Additional trackinfo
When Sykes, Dunbar and Murray were fired, 'Here I go again' had
not yet been finished; thus Vandenberg and Cuomo were called in
to complete it.
Notes/Comments
Produced by Mike Stone & Keith Olsen.
This album was issued with different titles throughout
the world: Just plain Whitesnake in the States, Serpens Albus in Japan and
1987 in Europe.
Also, all releases have diffrent songs included and the tracks comes in diffrent order. I can't list
all versions here, so I have just scrambled down all the songs that
has appeard on ANY of the releases, including the CD versions. Sorry about that.
Note that this album contains two reworked versions from the "Saints & sinners"
album, namely Here I go again and Crying in the rain.
Reviews
The "Serpens Albus" of this album, and the "annuit coeptis" of "Slip of the
Tongue", combined with other classical references in previous songs (see my
comments on "Burn" and "Lie Down" from "Trouble"), I am convinced that David
must have had a Latin class or two in his past.
The song "Straight for the Heart" is a standard type of Roman love elegy,
itself derivative of Greek, called "paraclausithyron". The central image is
that of a man shut out of his lover's house. Typical scenes include an
attack, physical or verbal, on the door of the woman's house, complaints of
being treated unfairly along with accusations that the woman is unfaithful,
and a certain vacillation between aggressive male posturing and
obsequiousness.
Consider "Straight for the Heart":
I'm coming round to see you,
Kicking down your door - This opening line sets the stage and places the
poem in the Roman elegiac tradition.
I've got to tell you girl
I really can't take no more - The statement of complaint over unfair
treatment.
'Cos I've been hearing about you
Everybody says you're front page news
Laying it down, all around the town
Giving all the boys the blues - And once again, infidelity, or the rumour
of it, seems to be the reason.
Stand and deliver in the name of love,
I'm coming after you,
I'll tell you want I'm gonna do
I'm going straight for the heart,
Gonna drive you crazy
Going straight for the heart
I'm gonna drive you insane - This verse and chorus state the aggressive
male intent to take the woman back by force of some kind.
I never loved a woman
The way that I love you
I can't escape the feeling,
You don't know what you're putting me through
So stand and deliver in the name of love
My heart is in your hand,
So try to understand - Just as with a love-sick lover, the character
switches from the attack to a more abject position, admitting that the
mistress is, after all, in control.
Despite its good reputation and tremendous commercial success, I have to
confess that I still don't care for this album very much. There are high
points:- 'Still Of The Night' is an undoubted classic, with Coverdale's
new, chrome-plated Rock God screaming fitting sublimely over Sykes' Heavy
Metal riffing, and the re-makes of 'Here I Go Again' and 'Crying In The
Rain' pack a tremendous punch - but the rest of the material is so cliched
and typically '80s as to be cringeworthy. And 'Bad Boys' sounds like a song
about male prostitutes. Worth getting hold of for the aforementioned gems,
just don't expect too much from the rest of the album.
Want your review of this album here? Mail it to me!

[ back ] David Coverdale - The Soldier of Fortune website.