Read Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage for Free Online

company.’ I’m sitting here in my office which is loaded with platinum
albums and I’m looking at these records, Purple Records, purple with the
big white P on it? So we had our own record company, big deal [ laughs ].”
    A similarly odd assortment of
contributors as the last record, also with Roger Glover producing, one
intriguing touch was the inclusion of Ronnie James Dio and his new wife Wendy
providing back-up vocals for opening track “Keep On Giving Me Love,” a funky
hard rocker that serves as an early blueprint for a room in the
Whitesnake manse.
    And n ow it was
time for Coverdale to get his live act in gear. Besides the clear-cut choice of
pal from home Micky Moody, David hired on a second guitarist by the
name of Bernie Marsden, who had been playing for Paice Ashton Lord.

    “What happened was, Dave and I had met
in Germany,” begins Marsden. “I was doing the Paice Ashton Lord album. He lived
about an hour away from Munich. So he came over to see the guys, where I met
him for the first time, and we got on really well. But he didn’t really know
what I did. And he’d heard some tracks. This was the Paice Ashton Lord album,
which is a very fine record, but guitar-wise, I’m very much in Steely Dan mode
on it, just playing kind of click solos and those kinds of guitar parts, rather
than trying to be Ritchie Blackmore or something. So he didn’t know what I did.
    “And then I bumped into him in London,
and I said, ‘What are you up to?’ And he said, ‘I’m here to put a band together.’
And he said to me, ‘Would you come down? Because I’m auditioning drummers
tomorrow.’ He says, ‘And your background with Cozy [Powell] and Ian Paice would
be valuable for me.’ And I said ‘Okay, yeah,’ and he said, ‘Bring a guitar with
you.’ So that was the idea. So we got in there and when we started playing,
along with these drummers and bass players, he was at the back, and I didn’t
know he came in. He wasn’t there when I got there. And he said, ‘Can I have a
word with you?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ We were playing this kind of Allman Brothers type-stuff, funnily enough, and he said, ‘I had no idea you played like that.’
    “He said, ‘What’s this rumour I hear
about you joining McCartney’s band?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s a rumour. Nothing’s
happened at the moment.’ And he said, ‘Well, I don’t think I can match his kind
of offer, but I’d really like you to be in this band.’ I said, ‘Well, there’s
no conflict there because I haven’t had an offer, and it’s been a few weeks
now.’ A few days after that, we had our first writing session and it was pretty
obvious that we were going to write very well together.
    “‘Mull Of Kintyre’ was No. 1 at the
time and I thought, hmm, Okay. It wasn’t that hard. If it would’ve been
something like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed,’ I might’ve been more inclined to hang around
[ laughs ]. So that was it, really. It was quite simple. It was a
no-brainer, really. I knew it was going to be a really good rock ‘n’ roll band.”
[Note: “Maybe I’m Amazed” is generally regarded as one of McCartney’s finest
songs, whereas “Mull Of Kintyre”, to put it mildly, maybe isn’t, thus
vindicating Marsden’s decision to sign on the dotted line for Coverdale.]
    “David wanted to put a band together,”
remarks Moody, offering his side of the story, “and he wanted me to help him
put it together, which I did. I was the first ever Snake back in ‘77. I helped
put Whitesnake together. At first, it was called David Coverdale’s Whitesnake
but he didn’t want that. He wanted it just to be called Whitesnake. I was the
one who said that we should have two guitar players. Like I say, I wasn’t into
hard rock; I was playing Little Feat and The Allman Brothers and that kind of
stuff, which is really my cup of tea.”
    Coverdale had worried that not only was
he not sure about having two guitarists in the band but whether
the budget