This past summer was something of a renaissance for cheese-metal bands, what with the unheralded, and perhaps unwarranted, resurrection of not one but two, not two but four, major players of the 80s hair-rock scene back in action: two tours, my friends, each pairing bands-the disposable attractions of Poison and Warrant on the left and the surreal combo of Van Halen frontmen Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth on the right. Wow. Hearing about these tours not only made me think how desperately infertile the current pop scene must be to have to rehash these dinosaurs, it also reminded me of those heady high-school days when such bands walked the earth in tight spandex pants, confident and supreme. Admittedly, I was not a big fan of the genre, but I was not immune to its wayward charms. This weekend, I decided to go back to those days and revisit one such motley crew. Their name, you ask in wondering anticipation? Whitesnake, my friends.
Okay, so like never mind the obvious masterpiece that is “Here I Go Again”, which only someone who lives in a cave without any hair styling products could have missed; the brilliance of the ‘Snakes is deeper, or rather more shallow, than that. Shallowness is, in fact, part of that brilliance. Let us remember that this band was big in the eighties, when superficial was the name of the game. Whitesnake played that game with style.
They had the look. Not only did they have the hair, they had the five most impressive sets of cheekbones this side of Grace Jones. They had the sound, ricocheting guitar squalls and juvenile innuendos so slickly over-produced that they didn’t have to be wet to be slippery. What set them apart, however, was that they were so goddamn earnest about it. If any band can raise doubts about whether Spinal Tap was serious or not, Whitesnake is that band. Listening to them, one wonders if maybe, just maybe, this kind of music is for real.
The Spinal Tap reference is, of course, unavoidable. The resemblance is almost eerie. I mean when a guy sings a line like “Y’know you melt my ice cream with your body talk”, he’s got to be kidding, right? Yet there never seems a knowing laugh lurking behind lead singer David Coverdale’s yowl. It’s amazing that any band, in the wake of Tap’s monumental joke, could even attempt to do this stuff seriously. Yet, Whitesnake means it. And that, my friends, is, if not brilliant, at least incredibly courageous.
Whitesnake had the credentials to pull it off too. Singer Coverdale used to front Deep Purple, a band not unknown to kick some ass from time to time. Lead guitarist Steve Vai (a late addition to the band) used to gig with Frank Zappa, of all people.
My Whitesnake album of choice is 1989’s Slip of the Tongue. This is Whitesnake’s swan song, and it showcases the band’s sublime ability to make pure amusement out of puerile trash. This is also Vai’s first outing with the ‘Snakes, and there is nary a moment on the album which does not vibrate with his caterwauling, frenetic playing. Trying to play air guitar to this stuff is a full body workout. Yeah, it’s all clichés, but it’s the right clichés. And yes, it might be soulless, but the technical skill is staggering, and that’s more than any Ratt or Cinderella could say for itself.
Coverdale deserves high marks too. His nail-on-the-head Robert Plant impression is blue ribbon worthy. But it is in his lyrics that Coverdale really shows his prowess. He is the Bob Hope of Hair Metal, spitting out sidesplitting one-liners left and right with deadpan conviction. My favorite songs-songs, mind you, that I would listen to proudly on any juke box in any bar; I sincerely enjoy them-are the comic masterpieces “Cheap an’ Nasty” and “Kittens Got Claws”. They are both, quite simply, gems of the genre. The latter, for example, features the nearly Joycean double-entendre “…you wear those skintight dresses with your G-string tuned to ‘A'”. How fabulous is that? “Cheap an’ Nasty” wins first place in my heart, though, for it’s memorable chorus of “You’re cheap an’ nasty, so come on an’ do the dirty with me.” And they say that romance is dead. All in all, it’s a rollicking ride; it’s just too bad that no one ever told Coverdale he was so funny.
The rest of the album is not quite as entertaining; still, with the notable exception of the genuinely awful “The Deeper the Love”, each song on here is as least as good any of the big eighties metal hits collected on any of the big eighties metal compilations. “Judgment Day” is as convincing a “Kashmir” rip-off as any. Then there is the anthemic “Wings of the Storm”, which, if there was any justice in this cruel world, should by all rights have been the theme to Top Gun. All in all, Slip is a defining moment in hair band history, the crystallization of a hormone-addled dream. If that does nothing for you, then I can’t help you. I can only say what I feel in my heart to be true: Whitesnake rules!