A major influence on the young Neil Murray was the Jeff Beck Group bassist Clive Chamon who helped improve his playing. Soon he was playing with the band Gilgamesh who played the pub and club circuit. He left this band in 1973 to join the rock band Hanson who produced just the one album, entitled Magic Dragon, before going their separate ways. Whilst enjoying a brief stint with Cozy Powell's Hammer, replacing old friend Clive Chamon, Neil met Don Airey and Bernie Marsden. When Hammer disbanded he and Don Airey teamed up with Gary Moore for the Colosseum II project. After fifteen months, having recorded the Strange New Flesh album, he left to join National Health (a band consisting of former Gilgamesh and Hatfield & The North members).
In 1977 Neil joined Whitesnake following a Bernie Marsden recommendation. As we all know, within a few years and after a number of personnel changes, Whitesnake became very popular in Europe. In 1982, during DC's attempts to get away from then manager John Colletta, the band was put on hold. When DC rallied the troops for a Whitesnake re-birth, Colin "Bomber" Hodgkinson was recruited in his place. When a proposed band with future 'Snake guitarist John Sykes, fresh out of The Tygers Of Pan Tang, did not get off the ground Neil was once again re-united with Gary Moore. He eventually left Moore during the recording of the Victims Of The Future album. Of his departure Moore was to comment, "I think he wasn't really happy playing this kind of music anymore basically... plus he had a bit of a run-in with the producer."
Neil
re-joined Whitesnake in time to make an appearance on the US version
of Slide It In. Now back in the fold he became part of the Coverdale,
Lord, Murray, Galley, Sykes, Powell line-up. When Mel Galley was forced
out of the band through injury, and John Lord had departed for 1984's Deep
Purple re-union, Neil was part of a more streamlined Whitesnake
with Richard Bailey playing keyboards. This line-up played Brazil's Rock
In Rio concert in 1985 and, with the exception of Powell (replaced
by Aynsley Dunbar) and Richard Bailey (replaced by Don Airey), went on
to record the biggest selling Whitesnake album; 1987. In what became the most controversial period in Whitesnake's
history Neil, along with the rest of the musicians who recorded 1987,
found himself out of the band with Rudy Sarzo miming to his bass parts
in the famous video's.
The late eighties saw Neil in a variety of projects and bands. He was involved in the all too brief MGM with Bernie Marsden and Mel Galley and, more unusually, Japanese rockers Vow Wow. This resulted in the two albums V (1987) and Helter skelter (1989), both released via Eastworld, where Neil had a big hand in the lyrics. His most memorable stint post 1987 was to see him recording and touring in Black Sabbath with former 'Snake Cozy Powell on drums. Although not credited he performed on the Headless Cross album which pretty much put Sabbath back on the map in terms of credibility and this author highly recommends it. By the time of the follow up TYR (1990) he was officially in the line-up, which also included vocalist Tony Martin (later of M3). Unfortunately, a sudden decision by Tony Iommi to re-unite the Heaven and Hell line-up with Geezer Butler on bass and the legendary vocalist Ronnie James Dio meant departures for Neil, Cozy Powell and Tony Martin. Things took a positive turn when Queen guitarist Brian May, a huge Sabbath fan, was impressed enough to recruit Neil as a member of his touring and recording band. This saw Neil appearing on three releases in the shape of 1992's Back to the light (EMI), 1994's Live at Brixton Academy and the Japanese only release Resurrection in 1996.
Following Dio's inevitable departure came a call from Tony Iommi who basically reunited the TYR lineup of Black Sabbath for 1995's Forbidden album but Grunge had taken a firm grip by this point. Neil hooked up with the Peter Green Splinter Group for the erstwhile Fleetwood Mac guitarist's 1997 comeback. This resulted in two albums, namely Peter Green Splinter Group and follow up The Robert Johnson Songbook (1998), through the Snapper label. Towards the end of the the nineties came another stint with Brian May (including events such as the Queen's Jubilee Party in 2002 at Buckingham Palace and Luciano Pavarotti's annual concert in Modena, Italy). Another World was released in 1998 and also featured contributions from Cozy Powell, Ian Hunter and Jeff Beck. The end of the 1990's also saw Neil hook up with Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden in The Company Of Snakes, where he recorded the live album Here They Go Again (2001) and the studio follow up Burst The Bubble (2002). As most people know this band became M3 Classic Whitesnake. M3 have toured extensively releasing a live DVD, Rough An' Ready (2005) in the process.
More recently Neil has performed in the very successful London West End musical We Will Rock You featuring the music of Queen. He continues to tour and record with M3 Classic Whitesnake, plus Bernie Marsden's own band, and sessions include an appearance with guitarist Rolf Munkes's Empire project. He has worked with Steve Vai, Paul Rodgers, Robert Palmer, Ian Gillan, Ozzy Osbourne, Allan Holdsworth and many more, but for many Neil Murray is the original and best Whitesnake bass player... case closed.
WHITESNAKE DISCOGRAPHY
Northwinds, 1977.
Snakebite, 1978.
Trouble, 1978.
Lovehunter, 1979.
Ready An' Willing, 1980.
Live... In The Heart Of The City, 1980.
Come An' Get It, 1981.
Saints & Sinners, 1982.
Slide It In (US Version Only), 1984.
Whitesnake, 1987.
Greatest Hits, 1994.
This article was written by Phillip Hackney.
Copyright © 1997 P Hackney.
1997 INTERVIEW
I asked Neil a few questions about his Whitesnake career back
in 1997 and he was kind enough to take the time to answer them....
Bear in mind that often there is no such thing
as the 'truth', just different people's interpretations of what went on.
Often, a certain version (not necessarily what actually happened) has been
repeated so many times by the teller that it becomes fact instead of opinion.
1) You appeared on one of the biggest selling
rock albums of all time. When and how did you find out that you were no
longer part of the band?
The short answer is that I read in 'Kerrang!'
(or one of their journalists told me) that the new Whitesnake lineup
was Coverdale, Vandenberg, Aldridge,
Campbell and Sarzo. No-one informed me that I was out of the band (and
I didn't quit). The longer answer is that we started work on '1987' at
the end of September 1985 in Vancouver. All the backing tracks were
done in a couple of months (with some gaps because of illness etc) and
it was too expensive and not thought necessary to keep myself and drummer
Aynsley Dunbar there after we'd finished our parts. Since Cozy Powell's
departure in January '85 it had definitely become David and John's band
(with lots of power-struggles between them) with other musicians treated
as assistants. Aynsley and myself were paid a weekly wage, and as the guitar
and vocal overdubs dragged on and on, it was decided that there wasn't
enough money to pay our wages as well as the huge studio costs, so our money was stopped on 1 April 1986. (In
view of the amount the album eventually ended up costing, our wages would
have been a drop in the ocean). Now, one interpretation would be that from that
moment on, we were no longer part of the band (and in fact Aynsley took
that to be the case, and went on to other things), but in my case I paid
my own way to Los Angeles for a week to see how things were coming on (and
remember I didn't have other sources of income - there wasn't anything
like old Whitesnake royalties coming in, though there should have
been - that's another story) and doing that got me into a bad financial
position, and I was in regular contact with David to see how things were
progressing.
About a year after I had done my bass parts on
1987,
John Sykes came back to studios in London to continue working on his guitar
solos, so I used the opportunity to redo some bass parts, so I was obviously
still considered part of the band or that wouldn't have been possible.
After that came the final power-struggle over mixing the album in LA with
Keith Olsen, (see question 8) where John felt he was supposed to be overseeing
the mix as well as David, and led to his departure when he turned up unannounced
at the studio and had a huge row with David.
After the album was finished, there was only myself
and David in the band, and though we were in contact over the phone with
me in London and he living in LA, it was easier (and probably pushed for
by the US record label and management) for him to start afresh and get
a whole new lineup, who all conveniently lived in LA. At first the new
lineup were just put together for the Still Of The Night video,
where it's deliberately not made very clear that it isn't John Sykes or
myself (no closeups), but obviously it was felt that this lineup was going
to work out, particularly as it was seen as very important that the band
was very visual and MTV-friendly, and certainly Rudy Sarzo had impressed
David with his stage performances with Quiet Riot when we supported
them in 1984.
2) Has David Coverdale spoken to you since
your departure from the band? If so, how did he explain such an extraordinary
decision?
No, he hasn't spoken to me, though I have avoided
meeting him at UK gigs in 1994 and 1997, and I've heard from other people
that he would like to meet up. We saw each other at an Aerosmith
party in London in 1988 (?) but I was suing him at the time in order to
get at least some of the 1987 royalties
I was entitled to. I'm sure he justified not having me in the band to other
people's satisfaction, especially as the band was so successful in 87/88
without me and the record company and management were really only interested
in him. In case you're interested, if John Sykes hadn't insisted on it
contractually, the musicians' names would have been left off the album
sleeve (like on Saints and Sinners), and everyone would have assumed
(and probably most did anyway) that Sarzo, Vandenberg
etc were on 1987.
3) What do you think of David Coverdale in
1997?
I still think he's a great singer with a lot of
charisma, but because he felt he had to do a lot of Robert Plant-type screeching
in recent years (and possibly due to ill-advised throat operations) his
voice is not what it was in the upper register, though when I saw him this
year it wasn't as bad as in 1994. I'm glad he's dropped the 'glam' Las
Vegas image, which was OK for 1987/88, but should have been ditched for
more of a street image (no, not Coronation Street!) from Slip
Of The Tongue onwards. He obviously has a lot of nostalgia for
the Moody/Marsden era of Whitesnake,
but I have no idea what kind of songs he might do in a future solo career.
4) Which Whitesnake line-up did you have the
most fun playing with?
Do you mean fun in general, or just musically?!
I did have a good time musically and socially with the Sykes, Galley,
Powell, Lord lineup and the Sykes,
Powell, Richard Bailey lineup that followed, but I suppose the best times
were around 1980/81 with Moody, Marsden,
Lord,
Paice.
When Micky and Bernie are together, they can be hilariously funny, and
there was a lot of room for me bass-playing-wise in that blues-rock style.
I very much enjoyed playing with Ian
Paice and I'd love to play with him again. Later on, the band was probably
heavier, which I also enjoy, but the songs didn't allow for as much interesting
bass-playing.
5) If you could turn back time is there anything
you would do differently, musically speaking?
Probably millions of things! I know that if I'd
worked on being really expert at American-style jazz-funk in the 70s, who
knows, maybe I'd have ended up working with Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton (though
I have done little bits with them) and other very successful artists. What
would have been better would have been to concentrate on songwriting and
singing, as that is where most of the money, power and musical satisfaction
is to be found. Almost all of the famous bass-players are also singers
and writers, and if you want to have a lot of say in the music you play,
then it's necessary to contribute significantly to the writing. (I wonder
if you can identify the parts on 1987 that
I came up with but was never credited with?). I've done a little songwriting,
but should have pushed myself much further in that direction. I haven't
had much use for it up to now, but it would have been a good idea to learn
to sight-read music at an early age (I can read music a little, thanks
to childhood piano and trombone lessons). Seriously, it's possible that
I should have fought harder to stay in Whitesnake in '82 rather
than go with Gary Moore, but I didn't get much encouragement from David,
who seemed to think I might not work well with Cozy! (see question 9).
6) Would you consider working with David Coverdale
again?
Yes, of course. There are very few singers of
his ability and presence around these days. However, like most artists
who've had great success, it's doubtful that we could enjoy the fairly
un-competitive, democratic way of working that existed in early Whitesnake
days. Everyone wants to be in control these days, including me! Of course
there's no particular reason that he would want to work with me - 'been
there, done that' etc, and having lived in the States for so long he possibly
feels more comfortable with that type of musician - more image-conscious
and Californian.
7) Many people have accused Cozy Powell and
John Sykes of being motivated by money during their stints in Whitesnake.
Is this one of the reasons that Cozy left before the recording of the Whitesnake
'87 album?
John Sykes was certainly very well aware of how
much money could be made from songwriting on a big album, and he was very
resistant to the idea of redoing old Whitesnake tracks like
Crying
In The Rain and Here I Go Again. Cozy, John and myself had naturally
hoped that the album and tour income from 1986 onwards would be fairly
equally split, and when Cozy was offered half of the percentage John would
get, quite apart from publishing income, he decided that he'd rather leave.
I reluctantly agreed to a much less than equal split, and ended up with
about half of even that, thanks to lengthy negotiations and lawyer's percentages
when legal action had to be resorted to in order to get more than a token
payment after 1987's huge success.
In hindsight, Cozy probably regrets standing up
for his principles, as if he'd stayed with the band he still would made
a lot of money, particularly if he (and I) had toured with Whitesnake
in 1987/88. However, he and John had done much better out of the band than
the rest of us in the previous couple of years. (By the way, if you read
interviews where Cozy says he played on the demos for 1987
- he didn't).
8) Producer Mike Stone allegedly fell out with
David during the recording of 1987. Was Stone difficult to work with?
Mike Stone was mostly my and John's choice as
producer, particularly from his work with Journey. He was more of an engineer/producer,
which was what we needed, as we all had a good idea of how the album should
sound. He was very easy to work with and a great guy. However, as the recording
went on and on and became pretty stressful, he may have ended up hitting
the bottle a bit, though I was not around, so I could be wrong. Because
of the months and months of studio time that David and John had used up,
Geffen
Records were keen to regain control over the album by having Keith
Olsen (who'd remixed Slide It In) mixing it in Los Angeles, whereas
John and Mike were insisting that it be mixed in London. Geffen
won. David had long-drawn-out problems with his voice, partly in my view
psychosomatic (imagined illness) which would have driven any producer to
distraction, particularly when an album is taking five times longer to
record than it should.
9) You first left the band with Ian Paice to
join Gary Moore after the Saints and Sinners album. What was the reason
for this decision?
On 7 April 1982, there was a band meeting where
it was revealed that David was parting company with the management, publishing
company and record company, and in business terms Whitesnake from
then on consisted of David Coverdale and anyone he wanted to have in the
band. Bernie Marsden was not going to be in
the next lineup, Micky Moody had left a couple
of months earlier and David had the chance to bring in whoever he felt
like, such as Cozy and Mel Galley. Of course
the band's wages stopped soon after, and with no royalty income (unlike
the Deep Purple members)
it was necessary for me to keep working while David decided what his plan
of action was.
Myself, John Sykes and a couple of other guys
joined forces with ex-Lone Star/Uriah Heep singer John Sloman
to do a couple of gigs and record some demos for EMI, but things went much
too slowly with that project, called Badlands. I had played with Gary Moore
in 1975/6 in Colosseum II and been friends with him since then,
and his band G-Force had supported
Whitesnake on our 1980
UK tour, so he knew how well Ian Paice and I worked together. He asked
Ian and I to play on his Corridors Of Power album (my idea for the
title, trivia fans!) during July, and we played a few club gigs and Reading
festival during August. By this time, Ian definitely knew he had been replaced
by Cozy, but David was still dithering about the bass-player; he supposedly
wanted someone who played with a pick (I'm a finger-style player) for a
treblier, more attacking sound, and he'd always been a fan of Colin Hodgkinson
from Yorkshire jazz-rock band Back Door. He also said that he wasn't
sure how my style and Cozy's would go together! (Apart from all the work
we've done together since then, I had first played with Cozy in his band
Hammer
in 1974/5, along with Bernie Marsden, more
recently on whose solo album I'd been on - playing with Cozy). Anyway,
Gary was offering me a permanent job in his band, whereas David seemed
not to be very interested, so I decided to join Gary. If David had been
prepared to pay me a small retainer to keep my head above water until
Whitesnake
started up again then I would have been happy to wait until the lineup
was sorted out, though I didn't think it was a very good idea for Micky
to return to the band, and he would agree.
10) 1985's Rock In Rio must have been a fantastic
experience. What are your favourite memories
of this gig?
We played twice at Rock In Rio, once with Iron
Maiden and Queen and a week later with The Scorpions
and Ozzy Osbourne, both times to about 300,000 people, the biggest
audiences I've played to. It was more memorable as a spectacle than a great
musical performance, as the stage was huge and the monitors inadequate,
so it was very hard to hear each other, and on the first show we were still
jet-lagged. The video of the event is a poor representation of the show,
with bad sound and virtually no shots of me and Cozy! My favourite memories
are the week off between the gigs, visiting Sugarloaf Mountain and the
Christ statue (Corcovado) and the fantastic scenery (both landscape and
female)!
11) How did it feel watching Whitesnake on
MTV and hearing your playing on the radio,
despite being out of the band?
It's hard to remember now, though it was made
doubly difficult seeing the band take America by storm when I was struggling
to pay the rent. Seeing the musicians getting multi-platinum albums to
hang on their walls when they hadn't played on the record was almost worse
than them making enormous amounts of money from promoting the album on
tour. Unfortunately, the large number of new fans the album brought were
mostly oblivious to who played on the record, especially in the States,
where the band wasn't that well known, and in Europe there had already
been too many lineup changes (with the new lineup always being the best-ever,
according to David's interviews) which tended to make the fans jaded anyway.
The fans of early Whitesnake often didn't like 1987,
and tended to assume I didn't either,which was difficult, because I liked
both the old and the new. The new fans were mostly uninterested in the
pre-1987 versions of
Whitesnake.
12) The late eighties saw you join the Japanese
band Vow Wow. How do you look back on this
period?
Basically I joined Vow Wow (though technically
I was never an official member) to work and earn a living, not because
I loved the music. They were very good musicians, but after the novelty
had worn off, British fans lost interest. In Japan, where we spent a lot
of time, they were quite well-known, but not huge - the Japanese prefer
to hear foreign acts singing in English and Japanese acts singing in Japanese,
not Japanese acts singing in English!
It was a very interesting experience for me to
work with Japanese musicians, and to spend months at a time in Tokyo, but
after a couple of years I felt the songs were becoming very predictable
and their following was getting smaller. There certainly weren't loads
of offers coming in because I'd been in Whitesnake - remember that
the last UK tour we'd done was in 1984, promoting an album I didn't play
on (in Europe) and in America I wasn't a well-known name at all.
13) What advice do you have for any budding
bassists out there?
Play along with all sorts of different kinds of
music - don't just concentrate on one style which may go out of fashion
14) Did you enjoy your time in Black Sabbath?
Yes, most of the time. Part of me really enjoys
playing very loud, heavy stuff, and in fact not all Sabbath's stuff
is like that anyway. Tony Iommi is a great guy, and lots of fun to be with
(unlike his image). However, for many of the fans the only good lineup
was the original lineup and I felt sometimes it didn't matter how good
I was, because if I wasn't Geezer Butler, then I must be rubbish. People
on the outside would think that Whitesnake fans would also be Sabbath
fans, but if fact there was very little overlap, with WS fans not
being aware that I was even in Sabbath, and Sabs fans not being
interested in Whitesnake. The press and US record label were not
keen on the band when I was in it, and Cozy and myself got very fed-up
with always being described as 'faceless session musicians'. I didn't feel
able to contribute much in the way of songs to the band, and some of the
material and the record-production could have been a lot better, in my
opinion.
15) You had a successful stint with Queen guitarist
Brian May, will you be working with him again
in the future?
Brian has always been a fan of Black Sabbath,
and it was mostly because of seeing me and Cozy with them that he wanted
us as his rhythm section. He's been working on dozens of songs since the
end of the tour in 1993, a lot of which Cozy plays on, though I'm not on
so many as Brian often plays all the instruments apart from the drums on
his songs. When the album finally comes out in spring next year, it's very
likely that Cozy and myself will tour with him again.
16) What are you currently doing?
After the last version of Black Sabbath
ground to a halt after a lot of touring in 1995, Cozy called me up
to help him with the return of original Fleetwood Mac singer/guitarist
Peter Green, who had been away from music for a long time due to psychiatric
problems. It was very slow and low-key to start with, but we've played
lots of gigs in Britain and Europe over the last 18 months. The band is
called the Splinter Group and it's mostly blues, with some of Peter's
old Fleetwood Mac hits, and it can be very enjoyable when he's on
form, though he can be erratic. I started playing bass in the mid-60s when
the British blues boom was happening, and Whitesnake was directly
influenced by a lot of the bands from that time and their black American
forerunners, so it's easy for me to slip back into that style. Cozy has
recently left and things are a bit quiet, but I'll probably be gigging
with the band for the next few months, and possibly doing an album (there
is already a live album). I occasionally do one-off gigs with
Micky
Moody and Bernie Marsden, and I quite often
see Mel Galley.
17) Using any of the people you have played
with, what would be your line-up for a 'super
group'?
Let's see....
18) You were once in a band called Hanson,
were you aware that some people went out and
bought the recent Hanson album (featuring three teenage
brothers!) thinking that you were playing on it!? (Ha! Ha!)
Sorry! Considering that the modern-day Hanson
weren't born in 1973/4 when I played with the other Hanson, don't
you think it's a bit unlikely?! I'm definitely too old to play with them!
19) Will you be doing any bass clinics anywhere
in the near future?
I just did a class at Basstech in London, which
I do about twice a year. I find it pretty nerve-racking, as I can't do
lots of flashy bass solos to impress the students, and it's hard to explain
why I play certain notes or phrases and not others. If I did lots of that
kind of thing I might be slicker at it, but I don't think I'm the ideal
person for that kind of performance - I'm much better with a band, bouncing
musical ideas off each other spontaneously, rather than showing people
exercises and scales. I don't get asked to do clinics by the companies
whose equipment I use, as they generally have guys who specialise in doing
that kind of thing all year round.
20) How would you sum up your time in the music
industry and what advice would you have for
those starting out?
In some ways I've been very lucky and have gone
a long way (especially not being a singer), perhaps sometimes by being
in the right place at the right time or by being friends with other musicians
who need a bass-player, rather than having to do lots of auditions. I've
had my fair share of rip-offs and not as much financial success as you
might think (sorry to keep on about it!), and sometimes I think it's a
very hard business where the tougher you are the better. I'm still glad
to have a career doing what I enjoy (most of the time) and what I'm hopefully
good at. See question 13, and also: Don't sign anything without showing
it to a music business lawyer first. The person who doesn't give up usually
wins in the end Music is important, but having a life is more important.
Photo courtesy of Rob Richardson
I
started doing a few gigs with a band called
MGM, which comprised
ex-Whitesnake guitarists Mel Galley and Bernie Marsden, as well
as drummer John Marter, though it was stressed that this was just a temporary
band for me until Whitesnake went back on the road. I don't think
David was keen on this, but I didn't have too many options for getting
some money into my bank account (and the band didn't earn much anyway).
David might have said at the time that I wasn't 'supportive' enough, which
I imagine means me coming over and supporting myself in LA while not doing
any work that would 'detract' from Whitesnake. He was almost certainly
not able to imagine what it's like to be stuck in London, broke, with hardly
any work, while he and Sykes are spending thousands of dollars per day
redoing guitar and vocals parts for the umpteenth time in yet another studio.
Bon
Jovi recorded
Slippery When Wet in the same Vancouver studio
we'd just vacated, released it,toured and sold millions of the album before
1987 was still being recorded.
Have confidence but don't be big-headed
Get the best equipment you can afford
Try to play with better musicians than yourself
Only work with good drummers
Try to play music you actually enjoy as much
as you can
Practise more than the competition
Hang out in the right places to meet other musicians
who can get you work
Your personality, looks and business sense are
just as important as your playing - work on all of them
Vocals: David Coverdale or Paul Rodgers
Guitar: Jeff Beck and Joe Satriani
Keyboards: Jon Lord
Drums: Ian Paice
Backing Vocals: Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Gillan,
Robert Palmer, Jimmy Barnes, Sting, Graham Bonnet
(yes, I have played with all of the above!)