WHITESNAKE

Before big hair there was the blues, and David Coverdale and co. began as a gritty British band.

It’s March 9, 1978. The ritzy stage of the Scarborough Penthouse looks like something out of The Price Is Right: curtains made out of multi-coloured strips of aluminium foil drape over a modest back line of amplifiers, a mirror ball hanging from the ceiling and glitter on the walls. But there’s no sense of pomp and ceremony, just a taste of stale beer and a whiff of pie and chips. There are maybe 100 people here for only the fourth ever gig by Whitesnake, the band fronted by the dynamic and thrusting David Coverdale.

Micky Moody sports a Zapata moustache and his trademark trilby; he’s an old-school guitarist from Middlesbrough, Coverdale’s neck of the woods, who’s earned his chops in Juicy Lucy and Snafu. Moody went to school with Paul Rodgers, and formed a band with him even before Rodgers’s voice had broken.

There’s fellow guitarist Bernie Marsden, small, smiling and stocky, formerly of UFO, Wild Turkey, Cozy Powell’s Hammer and Paice Ashton Lord. And who’s this on bass? Neil Murray, who played complicated jazz-rock-fusion in Colosseum II with Gary Moore and drummer Jon Hiseman. On keyboards there’s Brian Johnston, and on drums there’s David ‘Duck’ Dowle, both of whom used to be in Roger Chapman’s Streetwalkers.

A stellar cast? Perhaps not. But boy, can they play – and sing, especially sing – the blues.

The highlight of Whitesnake’s set is Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City, a song made famous by Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland. Played at a restrained pace, it’s moving, deliberate, pure, intense. As Coverdale’s deep, sonorous voice echoes around the room, it raises the hackles on your neck. And then caresses them. To those more familiar with the modern-day, turbo-charged Whitesnake, this version of the band from the late 70s would be unrecognisable.

“Believe it or not, it wasn’t really my intention for the early Whitesnake to follow that kind of musical direction,” Coverdale said. “The guys in the band, other than Micky, had no time to put any musical stamp on what was taking shape initially. It just began to develop as we played more and more together.”

“Whitesnake’s music had such a great feeling to it,” says Moody. “Of course, we were into the blues – people like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, we listened to that kind of stuff. We were all heavily influenced by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and their ‘Beano’ album.”

“What people don’t necessarily realise,” says Neil Murray, “is that myself, David, Micky and Bernie all came out the formative period of 1966 to 1967, when the blues was really the booming thing in Britain.”

“As much as I love the blues,” says Coverdale, “it was never a driving ambition for me to start a pure blues band. I’m a big fan of progressive blues by bands like the Allman Brothers. They were quite an influence on how I wanted to structure a group, given the opportunity. Cream, Mountain and of course Hendrix were immense in my sphere of influence. The original Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac were huge to me. And then of course there are my touchstone inspirational albums: Jeff Beck’s Truth and Beck-Ola. My God, did they connect with me.”

Welcome to pre-1987 Whitesnake. One of the best blues-rock bands you’re ever likely to hear.

“As much as I love the blues, it was never a driving ambition for me to start a pure blues band.” David Coverdale

Killer Track: Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City