The band begins with lead singer David Coverdale, a singer who had shot to fame in 1974 as the lead singer of hard rock legends Deep Purple, however his time in the band was particularly fraught. A year after he joined the band, their lead guitarist, arranger and founding member Ritchie Blackmore quit as he felt they were losing sight of their hard rock origins. The band were sent into a tailspin by Blackmore’s departure but Coverdale took the reins, desperate to keep the band going. They recruited a new guitarist but the damage had been done, and the band’s third album with Coverdale at the helm, 1976’s “Come Taste The Band”, sank without a trace and they split soon afterwards.
Coverdale was heartbroken by Purple’s demise but he soldiered on, and he spent the rest of 1976 preparing his solo career. He released his solo debut in February 1977, an album called “White Snake” that wasn’t a massive success but it steadied his career with panache, and would set up a success that would dwarf his achievements in Deep Purple. The debut album had been made in collaboration with a guitarist named Micky Moody, and Coverdale toured the record with him and a backing band called The White Snake Band. However, the duo soon realized that they both thrived when working in a full band set up, rather than making solo records.
Just before the release of “Northwinds”, Coverdale took his White Snake Band, shortened their name to Whitesnake, and became their lead vocalist. He had already worked so closely with them that he felt far more comfortable as one of the boys in the band rather than the main star of the show. “Northwind” was released to a far better reception than Coverdale’s debut had gotten but he’d already moved on, performing Whitesnake’s first live shows and releasing their debut effort, the “Snakebite E.P”, in June 1978. “Trouble”, their debut album, came in the autumn of the same year, but their true breakthrough wouldn’t come until 1980 and the album “Ready An’ Willing”.
The album was their first to enter the top ten in the U.K and even gave the band a top twenty single in the form of “Fool For Your Loving”. At the dawn of the 1980’s, the band were stars in the U.K and most of Europe, but the band wouldn’t make waves in the States until 1984’s “Slide It In”. Released on the major label Geffen, the album went Gold in the U.S within a year of its release and produced two minor hits in the form of “Slow An’ Easy” and “Love Ain’t No Stranger”. However, no-one could have predicted just how stratospheric the band would go with the release of their next album, 1987’s appropriately titled “1987”.
The album went top ten on both sides of the Atlantic within a week of its release and would go on to sell eight million copies in the U.S alone, giving them a number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Here I Go Again” to boot. Back in the U.K the band were nominated for a BRIT Award for Best British Group off the back of it but the album was a phenomenon in America, making them true Arena headliners for the first time in their career. Ever since then, the band have been one of the most respected acts in hard rock, with an envious back catalogue of bona-fide hits still able to bring an arena or a festival to its knees thirty years after their heyday. Coverdale is still a truly magnetic frontman, and the whole band still come highly recommended.
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