the unfortunate name “The Beast”. That guitar is one of those legendary Les Pauls, like Peter Green’s ’59 or Clapton’s ’60. The guitar’s reputation almost supersedes the guitarist’s, if you can believe it.
Bernie Marsden passed away. By all accounts he was a quality guy, a great guitar player, and the proud owner of a classic instrument. He also wrote a couple of those big Whitesnake hits. David Coverdale had a thing for taking songs from the pre-hairband period and re-recording them and releasing them as singles. Marsden co-wrote “Fool for Your Lovin'” which was a good song even to my ears in the 80’s. He also co-wrote “Here I Go Again” which was a mega-hit the second time around. Fortunately the hit version swapped out the word hobo from the chorus, though Coverdale replaced it with drifter which along with gypsy and rock and roll were words that he used over and over and over and over again, constantly.
Rest in peace, Bernie Marsden. I’ll give some of those old Whitesnake records a spin in your honor today.
Inside the Red Head's Head 