Perhaps Bernie's most notable work during this period was on the Paice Ashton Lord album Malice In Wonderland, a gig offered by way of a Cozy Powell recommendation. Commercial success was to elude them with Ashton also finding it uncomfortable in the lead singer role. The project was knocked on the head part way through recording of the unfinished second album when finances meant it was not possible to continue (the band was funded by Lord and Paice).

It was not until early '78 that he would hook up with a certain David Coverdale in the first incarnation of Whitesnake. At the time Bernie was expecting to hear from former Beatle Paul McCartney about a possible gig with Wings but, fed up with waiting, informed McCartney's people that he'd be joining Whitesnake instead. Recordings in the early days were frequent and Bernie quickly found himself touring and appearing on classics such as Snakebite, Trouble, Lovehunter, and the glorious Ready An' Willing. By the time of Come An' Get It's release Bernie had not only established himself as a great guitarist, he had also established himself as an integral songwriter; often sharing credits with DC and axe partner Micky Moody. Not only this, he had also managed to record two solo albums during his time with Whitesnake. Interestingly DC had helped write lyrics for the first one, entitled And about Time, Too (1979) - indeed, the demo's were recorded at the home of DC's partner Julie Felix. This was followed up in 1980 by Look at Me Now (both issued on Parlophone, 1981). The latter album featured Simon Philips on drums and Bernie was later to joke that more drummers bought the album than guitarists! August 28th, 1981 saw Bernie recording a solo BBC session, alongside Neil Murray, Don Airey, and DC. Bernie's Whitesnake exit in April '82 came as a complete shock. Himself, Ian Paice and Neil Murray were unceremoniously fired by the band's infamous manager John Coletta, having been led to believe that it was Coletta who was going to get the boot. It was at this point where the band was literally put on hold with the Saints and Sinners album (sessions started in October of the previous year) unfinished. Nevertheless, one of Bernie's songwriting contributions to this album was to eventually make rock history... a little DC co-write entitled Here I Go Again.

Following his removal from Whitesnake Bernie chose to form the band SOS (soon to become Alaska) rather than continue with the solo route he'd dabbled in previously. Alaska only released two albums (Heart Of The Storm and The Pack) and 1987 saw him form MGM with Neil Murray, Mel Galley and drummer John Marter. Despite a lot of work, studio sessions with singer Bobby Kimball (Toto) and some dates in Europe (with John Saxon at the mic), no music was actually released. Bernie was to describe the band as somewhat of a disaster. After this there appears to have been a bit of a lull in activity for the rest of the 1980's. In reality Bernie was involved in film and tv soundtracks, as well as recordings that didn't see the light of day including collaborations with Andy Taylor (Duran Duran) and Adrian Smith (Iron Maiden). It is interesting that Bernie was to have one of his greatest successes around this time without actually playing a note. The US remix version of Here I Go Again, co-written with DC all those years before, was a massive hit around the world (20 million copies and counting). Bizarrely enough there were two versions recorded during the Whitesnake '87 sessions; the aforementioned keyboard heavy US Remix with Dan Huff on guitar (which Bernie has stated he likes), and the more powerful John Sykes driven version (featured in the famous MTV video).

It was not until the 90's that Bernie appeared back in the public eye. 1992 saw him produce the Moody Marsden Band featuring himself on guitar and lead vocals, former 'Snake six stringer Micky Moody, and drummer Zak Starkey (later to be replaced by Terry Williams of Dire Straits). The album Never Turn Our Back On The Blues even included a cover of the Bobby Bland classic, and Whitesnake staple, Ain't No Love (In The Heart Of The City) which gained radio airplay here in the UK despite the onset of dance and grunge. John Trotter and Peter Stroud were onboard by the time of 1994's Real Faith which was swiftly followed by a live album, Unplugged (Live In Hell), complete with an extended version of Here I Go Again and other 'Snake classics. The same year saw Bernie and Micky contributing to Georg Bayer's short lived Borderline project for the Line-Up album which included the pair's song Bring Me Some Water.

The next period for Bernie and Micky Moody was somewhat controversial. Whether intentional or not their next band The Snakes featuring DC wannabe Jorne Lande (vocals) caused confusion on the European tour circuit. I received many emails at the time from fans complaining that they had been sold tickets that they believed were for the DC fronted Whitesnake who had just released Restless Heart. Out of curiosity I went to see The Snakes at Bradford Rio's, even if only to hear Slow An' Easy played properly! As it turns out it was quite emotional as Bernie and Micky were amazing but I thought Lande was awful. To my ears he was far more like Ronnie James Dio vocally but with very little stage presence. I would rather have seen DC get the two lads up on stage for a few numbers - especially as 1997's The Last Hurrah World Tour was being proclaimed as Whitesnake's last ever. As it stood I came away from the gig thinking of what could, or maybe should, have been... The same year saw personal tragedy for Bernie when he tragically lost his seven year old daughter.

The Snakes were soon to bite the dust but not before 1997's Live In Europe and 1998's Once Bitten albums saw the light of day. The latter featured all new songs and both were commissioned and released exclusively to the Japanese market via Pony Canyon. This band, minus Lande and his Norwegian compatriots, became The Company Of Snakes following the arrival of former 'Snake bassist Neil Murray, late 80's Whitesnake keyboard player Don Airey, drummer John Lingwood (Manfred Mann's Earth Band) and former Bad Company vocalist Robert Hart. Hart was gone after only a year or so and old friend Gary Bardens (MSG) briefly picked up the singing baton for some remaining live dates. That same year saw the re-release of Real Faith, minus a few songs, under a new title Ozone Friendly(2000).

2001 was to see a couple of releases with Bernie and Micky Moody recording The Night The Guitars Came To Play under The Moody Marsden Band name, and a live compilation entitled Here They Go Again as The Company Of Snakes; co-produced by Bernie with Rainer Hänsel, and released through the German label SPV GmbH. Largely made up of 'Snake classics (including the fantastic Come On to open procedings) the album saw Stefan Berggren (Snakes In Paradise) singing lead vocals and included a surprising cover of Is This Love?. Bernie would later defend this by saying it's a great song, and if David could sing his songs he could sing David's... not forgetting that Neil Murray had actually played on the original version in any case! The same line-up would go on to record a batch of all new songs for the album Burst The Bubble(2002), again produced by Bernie and Hänsel. Around this time, David Coverdale seemed bothered that The Company Of Snakes might be misleading the public with some of their promotional activities. Certainly the cover of Burst The Bubble gave a solid nod to the artwork of Lovehunter. It was the live gigs, however, that instigated a name change. It seemed that the public were only interested in hearing the old Whitesnake numbers (less than 40 punters showed up for a gig in Ålborg, Denmark in the winter of 2002) so they made the decision to give the public what they wanted. Out went the new material and name and in came the old music under the monicker of M3 (aka M3 Classic Whitesnake).

M3, with drummer Jimmy Copley (Tears For Fears), Keyboard player Mark Stanway (Magnum) and singer Tony Martin (Black Sabbath), toured throughout 2003. This line-up gave birth to the Classic 'Snake Live volume 1 DVD but by April 2004 the band's relationship with Martin had become untenable and Stefan Berggren was back with the band. The 2005 DVD Rough An' Ready is the band's last release to date and sees Berggren joined by fellow vocalist Doogie White (Rainbow).

On January 13th 2006, Ian Paice re-united with Bernie and other ex-Whitesnake pals Neil Murray and Don Airey. Recorded at the Rivermead Centre in Reading, Ian Paice and Friends Live In Reading 2006 is available exclusively through DrumWright and comes highly recommended. The DVD was released to raise money for Tong-Len, supporting primary education for highly deprived children in Northern India. Blues N Scales: A Snakeman's Odyssey 1970-2004 was released through Castle Music UK and, for all intents and purposes, is a 'best of...' covering all of Bernie's various musical endeavours. One highlight of 2006 was a performance with Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant to celebrate Bob Harris' 60th birthday. In recent years Bernie has talked often about a much anticipated autobiography and performed with former Alaska buddy Brian Badhams in the Elkie Brooks band. Up to present Bernie has been recording more solo material, including a collection of covers and, as always, can regularly be seen performing live. Take a visit to http://www.berniemarsden.co.uk/ for all the latest news and details on how to get hold of some real rarities...

This article was written by Phillip Hackney.
Copyright © 2008 P Hackney.

 Many thanks to Ann McLaren for typing the article below:

1997 BERNIE MARSDEN INTERVIEW - MOODY/ MARSDEN PART TWO

HARD ROXX magazine - Issue 35
14 Stoats Nest Road
Coulsdon
Surrey
CR5 2JD

Tel: 0181 763 0108
Fax: 0181 763 8929

Whitesnake: The Last Hurrah

....the end of a phenomenal legacy pt. 2

by Stig Myhre

Part 2 - An interview with Bernie Marsden, the lead guitar player, Micky Moody's partner in crime and the main writer along with Coverdale and Moody - 1978 - 1982 - Bernie has returned to the Whitesnake style with the band Snakes, and an upcoming studio album with new material as well as a live album with the old Whitesnake classics in the pipeline.

In the original line-up, you must have been spoiled by all the great musicians?

That's the problem you have when you form a band, because when you've been working with Ian Paice for five years, or Jon Lord or David Coverdale, then how can a musician come up to their standard? David is a very gifted singer and the ultimate blues man. Moody is a very underrated musician, Micky is the best slide guitarist in Europe, he threatens quite a few people. I think the slide guitar sound was a lot to do with the original sound of Whitesnake because of the way it was integrated into the overall sound. The slide guitar is his trademark because a) he does it so well, b) there aren't many who can do it very well at all, but he's like a hundred percent higher than all the other guys put together in Europe. Micky is a fairly laid back guy, he doesn't sort of jump around in the papers, you know what I mean? There's no rivalry, maybe that's the secret. It's not like 'Oh, he did that and now I'm going to do this'. We just play, and if he plays something really good, then I just stand there and go "unbelievable".

Jon Lord is Jon Lord you know. He's just a gifted man and a very nice guy. I think he did some wonderful stuff with Whitesnake. I think specially towards the end Jon Lord was frustrated on an album like Slide It In, because Jon was nowhere on it really. I think he was okay on the earlier albums. If you listen to Ready And Willing or Come And Get It, there's a lot of piano and the classic Hammond organ solo. With Whitesnake there was never like 'Okay, now the big guitar solo, the big organ solo', but 'what suits the song best, the slide guitar, piano or synthesiser'.  We never thought about doing the big 'ladies and gentlemen, Jon Lord' because Jon Lord could do that live, and I think it's better to have a really good song completely finished on a record than to build a song around a solo, which many bands do. I think he realised that it was a song based band rather than a feature band. I think he has underachieved as a musician, and he will probably hate me for saying that, but I think there's so much more music in Jon Lord that's never been released and I'm not sure it will come out now. He's not lazy, but he's like 'Oh, maybe next year'. With Jon there is always 'Maybe a next year' to do something.  Jon is so talented in every area. He can read and write music, he can do film music, he can do TV music, he can do classical music, rock music, jazz and I would like to hear the ultimate Jon Lord musical piece sometime. I like his solo albums. I like his Before I Forget album, but even then he surrounded himself with all his friends. I would like to hear Jon Lord play Jon Lord sometimes.

Neil Murray is a fantastic musician, a very talented guy. He can play many styles, I sometimes think he's really the kind of guy who should have been playing with Chick Corea for the last ten years. I'm not sure whether he would secretly have like that, I don't know. I might be completely wrong, you'll have to ask him, but I think he gets frustrated sometimes with playing one note in rock 'n' roll, but sometimes that's all you have to do.

Ian Paice made a big difference. He's the best and second best. Paicey is still THE MAN. How can anyone come up to his standard? Even if he's a very good musician, it takes a long time. You're thinking 'Well, he's a good drummer, but Ian would do this'. You could write a song with a specific drum part because you know Ian would do it, but then you go 'well it goes like this', you try to show the guy the drum pattern and he looks at you like 'are you crazy?' You say no, but that's the standard you expect. He has spoiled me for the last fifteen years since I played with him regularly. I did a charity gig with him a couple of years ago and it was just like we had played together for three weeks before. It was like putting on an old shoe. He's a great, great drummer. I've seen drummers cry on stage just watching his technique. Carmine Appice and people like that just love him. As a personality he's very, very quiet. You probably never saw an interview with Ian Paice alone. It's not that he doesn't want to, he thinks 'why should anybody want to talk to me. I'm just the drummer in the band', which is a kind of nice attitude to have. He can walk or go anywhere on a bus and 99 out of 100 people wouldn't have a clue who he was, that's the way he likes it and good luck to him.

Any good memories of the classics, Ready And Willing, Live In The Heart Of The City?

Ready And Willing and the ...In The Heart Of The City album was the best rock 'n' roll band in the world. I listen to Trouble now on CD and it makes me laugh. It's a good record but the energy level on it is fantastic. It was all recorded in like ten days, we just got on with it. There's some great songs on there, but it's a little rough, Lovehunter is the same again, it has some great songs but the sound is still coming, and then it all hit with Ready And Willing. Everything came together at the right time. I think we had not the best songs, but the best album of songs consistently. Live In The Heart Of The City is the best overall example of the line-up because you have all the songs from Ready And Willing on there live exactly as it happened.

Did you feel equal partners or part of the David Coverdale show?

Well, when we started the band, David was a very positive guy. He knew what he wanted to do, he wanted us to work together. He's now saying that Whitesnake wasn't formed to be a fixed group. That's news to me. It was pretty fixed for six years in the original line-up. He did everything he could to make sure that we were in the band on the first line-up. All this talk about a temporary line-up is very easy to say in hindsight. You can say anything after the event. Put it this way, everything that cost money, Micky and I paid for. We paid the same as he did, so you work it out from there... Snakes did Is This Love live, because we don't wanna say 'this doesn't exist'. It's like David when he's talking to the press, it's kind of like nothing existed before the day you talked to him. There was no Neil Murray, there was no Ian Paice, no Micky Moody. We were just 'passengers'. That's not just bullshit, that's rubbish. We were there from day one. David said 'Please be in the band, I know that Paul McCartney has made you an offer, I can't match his money but I can get you this guy who can manage us'. People don't know about stuff like that, we have never talked about it.

David begged me to join the band and said 'Please, you have to come in the band, you and Micky will work great together', and he was right about that. David brought us together and we're still here. In those days he was like one of us. Now he seems to have gone completely full circle. Maybe it's time to put the truth out, cause what he's saying in the press is not accurate. I don't understand it. It's like me and Micky saying to you now 'Oh no, Micky wrote Lovehunter the singer was OK but I did it, David just played triangle on it'. You know what I mean? We were all there writing the songs in a room, in the studio and breaking our backs making this music. We spent nine months in a little truck in England, at the beginning of Whitesnake, with David Dowle, Micky, Neil, me and David. We spent every hour together, we did the whole thing, breaking the band and making Whitesnake a household name. David should be happy about that, instead of talking about himself all the time. It doesn't make any sense to me. He's trying to make us look like we were just hired. We were not hired, we were equal partners. There's a big difference, and that is what he seems to try and bury now, like nothing of that happened. David has got a selective memory. You remember the bits you want to, or make them up. David can say what he likes but you have to hear our side of the story. We've always been very non-controversial about him, and he's kind of used that, because he thinks we won't say anything.

David should be very happy about the statement me and Micky made in Whitesnake, because without many of the songs we wrote together with either me or Micky or the both of us, he wouldn't have much work on. David is of the opinion that me and Micky should play 'our own fucking songs'. When we play Fool For Your Loving, two thirds of that song is written by me and Micky, so maybe he shouldn't sing our songs? He's only one third of Would I Lie To You, The Time Is Right For Love etc. David is saying he wrote Here I Go Again in Portugal, oh really? That's very odd because we recorded it three years before. He is saying that his biggest song is still Here I Go Again. Coverdale 'forgot' to tell the press that he wrote Here I Go Again together with me. I can tell you that every dollar he gets for that song, I get a dollar as well... I gave him some ideas for the lyrics as well, like Here I Go Again and You And Me. Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues. I wrote the line 'I'm walking in the shadow of the blues' and David told me 'wow, what a great title', and bang he would come up with these great lyrics.

I heard Ain't Gonna Cry No More for the first time with him playing it on the guitar alone, and now he's saying that the band played like shit on the second part of the song. Well, then he is shit because he did it at the same time as us, he's the singer on that 'shit'. Why dig these things over 15-20 years later? David has always been egocentric. I have a very strong idea why John Sykes never made it on the stage after 1987. I don't think it's a musical thing, he's very talented, a great guitar player, good writer and a great looking kid. I guess the spotlight wasn't big enough for David. It seems like we must have an appointment to talk to him now. It's like 'I will see you at four o'clock'. It's tempting to tell him 'Look, we're the guys who wrote the songs with you, we sat down to breakfast together for five years, remember?'

What was it like seeing Whitesnake as an outsider/ex-member?

I saw them at Donington '83 and that was just awful. I watched that show from the mixing desk and it was very emotional because I wanted to  enjoy it because it had been nine months since the band split, and I expected to hear all this new material and enjoy myself really. I wanted to hear Micky playing and Cozy was an old friend of mine and we all went back a long time together, and all I heard was a very bad imitation of the band that broke up, playing my songs, Mel having to play my solos. David would say 'NO, Bernie would do it like this' Micky would have to show him what I used to do. If you're going to change something, you should be changing it to better, or change it to a different colour. All I saw was the same colour, but it wasn't so good. They tried to come up with a brand new sound with 'Slide It In', but it wasn't, it sounded like a mix of 'Come And Get It' and 'Saints And Sinners'. I was in a terrible position. If I didn't like it it's because I'm not in it, and if I do like it I'm saying 'kiss my ass'. The best thing I did was that I went a couple of weeks later to the Hammersmith Odeon, again with the same line-up, because I didn't think Donington was great I thought 'that's because it's me, I'm angry'. Again it wasn't very good and it didn't bother me after that. I thought 'they've broken up a real good band and they've replaced it with a band that's not anywhere near as good and the people will make their minds up', and they did. That's when he began to go down in England, that's when he moved to America. I think the Sykes, Coverdale, Murray and Powell line-up was a great band, but the egos destroyed it literally within minutes. Then I saw them in 1988 with the American line-up. That was okay, I thought David sang really good, but I didn't like it much because I didn't really understand it. To me it wasn't Whitesnake anymore, he should have gone on stage as David Coverdale. The group that cracked America was called <Whitesnake, but it was nothing to do with the group Whitesnake that I was in. It was like watching a completely different group. In America it was the biggest thing for one and a half years. Whitesnake was big, big, big in the States for one and a half years and it had nothing to do with us. They had great success, but I think if it would have been called the David Coverdale Band it would have been just as successful. I didn't like his singing on the Coverdale & Page album very much, I thought he screamed too much, and I thought he screamed a little too much on 'Slip Of The Tongue' even though 'Sailing Ships' was a great song and a wonderful performance. I think he sang very good on the '1987' album. There was some good stuff on there. I think John Sykes is a very talented guy, a very gifted writer. He was the hero of the '87' album. David was great but it is Sykes' album. It was interesting to hear the new versions of 'Here I Go Again' and 'Fool For Your Loving'. I thought 'Here I Go Again' was very good, I like the remix version very much. I didn't like 'Fool For Your Loving', I thought it was terrible; nothing to do with the song but Steve Vai was a big mistake for David. I have no Steve Vai albums even though he's a great guitar player. He's completely at the other end of the spectrum. We both play the guitar but what I do and what he does is so different. I suppose it's like a Ferrari and a Volkswagen. They're both cars but they do completely different things. Maybe he's the Ferrari and I'm the Volkswagen, but the Volkswagen keeps going, it's reliable, it never lets you down. He played for Steve Vai, he didn't play for David Coverdale or Whitesnake. I'll never forget the first time we ever saw the the 'Fool For Your Loving' video, when we were in a club in Germany, when he did the solo in the middle. All I can remember is Micky falling on the floor laughing. It was the funniest thing I've ever seen, he couldn't stop laughing and Micky said, 'What's that, it looks like he's praying to mecca'. 'Fool For Your Loving' is a classic song, and it's always hard to recreate these things I know, but I think David did a really good job on 'Here I Go Again', because it's different to the 'Saints And Sinners' version but retains the simplicity of the song.

In today's bands do you see the Whitesnake influence?

There are some new bands coming up and I can hear some influences in a band like Reef. The funny thing at the moment is that a lot of the young rock bands are saying that Paul Weller was a big influence on them. People from our generation find that kind of funny because Paul Weller had nothing to do with rock 'n' roll in the seventies and eighties whatsoever, he hated it. Listen to the Style Council, it's not exactly Free, Humble Pie or Small Faces, and no the young kids because Paul Weller is kind of hip, they think that he is the guru of rock music in the seventies and eighties, but it's not true. Paul has made some good records, don't misunderstand me but I think it's kind of funny that they say 'We really like rock music because we like Paul Weller'. It's never been fashionable to admit being influenced by Whitesnake, but you can hear some stuff like Thunder, Thunder stuff is what we were doing only with a different name and different titles. Thunder became a kind of 'Son of Whitesnake', but without the success, with no success really. They were fashionable for six months but they didn't sell any records. At the end of the day that's what it comes down to, how many records you sell, how many times your stuff is played on the radio. Here I am in 1998, 'Here I Go Again', 'Fool For Your Loving' is on the radio more now that it was ten years ago, and I don't think you'll be hearing that from Thunder and all these other bands. Thunder has some good songs but I think they believed their publicity too quickly, 'you are the next big thing'. You can't force people, they have to want you, and that was the difference. Whitesnake was never a fashionable press band, but the people took to us one hundred percent. We sold out shows without any press because of word of mouth.

In Snakes Jorn Lande sings like Coverdale in the early days. How did you get hold of him?

Willy Bendiksen, our drummer, played me a tape of Jorn Lande singing Ready And Willing and I couldn't believe it. I played it to Micky over the phone and he couldn't believe it either, so as soon as you heard someone with so much influence, then it was a natural thing to play some shows. I had never tried to find a singer like David Coverdale since the band split the first time around. It never occurred to me because really, you could go crazy trying to look for a guy like that. If that was the case, then Ian Gillan could leave 'Purple every other week and they could have replaced him, and until we heard Jorn Lande, it didn't make any sense. We got out and played some rhythm and blues together in the Moody Marsden Band as you know, and we played some songs from Whitesnake, but we would only play the hits and stuff that we were comfortable with. Now with Jorn Lande, he sings very good and he's a great singer apart from singing Whitesnake. Jorn is a good singer in his own right, but he happens to sing exactly like David Coverdale. It's a very strange situation. Early on we did a few recordings, and I played it to some record company people in London and they thought it was the new Whitesnake album. I just played a little trick on them. You can close your eyes at our shows and it could be the old band with just a few small changes.

MICKY MOODY INTERVIEW - MOODY/MARSDEN PART 1

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