'Snakehouse', with Bernie Marsden and Safehouse - Stramash, Edinburgh, 24 November 2016

And now for something unique, folks.  It’s Snakehouse – a notion born of a chance conversation at the Edinburgh Blues’N’Rock Festival back in July, when Bernie Marsden agreed that yeah, he quite fancied the idea of doing a show with local band Safehouse, playing a heap of classics by the Allman Brothers, Whitesnake and others.  And why not?

And so here we are in Stramash, with Safehouse opening proceedings with Moby Grape’s ‘Hey Grandma’.  Now, who the hell remembers Moby Grape?  I certainly don’t, though the name seems vaguely familiar.  But I gotta say, you’ll remember this full throated stomper the way that Safehouse deliver it, especially for Chris Peebles’ raunchy vocal.  Peebles comes across as a throwback to somewhere in 70s America, all flailing hair as he gets his rocks

Liz Jones gives an extra dimension to Snakehouse

off to the music, underlining the vibe of Southern rock that’s the Safehouse speciality.

They keep up the good work via a great guitar solo by John Bruce on Big George Watt’s ‘Take A Walk In The Wilderness’, and driving boogie with swirling keys on ‘Can’t You See’, until eventually it’s time for Bernie Marsden to enter the fray.  He demonstrates his subtlety right away with the responsiveness to the vocals of his little fills on ‘Double Trouble’, underlined by the lovely Peter Green feel of his interplay with Bruce after his solo.

There are highlights aplenty as Gary Davidson joins them to provide a twin attack with Sean Scott on drums for the Allman Brothers stuff.  This is serious guitar territory of course, and Bruce and Marsden duet to great effect on an instrumental, before Marsden produces a rollicking solo on ‘Black Hearted Woman’.  Not to be outdone, as they all get tied tight to the ‘Whipping Post’, Bruce lets go with a rip-roaring solo that demonstrates the sheer physicality of his playing.  They close this

Bernie gets down to business

portion of the show with ‘One Way Out’, on which they’re joined by Edinburgh harp supremo Gary Martin, and which frankly achieves an insane intensity from Marsden’s solo onwards.

They come back onstage with a smokin’ version of ‘Hush’, on which Bruce shows his mettle once again on his closing solo, before getting funky with Little Feat’s ‘Spanish Moon’.  Tackling ‘Trouble’ with Chris Peebles on vocals prompts the thought, “David Coverdale, oo’s ‘e then?” before Marsden takes centre stage for a rendition of Robert Johnson’s ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind’, which features some nice interplay with Ali Petrie on keyboards, before Bernie gets down to some serious business in the guitar stakes.  And just to underline his Premier League status, he then demonstrates some exquisite tone on Skynyrd’s ‘Simple Man’.

There’s then another shift in tone as guest vocalist Liz Jones joins the band to deliver top drawer lead vocals on The Animals’ ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’ and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love (In The Heart Of The City)’, reinstating some verses that Whitesnake forgot (ie, Bernie forgot when he taught it to them).

They wind up proceedings with ‘La Grange’, with two drummers on the go again alongside bassist Andy Stirling, and serving up as meaty a delivery of the riff as Billy Gibbons could hope for.  Encoring with Whitesnake’s ‘Here I Go Again’ naturally leads to some mass choir practice for the crowd – though personally I’ll always prefer ‘Walking In The Shadow Of The Blues’.

It’s the end of a wild night of music, a celebration of its simple pleasures, and a night to remember for the Safehouse guys and their compadres.  Call it blues, call it rock, call it what you like – this is what it’s all about.

Bernie Marsden - Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 28 September 2015

Anyone rolling up to Bernie Marsden’s current round of shows anticipating him weighing into the likes of ‘Fool For Your Loving’ with a four or five piece band should recalibrate their expectations.  This could be billed as ‘An Audience With Bernie Marsden’, as the former Whitesnake man, ably assisted by Jim Kirkpatrick on guitar, harp and a share of vocals, delivers a largely acoustic set of songs interspersed with stories and audience Q&A.

Avuncular and affable are adjectives that could have been coined for Marsden.  He’s self-deprecating about his roly-poly shape and his aged dad’s lack of trust in him to change a plug, but less self-effacing about his guitar-playing and writing ability and the quality of the classic Marsden/Moody Whitesnake line-up – and rightly so.

Bernie Marsden - a talented little sod

He eases into things with ‘Linin’ Track’, a field holler inspired blues that also opens his latest album Shine, and follows up with ‘Till The Day I Die’, which he points out is a David Coverdale composition – throughout the evening he’s as happy playing others’ songs as his own.  And it’s a never-released Rory Gallagher track, ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ that provides one of the first highlights, with Kirkpatrick’s vocal hinting at Rory’s singing style and a measured, tasteful solo from Marsden.

‘Time Is Right For Love’ is hauled out from the nether regions of Whitesnake’s first album, Trouble, a song that Marsden says was dismissed by the whole band after one outing.  But he’s right to suggest that it’s an unfairly overlooked little gem, which in this light but warm incarnation feels like Bernie is channelling his inner Van Morrison.  It’s a good example of how songs can realise their potential in different styles.  He introduces ‘Is This Love’ with a tongue in cheek suggestion that Coverdale should have given him a writing credit for it.  Like Robben Ford, say, Marsden has a light voice that lacks the oomph and personality of truly great singers, but he’s tuneful and has a decent spoonful of soul, and not for the last time delivers a vocal that probably does the song more justice than ol’ DC could do these days.

He takes the piss out of some of Coverdale’s pretensions in the way only a mate could, doing a fair imitation of his Redcar-gone-AWOL accent, but at the same time gives him credit where it’s due.  Peter Green’s monosyllabic chat is similarly mimicked in the intro to ‘Dragonfy’, an old Fleetwood Mac song penned by Danny Kirwan and covered by Marsden on Shine – Green agreed to collaborate on the song but then no more was heard from him for months.  It’s another standout though, as Marsden demonstrates a lovely tone and produces a wonderfully relaxed solo very much in the spirit of Green.

He plays ‘Dragonfly’ on a twin-neck electric, having already made use of its 12-string option in the service of ‘Ain’t Gonna Cry No More Today’ – again, acknowledging that the song came from Micky Moody rather than himself.  Nevertheless, his playing highlights the lightly ringing chords to which the song owes much of his appeal.

A spare, earthy acoustic blues heralds the closing stretch, in which Marsden comments on the explosive success of ‘Here I Go Again’ in the years since he left Whitesnake.  Interestingly, in this twin acoustic rendition, with Jim Kirkpatrick supplying harmonies, the song sounds like something that could easily have been recorded by the Eagles rather than going global in the heavily-coiffed 1987 version of David Coverdale’s outfit.

Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love (In The Heart Of The City)’ is a temptation for a soulful singalong, before Mac’s ‘Oh Well’ brings the night to a rousing end.  Marsden introduces it by recalling how he was bluntly informed by Peter Green that he was playing the riff wrong.  Not an observation that would often be made of Bernie Marsden, I imagine.  He is, as Jon Lord apparently put it, “a talented little sod”.

Flashback #4 - David Coverdale

It must have been early 1976 when I got hold of Deep Purple’s Made In Europe.  It was the first Purple live album I got my ears around, and something of an epiphany – this was the real deal.  And listening to it now, it’s still a damn fine hard rock album.  What brings it to mind now though, in a blues context, is ‘Mistreated’ – interpolating, as the sleeve notes put it, ‘Rock Me Baby’ – and the way that I particularly identify the track with David Coverdale.

"Ere's a song for ya!"

It’s a great performance on Made In Europe, but it went on to become a mainstay of the Whitesnake repertoire, and you might say a template for their especially bluesy brand of rock in the Marsden/Moody line-up.  I dare say Coverdale had performed it live during his solo spell before forming Whitesnake, but my key recollection of it making an impression with the latter was when they did a tour of small UK clubs on the back of the Snakebite EP released in 1978.

There was a review in Sounds of a gig at, I’m pretty sure, the Redcar Coatham Bowl, probably written by their then North East of England correspondent Phil Sutcliffe.  As I recall, he was a writer was of eclectic interests, fair minded, but not someone whose tastes I would ordinarily have expected to run to an outfit such as Whitesnake.  But their performance of Bobby Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City’ got his attention, and next thing he was gripped by Coverdale gulping his air into his lungs, the better to bawl “AH BIN MISTREATED!”  Or something like that.

Anyway, spot on I reckon.  I’ve always thought of it as a song that, vocally, Coverdale “owns”.  Back then I was an even bigger fan of Rainbow, both for Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar and Ronnie James Dio’s vocals.  But their version of ‘Mistreated’ on the live album Onstage somehow never did it for me in the same way.  Whatever else I might think about David Coverdale, his blues-belting vocals made this his song.  Check out this performance by Purple at the California Jam in 1974, with both Blackmore and Coverdale giving it plenty!

Journey to the Blues #1

Mainstream superstars the Strolling Bones

The enthusiasm for the blues was a long time coming, and at the same time always there.  I latched on to hard rock during my teenage years in the mid-Seventies, becoming a fan of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Bad Company when they had already peaked.  I was too young to have encountered Cream at the height of their influence, and the Stones were now mainstream superstars, their evangelism for Chicago blues part of their early history.  The Allman Brothers were just a name to me.  But it didn’t take much to recognise that the blues was obviously an essential ingredient in much of the music I liked.

So it was natural for me to take in blues music through the likes of Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, Whitesnake (of the classic Moody and Marsden period), AC/DC, Pat Travers, Lynyrd Skynyrd et al. But my enjoyment was still filtered through the lens of heavy rock, without much direct connection to its roots. Still, I took on board the fact that Zeppelin had, shall we say, leaned heavily on a number of blues artists for much of their early material.  I noted too, that ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City’, a key song in Whitesnake's repertoire, was a cover of a hit for some blues-soul singer called Bobby Bland.

And that’s pretty much the way things stayed for a couple of decades.  My love of rock music took a back seat at times.  But when I did give it some attention I would occasionally bump into the blues in one form or another.  Until a few things began to come together that started me more directly on a journey to the blues . . .

You can read Journey To The Blues #2 here.