Whitesnake vs. Whitesnake: …and the winner is…

Like most people my age, the first time I ever heard Whitesnake was sometime around 1987. I remember listening to the radio one Friday night, like I always did, looking for new music to listen to. This song called “Still of the Night” came on and I remember thinking, “This is the coolest shit!” It kind of sounded like Led Zeppelin but it was still modern sounding and new. The DJ said that it was Whitesnake and as soon as I could I had my mom hauling my ass to the record store to pick up this Whitesnake album. When I got to Warehouse Records and Tapes I walked in and asked for the Whitesnake album. The long haired too cool for the school bus rocker dude behind the counter goes, “Which one dude?” What do you mean which one they have more than one? That was when I was taken to school on Whitesnake.

Mr. long haired rock n’ roll record store dude went on to tell me that Whitesnake had six albums before the one I was looking for with the first being released in the ‘70’s. “The 70’s” was all I needed to hear. I didn’t want to hear all this old person Whitesnake crapolla. I wanted the new and improved Whitesnake with the big hair and loud guitars. I wanted “Still of the Night” brah. Shaking his head at me he took me over to the Whitesnake section and pulled the vinyl copy of their 1987 self-titled album, handed it to me and said, “Little dude. You’ll grow up and someday you’ll realize just how awesome and how much better their older stuff is.” Yeah man, whatever you say. I paid up my 10 bucks took my album home and proceeded to rock out to some serious 1987 Whitesnake like “Here I Go Again”, “Bad Boys”, and “Children of the Night.” These guys could do no wrong in my opinion and quickly they became my favorite band. When Whitesnake toured as headliners in 1987, I was so pumped to see them. I did notice when seeing them live that they had played some songs like “Love Ain’t No Stranger” and “Guilty of Love” off of their previous album called, “Slide It In.” So back to the record store I go to buy “Slide It In.” How my parents let that one slide is beyond me but I got it and I loved that album even more than the 1987 album. It did sound a bit older but it still had a cool, heavy sound to it. I decided to take a chance and buy one of these “old” Whitesnake albums. I found out that the album “Saints and Sinners” had original versions of “Crying in the Rain” and “Here I Go Again” that were both on the 1987 album so I picked that one up. I excitedly put it on and to my dismay it sounded old. I put it back in my record box and went straight back to “Slide It In.”

In 1989 Whitesnake released “Slip of the Tongue” and I can remember that even then to my 16 year old self that most of what I was hearing on this album was kind of ridiculous. “Cheap N’ Nasty”, “Kittens Got Claws”, “Slip of the Tongue” all sounded about as ridiculous as it does now. Sometime during my senior year of high school in 1992, I remember thinking that almost all of those Whitesnake songs started to sound pretty ridiculous. I still dug hearing songs like “Crying in the Rain”, “Don’t Break My Heart Again” and a handful of songs from Slide it In but some of that corny 87’/Slip of the Tongue stuff just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I decided one day to bust out my old “Saints and Sinners” album and much to my surprise I was really digging this. I even found this original version of “Crying in the Rain” to be superior to the cheesy metal version from the 1987 album. At this point in the game I was starting to grow up a bit and this classic Whitensnake stuff not only wasn’t as lyrically ridiculous as the later stuff but the music itself was so fucking good.

My next move was to go pick up some more classic Whitesnake so off to the local record (now CD) store. I picked up a copy of “Live…in the Heart of the City”, put it on, and the minute “Come On” started I was blown away. When I heard the live version of “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” I was floored. What happened to this band? Was this really the same band that did “Is This Love?” Was this the same band that did “Cheap N’ Nasty?” Well, of course it wasn’t. This was an era of Whitesnake when what mattered was the music the most. They weren’t concerned with being a hip or good looking band because those were some frumpy looking motherfuckers. 20 something years later, when I want to listen to Whitesnake, I find myself going right back to albums like “Live in the Heart of the City”, “Ready An’ Willing”, “Saints and Sinners”, and “Slide It In.” Those albums still sound raw, kick ass, and full of hunger. Hell, they are so fun to listen to. When I put on that 1987 album, it sounds so overproduced, dated, and just flat out corny. Who needs “Is This Love?” and “Here I Go Again” when you can have “Fool For Your Loving” and “Mistreated”? Much like Mr. long haired rock n’ roll record store dude told me back in 1987, I grew up and I realized just how awesome this classic, blues based, hard rock Whitesnake was. Thanks Mr. long haired rock n’ roll record store dude, wherever you are.

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