WHITESNAKE: 1987

Released in UK March 1987. (EMI 064-240737-1).


Featured tracks:
01. Still of the night
02. Bad boys
03. Give me all your love
04. Looking for love
05. Crying in the rain
06. Is this love
07. Straight for the heart
08. Don't turn away
09. Children of the night
10. Here I go again
11. You're gonna break my heart again
Personel involved:
David Coverdale (vocals)
John Sykes (guitar)
Neil Murray (bass)
Aynsley Dunbar (drums)
Bill Cuomo (keyboards)
Don Airey (keyboards)
Adrian Vandenberg (guitar)

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.

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