Simon Talks: Remembering Whitesnake

Back in the hair-metal days of the 80’s, most of the mat rocks I knew were all into the bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Jovi, LA Guns, and a whole load of ‘em poodle rock bands.

But the serious metal fans (as paradoxical as that sounds), well, they were into Whitesnake. I dunno, in the whole hair metal scene, Whitesnake were quite different. Maybe because they were British, but so were Def Leppard, but there was something that set them apart. In retrospect, i can guess it was because of David Coverdale, the lead singer (and leader) of the band, that was the driving force (and only member to remain over the years). Coverdale, as many would know, was once from Deep Purple.

The band hit big time around 1987-88 (altho they were around since 1978) with the Whitesnake album, at the height of the hair metal craze sweeping the world. MTV caught on with their videos (especially on Headbanger’s Ball) like ‘Still of the Night’, ‘Here I Go Again’ (featuring a very hawt Tawny Kitaen dancing on a car), and ‘Is This Love’.

Next came the ‘Slip of the Tongue’ in 1989. I remember buying the album and after listening to it, went “what on earth is this?!” It was a very disappointing album for me.

By the early 90’s, the meteor named Kurt Cobain and grunge had killed all the metal dinosaurs, so it was also pretty much downhill from there for Whitesnake, too. But looking back, Coverdale had always been an excellent singer. And their music, though slightly dated, still held up much better than their contemporaries… Yeah, try listening back to Crue’s ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ or ‘Nothin’ But A Good Time’ by Poison and you’ll see what i mean.

And thanks to Youtube, i had a great time reminiscing about Whitesnake… below are ‘Is This Love’, ‘Here I Go Again’ and ‘Still of the Night’.