Bernie Marsden talks to Jason Barnard about his lifelong love of the blues and friendship with Peter Green, his time with Cozy Powell’s Hammer and Paice Ashton Lord, and partnership with David Coverdale and Whitesnake.
One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is your new box set Big Boy Blues And Green. It’s a decade of your music from around the mid 90s to the mid 2000s. And it’s very much on a blues theme.
Well, everything I’ve done really has always been based on blues stuff from when I was a kid. Once that’s in you, it’s like permanent, you don’t get rid of it. All my stuff, all through the bands I’ve been in has been pretty much, not blues based but that kind of feel. I was never ever a pop type person. I got lucky I suppose, later on in the career and wrote some pretty good stuff which isn’t blues. But the blues will always be close to my heart. And that period of time, I was playing a lot live and had some really good lineups and done some great festivals. I was going in and out of the studio and just putting down stuff all the time. Is it really 10 years? Yes, it must be probably more than 10 years actually. I never thought about it like that.
And then in your excellent autobiography, ‘Where’s my guitar?’, you talked about the influence, as many of your peers had, of British bands like The Beatles and The Hollies.
Yeah.
But then the blues came and I understand that really started to hook you in.
I was lucky I had a friend who turned me on to people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, not long after I’d heard the Beatles and The Hollies. Whereas everybody was listening to all the British bands and being influenced by them, I thought, I’m not so keen on this and then I found out that those very people were listening to Chuck Berry, and they were listening to Howlin’ Wolf as well. So I thought, well, I can go for the real thing here. So instead of getting stuck into my Beatles albums, which I did, but not to the point where they influenced me so much. I thought, well, I’ll listen to Howlin’ Wolf. That was when I started to play the guitar in earnest.
There’s a passage in your autobiography where you talk about the moment that you found you could reproduce some of Sonny Boy Williamson’s harmonica parts on the guitar. You’ve also got your version of ‘Do It If You Wanna’ on that set, too.
That’s right. I found that Sonny Boy was very accessible because even though he was a featured harmonica player, he always had some good guitar players on there playing good stuff in the background. And while I was playing along with those records, and I was about 16 or 17, I soon realised I was playing his parts as well. So basically, that’s a blues bass thing that you can imitate, and that’s why the harmonica works so well as a blues instrument.
And as the Sixties progressed, there was a range of bands that came onto the scene that were part of what is now known as the sort of British blues boom. Fleetwood Mac, the original version, were at the vanguard of that. On the first CD of this set, which is your album Green And Blues, you pay tribute to much of that.
Well, Fleetwood Mac were my boys. There were some really good bands around, Chicken Shack, Savoy Brown, lots of good bands. But Fleetwood Mac, I’d been listening to Peter Green with John Mayall anyway. And there was no contest really, I used to travel as far as I could in those days to go and see them play live. And I saw them live many times. When I look back on it now I’m very fortunate.
Great versions as well. You’ve got things like ‘Love That Burns’ and ‘Man Of The World’. How was it trying to capture Peter’s sound?
I think once you get that thing in your head with Peter Green, nobody could play like Peter Green. I think BB King said that. And if he says it, well I’m going to take note. It was just his feel, the feel that he had and getting that kind of sound and trying to be, less is more kind of thing.
And your story is weaved with linkages with Fleetwood Mac. Everything from the time you took your demo tape to Mike Vernon at Blue Horizon.
Yeah, I tried so much. I thought, well, if other people can do it maybe I can get my band involved, but Mike Vernon was very, very nice. He saw me as a solo artist rather than the band and at the time, I was about 17. The band was pretty hot. And we were very good mates. And I thought, No, I want to stay with a band. He saw me as a singer first off, funnily enough. I’ve seen Mike since, many times and it’s like, what could have been? We’ll never know. But it was a good time to go somewhere like Blue Horizon and not get just thrown out the door. They really listened. And Mike actually came to a gig to see me play, which I was very impressed by.
You’ve got stories where you were bumping into Peter Green, and then after Peter Green left the group, around 1970, your early group Skinny Cat actually opened for Fleetwood Mac.
We did. We opened for Fleetwood Mac in Oxford, with Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer. I’m pretty sure Christine was there as well. She must have been but I was mostly interested in the guitar players. They were really good. It’s a gig that doesn’t appear in their official biography, funnily enough. But I know it was there because my mates were playing with me. [laughs]
And on the set as well, there’s tracks like ‘Place In My Heart’, a song that you wrote that has got a similar feel to that early Mac sound.
I think so. That’s my writing tribute to that period. Joe Bonamassa recorded that song and I’ve just done a new version of it with Elkie Brooks.
Even better.
Yeah. So we wait to see what happens with that. Good song.
There’s great alternative takes on that set as well.
Yeah, I must have felt very strongly about it or I wouldn’t have done all the different versions. But I always thought it should be sung by somebody else for some strange reason. I wouldn’t say it was dedicated to Peter, but it’s dedicated to that period, that’s for sure.
And you worked with lots of great musicians in that period in your band. Andy Pyle, Geraint Watkins, Henry Spinetti.
As I said before, I had some great lineups. And the lineup that ended up recording was probably the best one, which is the way it should be really. Henry and Andy together, sensational. And I had Graham Walker as well.
So the next step was to play some of that material. And there’s the live set that you recorded at The Granary in 2003. But it also covers some soul, like ‘Hold On I’m Coming’, so you’ve got a broader range.
It was more or less a celebration of the music I grew up with really.
There’s a great quote in the liner notes. People may know but it’s just incredible. The compliment that BB King made that you’re one of the white men that can play the blues.
Yeah, he was very gracious. I only found out the best part of 10 years after he said it. The guy who interviewed him sent me a transcript of the radio show. I was absolutely knocked out. I didn’t know. I did get a chance to thank him for that. So that was nice.
To go back to some of the fantastic stories in ‘Where’s My Guitar?’, and your recollections of working with Cozy Powell. It seemed that working in Cozy Powell’s Hammer with hit singles like ‘Na Na Na’, were the moment where things really started to click for your career.
I think so. Working with Cozy was a turnaround for me because I’d been working with some good people before and learning my craft really. But Cozy in the studio, and Cozy as an artist was kind of a level up. He knew what he wanted to do and he had no issues with going in the studio. All the time before that when I went into a recording studio, I was kind of in awe, and Cozy would say “It’s just a room. Get on with it.” It changed my attitude.
You were working with Mickie Most quite a bit in that period.
Yeah, Mickie was a tour de force to work with. He basically took me on board with him. Me and Chris Spedding were his house guitar players for about 18 months, something like that, about a year/18 months. I did loads of sessions for him, which was always great. There was always extra money at the time. He treated me really well, he was a really good bloke. He was a difficult man I think business wise, but I never had that side of him because he hired me to play the guitar. He obviously thought I was pretty good. [laughs]
Clearly. People won’t know about those Hot Chocolate hits that you played on.
No. I didn’t know about them for a long time. It was the bass player in Hot Chocolate who reminded me. I’d forgotten about doing it. Because with Mickie, you used to work with backing tracks, not finished songs. He would say, “Oh, this one’s in G” or “This one’s in A” and whatever. And I’d go, “Okay, what do you want me to do?” He said “You’re pretty good without that wah wah thing. Get stuck in.” That kind of thing.
Mickie Most seemed to have a very clear idea of what he wanted and the sound because it seems that he was influential in not continuing to work with you and Cozy Powell.
He was the influence in making Cozy Powell and in fact, in breaking Cozy Powell because when we put the band together, we were ready to go and do an album. And he basically came in the studio and said, “Look, you blokes know what you’re doing. You know too much about recording. I can’t really go in the studio with you”. It was all very amicable but it was a bit devastating at the time, because we were ready to record and it broke the band up.
You’ve also said that when you played with Babe Ruth but then moved on to Paice Ashton Lord, it was another step up in your musical journey.
That was like working with three Cozy Powell’s. Jon and Ian were so experienced. They’d had fantastic success with Deep Purple. Ashton was just different, Ashton was a one off. He was a comedian-jazzer. But he was so funny. You’ve read the book, you can tell how much I loved him. Working with him was a delight. Every day, you just never knew what was gonna happen. Usually we were down the pub.
A shift in sound from Deep Purple, a much broader range in Paice Ashton Lord. Quite ambitious playing with them.
It was years before its time. The arch Purple fans took it on board, but that was about it. The rest of the fan club was “No no, this is not heavy metal. This is not rock. What are they doing?” They voted with their feet because the album sold very little. And we had to cancel more gigs than we did. But it was a great experience. And recording the album is one of the highlights of my career.
I assume it was quite a collaborative process, because your name is on the credits for writing quite a few of those tracks including ‘Remember The Good Times’.
I was pretty much involved in most of it, to be honest with you. We came up with a bit of a deal where PAL would appear on some tracks. But I was involved in the tunes.
A great story about you meeting Roger Moore at the time.
[laughs] That was something else. I was like “Excuse mate. I can’t get in.” He turned around and it was him. [laughs] He was most interested in the backline and everything and the guitars and stuff. I took him in. He had all his gear on as well. He was dressed as James Bond, it was really funny. I was showing him around the back line. He was looking at the drum kit and stuff. Really nice guy, genuinely interested. And then I was lucky enough. He said, “Well, you’ve shown me around. So why don’t you come on the set one day”. And that was fantastic. I was his guest on the set. So that was really nice.
It was in the Paice Ashton Lord period that you first met David Coverdale.
Yeah, we were recording the second album in Munich and he lived about an hour from Munich at the time. I think he just basically came down to see Jon and say hello. That’s when we met and we got on really well. We had the same influences. We were single children. We never had any brothers or sisters and we bonded quite well very early.
It was your idea to do a remake of ‘Ain’t No Love In The Heart of the City’.
I’d always loved the song and I knew that David would sing it fantastically. So it was me who took it into the studio, that first session.
A different version to the Bobby Bland original.
I didn’t want to do a straight copy of it. And David heard it as a blues, so we slowed it down and came up with a couple of different ideas. We put that opening riff onto it. It was Micky Moody who did that. It was just an opening riff and it stuck and the people loved it from day one.
And it was the idea of writing for BB King that sparked off ‘Fool For Your Loving’.
‘Fool For Your Loving’ was written for BB King. I’ve heard a few interviews where David says “I wrote ‘Fool For Your Loving’ for BB King”. Well, that’s not correct. “We”, the word “we” should be used a little bit more often. But it was the idea. Once we got into it we were saying, “This would be great”. BB King had done an album called Midnight Believer at the time. It was kind of funky. It was a different version. I do have a version of what Whitesnake would have done in the can actually, which I’ve never put out. With Geraint Watkins playing keyboards on funnily enough. That’s in the can somewhere. It’s a good version.
That’s a song that took off live and became a bit of a live anthem.
Absolutely. That broke us in this country, and pretty much in Europe as well. To this day it’s really popular. It’s not the biggest Whitesnake song of course, but it’s one of the big ones.
And it was management and contractual issues that kind of contributed to things…
Not kind of, totally. We were poorly managed Jason. We got to a point where it was like, what’s going on, is there any point in carrying this on? We’re not making any money, basically. We didn’t break up with a row or a fight or anything. I wish we had in a way, it would have been more dramatic. But we just drifted apart really. That was how it was to be. That was how it happened. It’s a shame though.
Such potential because towards the end of that period when you were in the original Whitesnake, you’ve got things like ‘Here I Go Again’, which showed the potential of what the band could have become.
Yes, I believe that. The potential was completely taken away from us, because we would have broken through. We would have done another record. I don’t think it would have been ‘Slide It In’. ‘Slide It In’ for me is a very disappointing record. I think until they did the 87 album, as a Whitesnake album, there wasn’t much going on really. I look back on it now. There’s two different Whitesnakes. It’s like the Fleetwood Mac thing. Fleetwood Mac with Peter, and there’s a Fleetwood Mac with Lindsey and Stevie Nicks. But equal in their parts, as important as each other, but very different.
You remade ‘Here I Go Again’, a live version that’s on the set is quite radically different.
With the girl singing?
Yes, Sharon.
Yes, it’s very emotional. It’s very poignant, and she sings it beautifully. People just want to sing the song. She kept saying to me can we do ‘Here I Go Again? I said, “No”. She said “Why don’t we do it quiet with me singing?”. And I thought, “Oh, ok”. It went down so well on stage that when we did a live album I just kept in.
Even in Whitesnake, you were releasing your own material like ‘Look At Me Now’.
I was encouraged by David, to be honest with you. David was a very big force behind me making a solo album because I was writing a lot of stuff that I’d say, “What about this for the band” and they’d go “I’m not sure that’s good for the band, it’s a bit poppy”. He said “Because you write like that, why don’t you do a solo album?”. So he was very good and he pushed me a lot to do it. I’m glad I did now. I’m very proud of those two solo albums.
You were working with such great musicians for those solo albums.
Yeah, I had a great black book in those days. Well, I still do! [laughs]
One of your more recent albums is Kings. There’s great material like ‘Help The Poor’ on there. You didn’t pick something obvious in that song, you picked a bit more of an obscure BB King track.
I wanted to do something that was like going back in time to pick the songs I created a career from really. But ‘Help The Poor’ was one I always liked. It was never one that he played live very much. I just thought it was a great vibe. And certainly nobody can play like him or sing like him, but you do your best.
Almost a decade ago, David Coverdale featured on your song ‘Trouble’ from your solo album Shine. Was that a moment of rounding things off in a bit more of a complete way.
Yeah, to a certain extent. I rang him up and just said, “I’m doing ‘Trouble’, I’d like you to sing it”. And I thought he might say, oh, I don’t know. You better speak to my manager. And he said straight away, “Of course. Send it over.” He did it great, and sang it in the same key. He’s been very supportive. He was very keen. When I told other people, David Coverdale’s singing on the album, asking other people to get involved was easy.
I think you recorded some of that with a group at Abbey Road, didn’t you?
I did the whole album at Abbey Road. It was really good. Joe Bonamassa came down and played on it. And I had the late great Jimmy Copley playing drums, who was just incredible. It’s nearly 10 years since that project started and I’m very proud of it. It was a good comeback album for me. The record company did a good job on it, the guys in Holland. It kind of put me back out there again and I’ve never stopped since.
What’s the future for you? You’re releasing some great solo albums at the minute. Have you got plans to record, play live?
I’ve got a studio album in the can that’s coming out I think in July. It’s very different. I don’t know what to say about it really, because I’m leaving it for other people to make their minds up. I’ve got everything out of my system, now what with Kings, Trios and the Chess album. And the Shine album, the rock thing I’ve done. I’m concentrating more on songwriting, and I think it shows up a lot on this album. It’s going to be called Working Man. I’m not doing much live at the moment, I’ve not been in the best of health for the last six months. So I’m not sure what the live situation is going to be. I’m recovering ok now, as you can probably hear, but live isn’t on the map at the moment. But the album will be out in July and I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people.
That’s fantastic. As you say, you’ve covered so many bases yet in terms of your music. So it’s time for something new to add to your repertoire.
I’m 71 years old now and I don’t want to be singing “Come over here, baby, I love you, let’s spend the night together”. I know where I’m at. I think Robert Plant has got that down to a tee. The great Jeff Beck continually reinvented himself. It’s taken me much too long to have that attitude, I think.
Thank you so much for your time. It’s been great listening to this superb set.
I’m glad Cherry Red has put it out. It’s a good idea. I wouldn’t have thought of doing it so I’m glad. Especially if people get to hear the Peter Green stuff and people go back to Fleetwood Mac and think “I didn’t know that was Fleetwood Mac”. Well, it was. Without him there would be no Fleetwood Mac. [laughs]
Your album got overshadowed by the excellent Gary Moore album in that period. But I think you’ve recorded your album before Gary did, didn’t you?
I did. It got overshadowed by Gary, because Gary was a star. He was a mate of mine. In fact, I delayed the release of it because I knew that Blues For Greeny was coming out. And it would have looked like I was just jumping on the bandwagon. But I recorded mine before he recorded his and used his guys. I think it miffed him a bit! [laughs] We were good mates. We were close. Like I got close to Peter at the end as well. When I look at it now, it’s strange how there’s two Whitesnakes and the very biggest band that I ever loved, there were two of them as well. So we run in parallel in a way. I got really close to Peter at the end of his life. So that’s a joy to me.
That must have been amazing to spend time with him, and especially in those latter years.
To drive to his house and have him open his front door, and I’d say, “How are you Peter?”. And he would say, “All the better for seeing you.” That made me feel so good.
Well, it doesn’t get any better than that. Thank you so much again.
You’re welcome.
Further information
Bernie Marsden: Big Boy Blues And Green (1995-2005), 4CD Box Set
An audio version of this podcast will be released soon.
