Free Sail Away: Whitesnake's Fantastic Voyage by Martin Popoff

Memorial, Columbus, Ohio. The rest of Rod Dysinger's
photos are from the same gig too. ( Rod Dysinger )

 

    Above: The one and only Cozy Powell. ( Rod
Dysinger )
    Over the page: David Coverdale and John Sykes rocking out in 1984.
"If you're lookin' for trouble…" ( Rod Dysinger )

 

 
    -5-
    Lovehunter – “It’s Not Shakespeare”
    Lovehunter , issued October 1979, was, like Trouble , a further
step in the “right” direction for Whitesnake, or the direction of an audience
anyway, on its way to various forms of straight rock and then stadium rock, but
still with one foot in disorienting diversity.
    Not so the album cover. What was written
on the tin, in this case a dramatic Chris Achilleos illustration of a buxom
naked girl straddling a snake, screamed heavy metal. Indeed the
artwork caused hoots of derision, which didn’t stop it from getting stolen in the
1980s (as well being reproduced in exquisite and skilled ballpoint pen detail
by the author on his Grade 11 math book, as I’ve proudly trumpeted now for a
second time). A huge fantasy and sci-fi-related career ahead of him, Achilleos vowed
he would stay away from album covers henceforth, his only other
famed piece being a similarly fantastical and sexy set-piece for Uriah Heep’s Fallen
Angel , along with by-default album art for the Heavy Metal movie and
a later offering for Gary Hughes.
    Marsden, however, doesn’t remember much
complaint. “No, not really. The one that got more trouble was Come An’ Get
It . That one was sanitized in America. We don’t need to get into why, but
if you looked at the cover, you probably realize why. But it’s not to be taken
seriously. But at the time, there were some journalists with axes to grind, who
were treating the lyrics seriously, and we weren’t taking ourselves seriously.
It was all a bit of fun. ‘Lie down, I love you;’ it’s not Shakespeare. You
know, if somebody’s going to say that, it’s like, seriously, what do you think?
No, of course I’m not being serious.”
    Back to Lovehunter though, and “Long
Way From Home” is a strident, accessible rocker, not too blues and not too
heavy metal, more like confident, relaxed stadium rock. Its commercial push
forward was so effortless that the song was issued as the album’s first single,
achieving a middling No. 55 in the British charts, with its b-side, “Walking In
The Shadow Of The Blues” becoming much more of a Whitesnake classic over time.
    “That was David’s song,” says Marsden of
“Long Way From Home.” “That came in as pretty much a finished item, and I just
dubbed the guitar parts on it, and I was pretty much done. David always did
very good demos. Well, him and I did most of the demos between us, and that was
one of them he had done, more or less on his own. The first time I heard that
was a couple days before we recorded it. Good song, very good song.”
    Amusingly, even though the
chorus finds David singing “long, long way from home,” the title of the
track contained just one “long,” to avoid confusion with the anthemic
heavy rocker from Foreigner’s self-titled smash issued in 1977.

    Lovehunter was recorded in April and May of 1979 at Clearwell Castle, Gloucestershire,
using the tiny Rolling Stones Mobile (nicknamed Café Mobile), with mixing done
at Central Recorders. “Yeah, only how cold it was,” laughs Marsden, when prompted
for a memory of Clearwell, famous for hosting Sabbath, Purple, Bad Company,
Sweet and Led Zeppelin. “But it was a great place to work. Because it was a bit
cold and little bit soulless, it made you work harder. It made you drink harder
as well. The banquets in the evening tended to take a bit of a toll on you. But
again the work was done, and we did that with the Rolling Stones mobile, which
is great, an interesting process.”
    “A lot of stuff went on at Clearwell,”
notes Marsden, when asked about any shenanigans that took place during the
band’s multiple ensconcements at the castle