Hey Uwe~ & All Other WS Fans!!

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

Chris Frazier & Uriah Duffy are out & Brian Tichy is the new skins man.
A new bassmon hasn't been chosen....send in your resume, Uwe!

This info was revealed a month ago but I missed it cuz I ain't online much anymore:

www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=141841


I'm sad to see Uriah go. Alas
He's a super talented & very cool cat!!
He sang backup well too.

Glad to know that a new album is underway & DC is very pleased with lyrics for the Title Track.

[uwe]

Duffy looked great, but his playing was plain (in WS, it might have been different with Sly Stone), not a match for Mendoza, not for Sarzo and certainly not for the great Neil Murray.

That said, Whitesnake hasn't been a band since the 1987 album. Never forget how nobody from that album - except Coverdale - was in the hired hands touring line up.

My style of bass playing wouldn't last a rehearsal in today's WS. DC has dumbed down his music so much that it grates. When Vince Neil plays dumbed down music, then that is ok, he really can't do much more with his voice and intellectual might, all credit to him. When Coverdale does the same, it hurts given his rich musical legacy and ability to put emotion in a song. WS today is a bit as if Leonardo Di Caprio (who has become a great actor, he was brilliant in Shutter Island) decided to only play in porn flics from now on or Titanic I, II, III, IV etc. A waste.  

But I'm a faithful type so I'll buy the new WS CD no matter what cohorts are allowed to be in the band for ten minutes of fame and I'll see the tour, hoping he'll sing live this time.

Uwe

 

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

Edit: I may be missing any humor that was intended in the original post here (I didn't see it at all). I'm open to restoring it if I can be convinced I was wrong, but to me this post crossed a line that we're trying to avoid here.

We all have opinions and Uwe stated his without being personally insulting to anyone here. Any responses should follow suit.

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

Calling Uriah's bass playing "plain" is insulting!
Uriah is way more than a handsome lad; he has a great personality! Which is of utmost importance to Coverdale--WhiteSnake is built on the charm & eloquence of a true gentleman who is THE British LORD of ROCK!

(Edit: if you can't express a contrary opinion without name calling, don't express it at all.)

[uwe]

I have nothing against Uriah, when WS toured Frankfurt he was in the clothes boutique my son worked at during an internship and my son said he was nice enough. That doesn't make his bass playing on the last WS CD inventive though, Ter, you have mentioned here how you saw Cream in the late sixties, you know all about inventive bass playing then. Name me one inventive or even just musically interesting or unusual or memorable bass line on that CD. There is none, it's almost all root note "beefing up the bass drum". And that makes Uriah's bass playing on that album plain, not him as a person. I'm sure he can do better.

I've been a WS fan since 1977 and have just seen too many line ups come and go to get excited about individual players who play on tours and CDs but have no musical input whatsoever. For a band whose music was once shaped by the mighty Paice/Murray rhythm section, that hurts.

I also wonder whether Coverdale would ditch his musicians quite as freely and often if he thought them to be vital to his music. He doesn't. With the exception od perhaps Doug Aldrich they are all hired, uncommitted hands, immediately replaceable and they know it and act like it too.

All that doesn't say any thing about Uriah as a person, but having seen him on stage, you could see that his heart wasn't really into what he was doing. I'm not surprised he didn't last long. The one person in the band he seemed genuinely attracted to/be friends with was Reb Beach. And Reb is certainly only in WS for the buck, at times he even seems to be amused about the music he plays there and the more traditional guitar hero stance Doug Aldrich takes in the line up. On stage, Reb and Uriah came across - for lack of a better comparison - like a couple freshly in love. I don't know about the sexual orientation of either of the two gentlemen and it doesn't affect my judgement whether they have a place in WS or not, but they were genuinely enthused with each other, it was cute to watch, they were giggling schoolgirls, always looking for close contact to each other.

Uwe

[Highlander]

"Ere's a song for ya...!"

I went to see Whitesnake from pretty much the very start (Duck Dowle and Pete Solley on the drum seat and keys, respectively when I saw them for the first time at London's Lyceum) up until Bernie Marsden left, I even had a couple of pics in a tour program (one of Coverdale holding the Lovehunter program he had just signed, taken backstage at St Albans, the other was one of the backroom staff (Tina?) where they had cut Bernie Marsden out of the shot) and John Lord organised my tickets for the Rainbow Theatre anniversary shows; even saw them in Germany - I'm one of the voices you can hear (front row- stage left mic) singing "Ain't No Love..." as part of the "Hammersmith Chorus" on the first live recordings made at Hammersmith, and again up the front for the next recordings in '80 - I saw them well into double figures, saw the spin-offs and when I could (Mick Moody used to jam Sunday lunch times in a pub called the Red Lion just down from where I lived - I was born round the corner from there; Paice and Murray depped a few with Gary Moore - a great one at the Marquee with Airey) but I just lost interest after they changed, after it went back to being the title of a solo LP and not a band...

I've never heard of Uriah Duffy before, I've not bought a Whitsnake CD since 1987, nor seen them since Marsden left, nor am I likely to...

Uriah Duffy may be a good bass player - I don't know - I looked at his resume on wiki and a lot of pop sprang out - not that there's anything wrong with that...

I just feel that everyone is intitled to their own opinions...

So, in my opinion, Neil Murray was the best bass-player in Whitesnake in any version I ever saw... he was also the nicest one I met, too...

[Freuds_Cat]

Have to admit I'm with Ken on this one. I have every WS album (and Coverdale album) up to 1987. To me they stepped over the line from Blues Rock to Rock Metal. I have no problem with metal, even old school pop metal but given the choice my listening preference is for the Murray, Paice, Marsden, Moody etc lineup. Uwe is right, it does look more like "the David Coverdale Band" post 87 rather than Whitesnake per se.

[uwe]

Ter is entitled to like and love plus zealeously defend today's Whitesnake/David Coverdale because whereas the affectionate interests of non-Yanks might lie with the old, bluesy line-up ("Bad Co with a kick up its butt" as Coverdale once said) that was a force to be reckoned with in Europe, UK and Australia, things were different in the US where WS meant nothing prior to Slide it In (probably the first album the old fans disliked) and only took off with the grandeur of 1987 recorded by Sykes/Murray/Airey/Dunbar before DC toured it with the Vandenberg/Campbell/Aldridge/Sarzo line-up (who IMHO never managed to replicate that sound live, there is a British "leanness" to 1987 that always eluded the Dutchman, the Irishman, the Yank and the Cuban). To most US listeners, DC will forever be the blond lionmaned frontman of late eighties WS while we Europeans still cringe at the sight of a peroxied Coverdale, I always liked his natural dark hair and I preferred him with a cute little beergut and a voice that could move you to tears to his late eighties image with a six-pack and Robert Plant-like falsetto shrieks. But that old David Coverdale is gone and he went by his own choice, I don't think it is a coincidence that the boy from Redcar in Northern England has now adopted US citizenship and prefers this view of Lake Tahoe




to the old North Sea shoreline view he had in Redcar.




Ter, I know you love WS and so do I, we just love different eras, I like this here, which is closer to The Faces than to Led Zep:





and find this here in comparison bloated and laboured, "larger than life", way too large for my European taste:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJHC5k86rKY&NR=1&feature=fvwp

For the life of me I will never understand how someone who as a young man in his early twenties helped shape the totally un-Zep sound of late DP



began to wish to reinvent himself as a Robert Plant clone and recycler of Jimmy Page riffs in his mid-thirties, and I'm not alone, Jon Lord thinks so too:



And while we're at it, name me one track of Uriah with WS where he has played as musically as Murray does here between, say, 3.30 and 4.15. I can't believe that as a drummer you cannot immediately spot and appreciate the difference.

[Basvarken]

Reb is certainly only in WS for the buck, at times he even seems to be amused about the music he plays there and the more traditional guitar hero stance Doug Aldrich takes in the line up.

When we did a support for Whitesnake I ran into Reb backstage when their drummer was doing the obligatory solo spot. I complimented Reb on his guitar playing. He shrugged and said "Oh it's a job". Like he wanted to apologise for not putting his heart into it.

[uwe]

I like Beach's playing, both rhythm and solo. Yes, it's more Steve Vai than Robert Johnson, but it seems to come from the heart and sometimes it's outright clever what he plays. With Doug Aldrich you get that overblown blues metal sound that to me sometimes lacks any fine nuance, every note, every tone is equally important and equally intense. Larger than life. Again.

[Rhythm N. Bliss]

I apologize for getting riled up & being insulting to Uwe, altho he's throwing poo at my fav band.
Amazing how a person who calls himself a fan can be so damn mean in his assessment of 'em.
This has happened before here. I won't contribute any more info about WS on this site ever again.
As for Doug Aldrich, he can speak very eloquently for himself:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3mDlJlR_o8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Yeah~ he's a full-fledged WS member & has been for much longer than any of the OLD guys.
~Peace & out

[Basvarken]

Oh he can play alright.
But I guess Uwe just misses the bluesy old Whitesnake.
Doug Aldridge has that über-compressed hi gain metal guitar shred sound, that first made it's entry with John Sykes when he joined WS.
Although he perhaps even had a little less g(r)ainy sound.

On stage WS have empty Marshall heads and empty cabs. Nothing in the amps but a 9 volts battery to light up the pilot light.
Both Doug Aldridge and Reb Beach use a pod for the guitar sound...
Guess they really don't care for real vintage tone.
 

[Highlander]

No Coverdale - it's all about the music here... no, nothing technically brilliant, not a Satriani or a Vai to be seen, but it is why I used to see them as often as I did...

[uwe]

Ter, I couldn't even read what you wrote when you were so incensed, it was edited before I became aware of it. Whatever it was, I would have seen it first and foremost as a sign how much you love the band and I appreciate that more than someone saying he doesn't care about WS one way or another. I still care about WS like you care about something you once loved and it has moved away from you. So don't stop posting WS news here, because I do find it interesting and do take note. Even bad news about WS is still interesting to me. And, perhaps, one day DC will record an acoustic solo album with Rick Rubin where he plays guitar (he's not a bad guitarist) and piano (ditto) himself. That will be a great one and I'll be patient. In the meantime, I find it both hilarious and reassuringly immature that men our age can still get worked up that much about a band and its music. Best!

Uwe

PS: My attachment to Herr Coverdale is till such that I only bought recently a Steve Vai instrumental CD that features a spoken intro of DC on one song. And I don't even like Steve Vai instrumentals. That is true madness!

[Freuds_Cat]

Uwe is right Ter, there are a lot of us that love WS regardless. It would be a shame if you were to stop posting info about them.

I have two LP's of the Slide it in album. One is the US release version, the other is the Europe/Australian release. The production is completely different to each other. The US version to me is very slick and IMHO over produced. The Euro/Aust version is more like their older production sound which was quite organic.  The songs are the same. The reason that I have a preference one way or the other is probably more to do with what I was used to hearing than any technical or musical superiority. It is interesting to be able to compare them though.