Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley You Can
Be Serious podcasts, Ladies and Gentlemen. Last episode, Jason and
I talked about what we were doing summer of eighty six. Jason,
do you know what David Coverdale was doing? Summer of
eighty six?
Speaker 3: David Coverdale was pushing his broken down white Jaguar out
of the middle of an intersection in Los Angeles. He
had five dollars to his name and a condiment his wallet,
and that's it.
Speaker 2: He was on his first date with a lady he
would later marry, who at the time had no idea
who he was or who White Snake was.
Speaker 3: Yes, the lovely iconic Tanny Katana.
Speaker 1: Time.
Speaker 2: Okay, everybody, we are here for the beginning of our
Summer of eighty seven series.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're gonna spend about, I don't know, six or
seven weeks in the summer of nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I love the summer of nineteen eighty seven. I can
remember MTV and going down into the pool and checking
out the girls whose clothes seem to fit a lot
better to me at that age.
Speaker 3: All right, Di, I know you're a golfer. Sure, when
you hit the ball and it goes in the rough,
it's hard to see.
Speaker 2: It is so hard to find.
Speaker 3: It's not cool when it's in the rough.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants a bunch of rough around there.
Speaker 3: You want it in the fair way and you want
it cleaned up so you can see the ball at
all times.
Speaker 2: Right, the smoother it is, the easier it is to see.
Speaker 3: That reminds me of our sponsor, Manscape dot com.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, manscape dot com. They have got incredibly good products.
They've sent us some and we're both totally amazed by
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Speaker 3: We've tried the weed whacker, we've tried the lawnmower. They've
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Speaker 2: You know, if you feel a little bit nervous about
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nose and it's an absolute distraction. Don't be one of
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out with that, and then once you feel secure about
how awesome these products are, you can feel a little
more comfortable about heading south of the border and taking
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Speaker 3: Take care of your rough fellas, it's just the right
thing to do. Head over to mandscape dot com, use
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on all the products.
Speaker 2: Guys. Don't forget it's easier to see a giraffe on
the plane than it is in the forest.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's good. Summer of nineteen eighty seven was thirty
five years ago. De It's hard to believe it's been
that long. So man, here's what we've got on the
docket coming up. Okay, so we've got a history of
White Snake. Then we're going to go track my track
through White Snake's nineteen eighty seven album, probably their best
known album. Then we're gonna do Motley Cruez Girls, Girls Girls.
These two bands toured together on the same bill. I
was not allowed to go that was Shucker. Yeah, parents
said no to that one. And then after that, we're
going to do RoboCop versus Predator. Okay, two awesome Summer Blockbusters,
and then we're gonna get together with the guys from
the Film by podcast and we are going to break
down Superman four versus Jaws The Revenge. Both came out
the summer of eighty seven.
Speaker 2: They were the highlight of the summer.
Speaker 3: Some of the worst movies of the eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeap. So before we get going on the second episode,
speaking of guests hosts, we have a new executive producer,
mister David Wright, who you will listener remember from our
Raising Hell versus Licensed to Ill Combo.
Speaker 3: It was an incredible four partor with Dave's help, Maan.
Dave was like Professor easy Rock right there.
Speaker 2: I wonder how he's gonna feel about being the executive
producer on a hair metal album.
Speaker 3: Dave, thank you very much. Dave's a good friend of ours. Dave,
We appreciate it. He texted us this week and said, oh, no,
I've done a thing.
Speaker 2: Guys, if you would like to be an executive producer
of our episodes, be sure and check out our Patreon page.
It's patreon dot com. Slash Shirley podcast that's s U
R E L Y Shirley podcast and for as little
as five dollars, a month. You can be an executive
producer and it goes up from there and we start
giving out gifts when you've given large donations, So please
check that out. If you don't have time for that,
be sure and leave us a five star rating. And
if you give us a review that has something like
here I Go Again.
Speaker 3: Or Still the Night or is this Love?
Speaker 2: Or Black and White Jaguar, then you will be entered
into a contest to win an awesome engraved ozarka tumbler.
Speaker 3: By the way, Patreons now receive bonus episodes. We're going
to do these many episodes once a month covering one
hit wonders and it's going to be awesome and it's
a little added bonus for all the Patreons out there.
It's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 2: Okay, guy, let's jump into the history of White Snake.
Speaker 3: History of White Snake.
Speaker 2: Well, as you might imagine, we've got to start with
David Coverdale.
Speaker 3: I don't know where I'm going, but us sum of yes,
he's the only constant in White Snake over the years.
Speaker 2: He is now. He was born in fifty one. He
was with a few bands when he became a teenager.
He was with a band called Vinted sixty seven in
sixty six and sixty eight. He was in the government
through seventy two, and then he was with a band
called the Fabulos of Brothers in seventy two and seventy three.
And then in nineteen seventy three he's reading his Melody
Maker magazine and he sees an article that says Deep
Purple is auditioning singers because Ian Gillian has left the band.
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: So when he was with the government, they and Deep
Purple had shared the same bill, and so he was like, oh,
I know those guys, and I would love to sing
for that band. So he sends in a tape and
a little later on they audition him, and in nineteen
seventy three he becomes the lead singer of Deep Purple.
Speaker 3: No I heard he was selling shoes. He goes from
shoe salesman to lead singer of Deep Purple at twenty
two years old.
Speaker 2: That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: Pretty good step up right there.
Speaker 2: I mean, And if you don't know Deep Purple, you
probably know My Woman from Tokyo or the infamous famous
Smoke on the water on the water. Sure, yeah, but
David Coverdale came along after those songs, but he was
still a good singer for the band. In seventy four,
they came out with Burn, which went gold.
Speaker 3: YEP.
Speaker 2: They played at the California Jam in front of two
hundred thousand fans. They had another album that year called
Stormbringer that also was gold. And then in seventy five,
Richie Blackmore, the guitarist, leaves you've got your original lead
singer gone and your lead guitarist. You probably have lost
what would most would consider the heart of the band.
But David Coverdale pleads with the other members of the
band and he's like, I know this American guitarist named
Tommy Bolan. I think he can bring us back to
where we need to be. And so with Tommy Bolan
they came out with Come Taste the Band in nineteen
seventy five.
Speaker 3: There is no sexual connotation with that, I'm quite sure,
oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen seventy six they had kind of a
lackluster tour because of that, that album was not well
received and by the end of seventy six, end of
the tour, Coverdale walks off the stage in tears and
resigns from the band, but he was told there was
no band to resign from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was over at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other band members had decided, well before, we're
not going to be banned after this. They just didn't
tell David.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So what he did in nineteen seventy seven is he
released a solo album and that solo album was called
White Snake. Now, I wonder why he called it white Snake.
Do you happen to know this joke? I do know
this hit me hip. Okay, you don't know why it's caught? No,
I have no idea. Tell me.
Speaker 3: Well, here's what he has said. Okay, okay, this band
name is named after his own penis.
Speaker 2: I expect that that was what the answer was. Like
I've always assumed that that's what the answer was, but
thank you for confirming. I appreciate that. So in seventy
eight he had another solo album called North Winds, and
then shortly after that he puts together the band that
would be White Snake. Now other than unlike the album,
white Snake is combined to be one word, and he
puts together this band with Mickey Moody and Bernie Marston. Yes,
Bernie Marston is important. You know why.
Speaker 3: Bernie Marston is the guy who helps him rite the
song Here I Go Again.
Speaker 2: Yep, and also ful for Your Loving. So several hits
for White Snake in their early days are Bernie Marston influenced,
and their first album is an EP called the Snake
Bite EP. So I wonder what snake bite would mean
in that scenario. I'm sure. No, all right, And at
this point I got to pass it to my friend.
I'm fading back. I'm doing the long pass. Can you
tell me the discography of White Snake from then on?
Speaker 3: Okay? Yes I can, and following with me the chart
history for these okay, okay, you can watch the success
start to happen. So in nineteen seventy eight, like you said,
they have their first album come out as White Snake,
and it's called Trouble. It goes to number fifty in
the UK. Okay, not bad didn't chart in the US?
No it did not. Okay, No it did not. Then
in nineteen seventy nine, you have the album that comes
out it's called love Hunter, that goes to number twenty
nine in the UK chart in the US, no it
did not.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Then in nineteen eight you have a album called Ready
and Willing. This goes to number six in the UK.
Couldn't chart, It did all right, number ninety in the US.
Speaker 2: Wow, ninety.
Speaker 3: Now this one is a little bit of note because
it has the song full for Your Lover for your
no More. That song was re released the fall of
nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 4: It was a big hit for them on the slip
of the Tongue album.
Speaker 3: Yep, trying to kind of rea do the success of
eighty seven, all right. Then in nineteen eighty one they
have an album called Come and Get It. It goes
to number two in the UK. It does not chart
in the US.
Speaker 2: No, you've anticipated my question there.
Speaker 3: Yes, And at this point they're financially in debt. They're
selling albums, huh, but they are going lower and lower
into debt. Okay, Albums cost money, they do, they do,
and tours cost money, all right, now, then stay with me.
In nineteen eighty two they released the album called Saints
and Sinners. On this album you have the song here
I Go Again and Crying in the Rain. Okay, they
sound bluesier and not as tight definitely. And we're going
to talk about what John Klaudner thought about these but
this goes to number nine in the UK, does not
chart in the US. Okay, And at this point now
we need to segue into the story of John Klaudner.
Speaker 2: Okay, So John Kalodner started as a photographer and a writer.
He was doing he was going to concerts and taking
pictures and writing music articles for different magazines, and then
he gets hired for Atlantic Records to do the same thing. Okay,
And one day they're having a big meeting and the
president of Atlantic Records says, Okay, I need an A
and R guy, and Kallaudner's like, I would like to
be the A N R guy.
Speaker 3: Penis they do that job?
Speaker 2: So John Kladner says, well, I'm actually really good at
figuring out what's going to be a hit song and
what's not going to be a hit song. Right. The
president is like, Okay, I'm gonna let you give it
a try, but you've got to bring your own tape player.
You've got to bring your reel to reel, and you've
got to listen to every cassette that gets submitted. And
he's like, okay, you did not listen to every cassette
that got submitted because he they would. I mean, just
think about it. People are sending in demos multiple sources
all day long. So he his little filter system was
he would pick the ones from music attorneys. He figured
if the band was savvy enough to get an attorney,
that they were probably going to have such a decent product.
And if the attorney was impressed enough that he's sending
it on, then it probably is another indicator that it's good.
And so that's how he discovered a lot of his
folks that's interesting. And so then he does that for
a while. For Atlantic Records. He continues to kind of
freelance on the weekends doing the photography and the writing
for those journals. Then in nineteen eighty he gets a
call from mister David Geffen to come join him and
be the Geffen Records A and R man.
Speaker 3: Yes, Now do you know what A and R stands for?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Only because we googled it about ten minutes ago. I
just we came in today and we're like, Klunder's an arm.
Speaker 2: What is a A and R stand for? What is it? Okay? Guest?
Do you know? Would you like to venture your guests? Now?
What is an R? Okay? Good?
Speaker 3: Guess here's the real answer. A and R means artists
and repertoire. His job was to find new artists and
acquire them for the label.
Speaker 2: Right, So he is the A and R man for
Geffen Records. Yes, when he walks in the door, he says,
mister Geffen, thanks for the hire. I think that we
should hire Sammy Hagar yep. I think that we should
hire Phil Collins yep. And I'm excited to work with Aerosmith. Yes,
and Geffen's like, I like those suggestions, but we're not
going with Phil Collins. We're going with Peter Gabriel. Sir,
I think that Phil Collins is going to be better
now we're going to go with Peter Gabriel.
Speaker 3: It's hard to blame Geffen too much on that because
Peter Gabriel did have some success in the eighties, I
mean very much success.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well he kept Danger Zone out of the top spot. Yes,
he did, which is a miracle in in and of itself.
Speaker 3: We talked about that last week. But my gosh, Phil
Collins had a humongous nineteen eighties and nineties. For that matter,
I was going to tell you I recognized John Kalodner
once we started looking into this, and when I googled him,
I looked at his face. I'm like, oh my gosh,
that's the guy from the Aerosmith videos. He had a
lot to do with Arismith's rebirth in like nineteen eighty
seven the Permanent Vacation Tour.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go back and check out our Aras episode. We
talk about how Tim Collins is that his name, the
guy that kind of helped them get off drugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2: Kladner was another major factor in that process of getting
those guys clean.
Speaker 3: Kladner is the guy dressed in a wedding dress and
the dude looks like a lady video.
Speaker 2: Now everybody knows who we're talking about.
Speaker 3: That big lung, scraggy beard. It's kind of a weird
looking dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially in a wedding dress. Yes, okay, so Kladner
Ultimately round eighty two, here's this album that White Snake
has put out that has these songs on it, including
Here I Go Again. And he thinks to himself, this
is a hit song. He calls David Coverdale. He's like,
you got a hit song, but it was badly recorded
and it was badly played.
Speaker 5: A blood cutting man when he's burning with a fever,
a strand of house, when he's lonely in the night.
Speaker 2: You need a better band. You got a mediocre band,
and you need a better producer. He's a nice guy,
he's not a good producer, yep. So he hooks David
Coverdale up with a new guy and gets rid of
everybody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these are all like his best friends. Gotta let
him go, dude, if you want to make it to
the big time, you gotta dump all these guys.
Speaker 2: So Kalladner has this guy who he's seen playing with
Thin Lizzie, and his name is John Sykes. Yes, John
had been with Thin Lizzie and another band, but he
had a good look and he had a great ability
with music and lyrics, and so he thought, I'm gonna
get this guy together with Coverdale and we're gonna have
the magic duo, just like bon Jovi.
Speaker 3: John Sykes is like a guitar guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he is an exceptional guitarist and he just has
I mean, there are guys who play well, there are
guys who write good music, and there are guys who
play well and write good music, and John Pskes is
one of them. And he is a huge, huge factor
on why this album is so good. Yes, which is
interesting given what we find out later on.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: So the producer that John Kladner says we need to
have come in is this guy named Mike Stone. Now,
Mike Stone is another icon in the field. Kallawdner is
he does not pick losers, right right, So he picks
up this guy named Mike Stone who had gotten his
start as an assistant engineer in Abbey Road Studios working
with the Beatles. So not a bad out of the
gate start start. Yeah. So he goes on to work
with Foreigner on multiple albums, Journey on multiple albums, Asia
on multiple albums, and Queen on multiple albums and hold
on for the for the big hit ready. Yeah, he
was the engineer behind Bohemian Rhapsody.
Speaker 3: That's incredible Mike Stone. I do think it's interesting that
anytime Kaladner brings him up. Yeah, he's like genius drinker.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well he died from drinking, so a bit of
a drinker, which is tragic because he was an amazing
sound engineer. So apparently with Mike Stone and John Sykes
they lay down some amazing tracks. But then we started
running in some trouble.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So let's back up for a second. So in
nineteen eighty four, Coverdale and Sykes come out with an
album called Slide It In? Right, Are you familiar Slide
it In a little bit? Okay? I feel like I'm
one of the first people that I knew that was
familiar with Whitesnak because there was a guy on my
bus who had, in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Six, my school bus.
Speaker 3: On my school bus, he had a Walkman tape player
and he would listen to Slide It In all the time.
Speaker 2: It's like a scene out of a movie man, right, And.
Speaker 3: So he would let me listen and we would listen
to Slide it In and slow and easy and love
ain't no stranger. So I was just say slow and
easy again, slow and easy, let's listen to it real quick.
I freaking love that song, dude. That's such a good song.
It's awesome. A quick side story about sliding in. Yeah,
a few years ago, my wife made a video to
be played in church regarding a women's retreat that she
had just attended. Okay, and this is kind of funny
because I know some women in my church listened to
this podcast. But while she wasn't looking, I replaced the
you know the Zoe Girl musical track with Slide it In,
and it became the funniest thing we've ever watched. So
the next day, when we played it in church, I
checked it about fifteen times to make sure that I
had corrected that.
Speaker 2: The sec please don't be slighted in Oh my god,
that would have been a much better story, but I
was not about to let that happen.
Speaker 3: Anyways, classic So I love sliding in, great out and
that's with Sykes. Okay, Now in nineteen eighty four, that
actually makes it to number forty in the US. They've
get some videos, they've got some momentum, but they still
haven't broken through in the US.
Speaker 2: Poised for success, poise for success.
Speaker 3: So Claudner's like, you guys, go to the South of France,
write your follow up. This is the spring of nineteen
eighty five, Right, go write some songs. Let's get this
album pumped out. It's time nineteen eighty five. We're gonna
take America by storm.
Speaker 2: The iron is hot, strike it now, nineteen eighty five.
But right, so with Mike Stone, they laid down these tracks,
right and the music is great. You've got John Syke's
playing guitar, who, as you mentioned, thunder genius.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So they've got Mike Stone and they've got the band. Now,
the band is a little bit different than it was
for Slid It In.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's definitely different. Coverdale basically fired everybody. Was
persuaded to keep Sykes and Neil Murray right. He went
to Geffen and said, I want to fire everybody.
Speaker 2: Sykes had come in to take over for Mickey Moody,
who would.
Speaker 3: Left right on Slide It In, that's correct.
Speaker 2: And then who was the drummer?
Speaker 3: You had Cozy Powell, okay, which is very well respected drummer.
In fact, Coverdale actually has said the nineteen eighty seven
album was written with Cozy Powell's drum beats in mind.
Made him an offer which he thought was fair. Cozy
Powell thought it was no good, so he said.
Speaker 2: Screw you.
Speaker 3: I'm going to screw you guys. I'm out of here.
And Coverdale said sadly that cost him millions of dollars.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean if he was offering him a
percentage plus a salary, sure, yeah, I mean, but again,
I can see how in that position, you'd be like, well,
I don't really know. You have no idea that the
nineteen eighty seven album is going to be the success
that it is.
Speaker 3: We just finished up our most successful album we've ever had,
and we're three million bucks in debt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, so part of the debt that we're going
to talk about later on is due to the production
of this album. That's right, of the nineteen eighty seven album. Right,
But so they replace Cozy Powell with Journey drummer Ainsley Dunbar. Yes,
it's not too that's not a bad trade. Yes, I mean,
Ainsley Dunsbar is pretty freaking awesome honestly.
Speaker 3: By the way. Yeah, something I didn't know about Ainsley Dunbar,
which James Buckley or Shirley friend pointed out to me.
Speaker 2: Number one Patreon subscriber, mister Buckley.
Speaker 3: We love we love James. He's a freak Zappa guy.
Go back to our Toto episode where Steve Luca Third
tried to join the Zappa band, right and was humiliated
in front of everybody and scared off and all that stuff. Yeah,
James Buckley was just telling me that he admired Ainsley
Dunbar and was a former Zappa guy.
Speaker 2: Right, So James Buckley is a drummer for a band.
Speaker 3: Hidden Tracks, Hidden Tracks, Yes, shout out to Hidden Tracks.
Go see him at your local area bowling alley or whatever.
Speaker 2: Are they playing a bowling all? I don't know, James,
if you were in Monroe, is it West Monroe or
is it Mone?
Speaker 3: It's Monroe. He was people aid the Shreamport the other day.
Speaker 2: Oh nice. So he's all over the place down in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: I totally. When he makes it to Dallas, will be there.
Speaker 2: You just gather all that equipment, move over and we'll
take a two hour air conditioned drive down to see you.
Speaker 3: Let's go.
Speaker 2: Okay, So for the eighty seven album, we've got Mike
Stone engineering, We've got John Sykes and the guitar yep.
We got Neil Murray on bass, yep, who is a carryover. Yes,
we've got Ainsley dunns Bar on drums, who, again, great drummer,
but not the drummer that they had had in mind
when they made the album. Right, and they laid down
some great musical tracks, yes, and then all that's left
to do is put down the vocal tracks. Hey, that
sounds pretty easy, right, right. I mean, we've got the
guy who's been singing for the last twenty years and
you know, used to sing for Deep Purple and is
now you know, steadily moving up in popularity in the UK,
now in the US. And so David, what do you got.
Dave cannot sing. He can't sing, he can't this this
is the story. Okay.
Speaker 3: He starts to lay down the vocals and he notices
that his voice is unusually nasally.
Speaker 2: That's weird, it's just stuck in his bass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's off pitch.
Speaker 2: Uh huh huh.
Speaker 3: So he's like, something's wrong with the studio. We got
to change studios, right, yeah, So they move from Vancouver
to the Bahamas where they're gonna lay down the vocals.
Speaker 2: Better studio there.
Speaker 3: I work better in the Bahamas personally, Well it was.
It worked for ac DC, right and the police. Yeah, yeah,
was that Jamaica. I can't.
Speaker 2: I mean Caribbean, Caribbean, it's all the same.
Speaker 3: I work better in the Caribbean as well.
Speaker 2: You mean too, we should move the Shirley studios down
to the Caribbean so we sound a little bit better.
Speaker 3: But it's just not working for him, right, right, so
he goes and sees a doctor.
Speaker 2: M hmm, yeah. So yeah. John Klaudner's like, okay, they're
in California now, you know, right just down the street
is Sugarman. He is the greatest e n T in
the world. Let's go see what he has to say.
He needs an operation for his septum. Septum. So anytime
you say rock and roll and septum, you're either going
to talk about a nose job or you're going to
talk about the white powder.
Speaker 3: David Coverdelle says, every time he mentioned his nasal surgery,
millions of people made invisible spooning motions to their nose.
And he swears that's not the case. But I don't
believe it. Hey man, it was called the liar.
Speaker 2: I don't know him, Okay, okay, but yeah, he is
in the he is in a hard rock band in
the middle of the eighties. It was kind of the
thing to do.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So he gets his nasal surgery and still is taken
a while to get something else.
Speaker 3: Six months of rehab.
Speaker 2: John Claudner talks about this and he's really like, he
doesn't outright say it, but you can tell he thinks
it's he thinks it's psychological. Yeah, and so desikes, yeah,
that being that what it is, you know, psychological. Whether
that's a valid excuse or not. As an entirely separate story,
but the case is, the man is not singing the songs, right,
So what's John Sykes do it?
Speaker 3: So John Sykes is like, he knows what he's got, right,
I've got twelve fantastic songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He goes to Mike Stone, who has a good relationship
with He's like, we might need to find ourselves a
new singer. We might need to fire David Coverdale from
White Snake, right, And that's not okay. David Coverdale does
not like that idea at all.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, let's just be real here. He's the
only guy who's been consistently in the band. I mean,
the band's original name was David Coverdale and White Snake.
Speaker 3: It was named after David Coverdale's Johnson. I thought you
were going to say his first album, you mean by Johnson.
Speaker 2: We cut off Johnson. Yeah, So the idea of removing
him from the band, it's kind of like trying to
kick bon Jovi out of Bond. That's right, that's right,
It really is I mean, you can't have the bon
Jovie without the john That's right, right, yes, And you
can't have the White Snake without the Johnson.
Speaker 3: So here's what happens. So he has the surgery, goes
through six months of rehab. This whole time, Geffen is
losing money and the band has zero income during this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. John Kladner says nineteen eighty six was the only
year in the eighties that he did not have a
hit to his name, John Gladner, because he's got Aerosmith,
He's got all these other bands, but Aerosmith, he's cleaning
them up deep in rehab, and David Coverdale is silent.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's incredible. By the way, I want to throw
this quick in real quick. John Kalodner had a hand
in getting Berlin on the Top Gun soundtrack.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, we tie everything back to any prior
episode that we can, but this is a good one.
This is last episode Berlin who sang take My Breath Away. Now.
My story was that when Giorgio Moroder came in and said,
Terry Nunn, I want you to sing this song, she
was like, yes, please, But you're saying it took some convincing.
Speaker 3: Kallaidner said that he went to her as like, hey,
I think you really need to do this, and she's
like and he was the one who's like, no, you
got to do this.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Kind of interesting different take again.
Speaker 2: You know, everybody's got a different perspective on how things
go in the past.
Speaker 3: Right, So nineteen eighty six is rolling. Geffen's losing money,
They're losing patients. John Sykes is losing patience. John Kladner's
losing patients. John Clutter's like they might fire me. Like,
if Coverdale doesn't release this album, I might get fired.
And I'm the one who said this guy's a superstar, right,
Sikes is going, we've got a great album here. Yeah,
we've got to release this or fire him. So Coverdale
works his way through the rehab. He even admits he
had a mental block.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he they change producers, like he wasn't working
well with Mike Stone. He's not working well with Mike Stone.
They think, let's do another producer. That guy didn't work out.
Eventually they get Keith Olsen in there, and Keith and
David Coverdale are able to work together, and finally, after
two years two years, right, they laid down the vocal tracks.
Speaker 3: Basically, these songs were written in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Iron is no longer hot.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. Right now the model has switched to
bon Jovi, right.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, bon Jovi. So Kalaudner, I will say this,
there are several key factors in this album. David Coverdale
obviously a factor in this album. Yes, you can't escape
those vocals.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah.
Speaker 2: John Syke's huge songwriter, John Kladner, said he had absolute
control of the album. He said their inspiration point was
bon Jovi and musically yep, but he was in charge
of what I mean he called John Klauderner made the
call on songs, album, artwork, musicians, producers, like everything was
his call because he knew how to make a hit
record and that was what his job was. Yes, and
so he is a giant, gigantic factor on the success
of this album.
Speaker 3: You know who else is a huge factor in.
Speaker 2: This Yes, I do. And her name is Tawny Kataine.
Speaker 3: I saw her described in print as having a honey
drenched million dollar act. And you know what, they were wrong.
Speaker 2: I can't fault that not an inaccurate description, Okay, so
let's talk Tawny Katine for just a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Tawnie Kataine had a boyfriend in high school. Yeah,
Robin Crosby of Rat. Yeah, so Robin Crosby. I think
we might have touched a little bit on him in
our Motley Crue episode Close Friends with Nikky six big
factor in Rat. Tawny Katain and he were boyfriend girlfriend
in high school. Birthday is a day apart. She ends
up leaving him for a guy named Pete Angelus. That's right,
and Pete Angelis did the lights for van Halen. So
she leaves the guy who's going to be a star
in Rat to get the lighting guy for van Halen. Wow.
I don't know if that's a fair trade or not.
But then the lighting guy comes the manager for Van Halen,
and that ends up being a pretty good deal, right,
And so one night they have to you know, she's
with the rest of the guys. She went on tour
with them. She was on the bus. She lived the
nineteen eighty four Van Halen party life. Yes, And she's
on the bus with these guys and they're going to
different hotels and stuff, and you know, when they're you're
as famous as they are. You have to leave through
the kitchen. So one night she is walking out with
Pete behind Eddie and Valerie, and she says to herself,
someday that's going to be me with the leader of
the band up there instead of you know this guy.
That's exactly right, And if that thought goes through your head,
you probably shouldn't still be dating a.
Speaker 3: Guy not as chump standing next to me.
Speaker 2: Right. So a little bit later on, she is in
a restaurant. She had gone down to La she had
started working in movies. She was the fiancee in Bachelor
Party with Tom Hanks. Yeah, so she's already making a
name for herself. Hey listen, Yeah, I'm gonna stop you
right there. Okay.
Speaker 3: Bachelor Party was a naughty pleasure for me and my
buddies back.
Speaker 2: In the day.
Speaker 3: It's funny, it's you know, booblned and.
Speaker 2: I want you to sleep. I want you to sleep.
Speaker 3: That was like the epitome of comedy slash naughtiness in
our eleven year old self. Plus in nineteen eighty six,
she did kind of an eighties off the beat classic Witchboard.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. Yeah, so she's in La having a drink
with a friend, and the friend is like, hey, there's
a couple of cute, long haired guys back there behind you,
uh huh, And so she's kind of eyeing them a
little bit. And so she gets up to go to
the bathroom and the first one kind of stops her
early on. It's like, hey, would you like to sit
down and have a drink with me and my friend?
And she's like, well, no, I don't drink, so that's okay, thanks,
and she keeps on going. And then she gets up
to the top of the stairs and there's David Coverdale
and he says, excuse me, would you kid have a
spot of tea with me and my friend? And she
was like, spot of tea? Well, yes, that sounds very nice.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So that's the introduction yep. So he asks her out
for a proper date. Yes, shows up in a white jag.
This seems like a good sign, right, Hey, here we go.
He's wearing a suit.
Speaker 3: This is the same blue suit that he wears in
the Here I Go Again video and the same white jag.
That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: So she's like, okay, she's impressed. Yeah, And so she
gets in and she's like, so you know, what, what
do you do? And he's like, oh, well, I'm a
singer and we've been working on this album. And she's like, oh,
he's and she says, what's the name of your band?
He says White Snake.
Speaker 3: She's never heard of him, right, She's toured the world
with Van Halen, she's run around with rat she knows
the rock and.
Speaker 2: Roll scene, and she doesn't know who White Snake is.
Speaker 3: Never heard of you, right?
Speaker 2: And then he's like, we've been working on an album.
Let me put the tape in, and so she sticks
it in and she's looking out the window like, oh great,
I am with some loser who doesn't have any idea
that he's never going to make it in the music business.
And then the car breaks down in the middle of
the road. So David, imagine this David Coverdale in the
blue shiny suit pushing a jaguarre onto the median as
smoke plumes from the.
Speaker 3: Hey don't worry. Two years from now, we're going to
be in a video with this suit and this jag
and we're gonna make millions of it.
Speaker 2: It's gonna change history.
Speaker 3: He didn't even have insurance on the car, that's right,
and he was living in a hotel room that he
couldn't check out of because he didn't have the money
to pay the bill.
Speaker 2: He literally, like you said, three million dollars in debt.
At this point that he's met Tawny Kataine. This album
still hasn't come out yet, right, they're waiting. And then
another key factor in the history of the White Snake
album absolutely John Kaladner says, there's a guy who needs
to make a video for your album, and he introduces
them to a guy who we've talked about before named
Marty Callner. Yes, and you'll remember I was talking about
him before because I mentioned that he was the guy
who started the Hard Knocks series on HBO.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, Hard Knocks.
Speaker 2: Right, So at the time, that's all I knew about him.
But now I've got a whole story. So here's this
story on Marty Calner. When he's a little kid, two
years old, his mom and dad get divorced. His dad
leaves mom home alone to take care of the kids.
She has to work three jobs. The dad doesn't support them.
They live in like lower middle class you know, the
picking up the sweet and lows so you have sweetener
at the house, mismatch furniture, kmart art on the walls
right until he's about ten years old, and then his
dad dies. His dad's family says, oh my gosh, he's
the only Calner male heir left. And it turns out
they are like bajillionaires. Yes, so the Calner family is
a huge family in Chicago, Like there's a Calner building
in Chicago.
Speaker 3: WHOA.
Speaker 2: The dad never supported him, but he had the decency
to die before the kid was fully grown, and so
the family starts taking him up to Chicago. He gets
picked up by a limousine like he's wearing his little
league baseball uniform. Gets picked up by a limousine, taken
to the nicest hotel in town. They have a penthouse
suite up there. They have Monaise and Picasso's like the
real thing, not even a print, but like the real
art on the wall. And they spend the next eight
years of his life culturing him. Each summer, so he
spends half of his time in the you know, make
it on your own in the right low income area. Two,
I'm in the finest of the fine And he says,
so that is how I developed my eye for what
is beautiful because I could tell the difference between the
Kmart pictures and the picassos. And so that's how I
was able to develop this eye as a director. And
so he goes to college. He has a lot of WS.
He spends about five years in college. I don't think
he graduated, okay, all right. He gets done with college,
had himself a little trip experience that left him a
little weird for about three months. But he gets out
of college and has no real prospects at all. And
his mom works for TV Guide Okay, she's like a
local distributor to TV Guide, And she says, if I
call one of these TV studios, will would you take
a job? He's like, okay, sure, yeah, whatever, right, And
so his first night in the studio in the TV studio,
he's in the newsroom and there's been this big wreck
and people are running around to get the full story
on it, and it seems exciting. So he's excited about that,
and so he starts talking to the other directors. They've
got about seven directors on the staff at this TV studio, okay,
and they're showing him, you know, with code hangers as
frames for TV shots, how to do TV shots like this,
and he starts working for the show The Nick Clooney Show.
Have you heard of this? No? Okay, Well, Nick's son
about seven at the time, is running around. His name
was George.
Speaker 3: I've heard of George. Yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's where Marty Callner is getting his start, young
twenties guy in the Nick Clooney Show. And then he
gets his directing break when he's the only guy there
and the director who actually knows something has to run
because there's an accident, and so he's given the reins
and he pulls it off, and suddenly he's making more
money because hey, it turns out he can actually direct. Well,
then he gets a call a little bit later on
two job offers. Okay, one is eighty five thousand to
work for this pretty well known TV studio and the
other one's thirty five thousand dollars for this much lesser
known TV studios this mid seventies. Yeah, but they said,
we'll give you a lot of artistic license. You will
really kind of be the guy who designs what this
TV studio is going to be about.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: He goes, Okay, what's the name of the studio and
they said, we're.
Speaker 3: Calling it HB. It's called Home Box Office. Yeah, and
so this little known.
Speaker 2: Studio becomes the artistic outlet for Marty Callner. He's responsible
for the music that everybody associates with.
Speaker 3: HBO thought we got to play that right here.
Speaker 2: So he didn't play it. He commissioned it. But I
mean it was him. He was the guy. He was
the guy for HBO. And he's still trying to do
some directing and he directs. He decides what I want
to do. He loves comedy. I want to direct a
comedy stand up show, okay, and so it's Robert Klein
is his first show. He does not do it right.
He's not used to these type of shows where you're
filming live. He says, it ends up looking horrible. You know,
the angles, Robert Klein's hands look gigantic. You know, he's
just filming it like he would a TV show and
he's using real cameras. It just doesn't make any sense.
And so he thinks, great, I'm gonna get fired. I'm
gonna get fired from this job, right, and he almost
does until the next day when there's a review in
the New York Times magazine that says this is one
of the best specials HBO has ever produced, and overnight
he goes from thirty five thousand, two, three and fifty.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Okay. So he's sitting in bed one night. He's done
some videos. He's done a few music music videos with
Laura Branigan, among others. Okay, lots of comedy specials. He's
sitting in bed one night and he sees a video
by our friend Russell McKay. Uh huh Betty Davis Eyes
by Kim Crush.
Speaker 3: She's never cold. She's got that today beside a ton
of music.
Speaker 2: He sees that video and he's like, holy cow, this
guy is breaking all the rules.
Speaker 3: Our man, Russell McKay.
Speaker 2: Russell McKay, he has had so much influence on so
many things in the eighties, it's crazy. Yep. So he
sees that and he says to his wife, I want
to quit my job and I want to make music videos.
And she's and she's like what. He's like, I know,
we live in a really nice house and I make
whole lots of money, but I need to go do this.
And she said, I'll live in the desert in a
one room house with you if you're happy.
Speaker 3: Oh what a woman?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a woman. So he goes and inquires with friends,
and one of them says, Okay, I got three bands
that you could do a video for. First one's out
of Australia named in Excess.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, inks, who is this.
Speaker 2: Pronounced in Excess? The other one is out of New Orleans.
They're called Zebra, And I've got this bar band that
I have no idea what to do with. Oh yeah,
what's the what do they call Twisted Sister? So, yeah, everybody,
Marty Comer is the guy responsible for the We're not
gonna take it. I want to rock. Those amazing and
iconic videos are Marty Culner. And so fast forward just
a couple of years and Marty Culner is getting a
call from John Klaudner who says, I need somebody to
make a video, and I need you to make it cheap.
We are out of money. Uh huh. So before we.
Speaker 3: Get to the video for Still the Night, which we're
getting to, yeah, I mean Coverdale felt like he was
dealing with a rebellion within the band, and so he
went to Geffen and He's like, we're firing all these guys.
They wanted to fire me from the band. I can't
have these guys in my band. They're out. So as
soon as Ainsley Dunbar got done with his drum parts, Ainsley,
thank you, see you later. Neil Murray, you're done with
your bass by and John Sykes is like, well, I
could either quit or I could see it through. So
I finished my guitars and then I quit and that
left Coverdale as the only member of White Snake left.
So Kladner said, all right, well here's my chance to
build my dreamline up of White Snake. And that's when
he brings in Tommy Aldridge on drums, he brings in
Adrian van der Berg, he brings in Vivian Campbell, and
he creates this band out of nothingness. And that's what
you see in the videos, right.
Speaker 2: So the first time, this is monumental. Everybody listen to this.
The first time the band that probably you and everyone
you know knows is White Snake from MTV. The first
time that those guys met each other was on the
video shoot for Still of the Night. That's crazy, man,
it is nuts. And just before they were about to
shoot the video. They lost their model, they lost their
female girl sex symbol. You know that was it's the
guest girl, baby Claudia Schiffer. Claudia freaking Shiffer was supposed
to be the girl in the White Sink video.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Claudia Schiffer, we still show.
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, she bails at the last minute. Marty Callner
and David Coverdale are supposed to have dinner at Marty's
house that night, and so David brings his new kind
of new girlfriend with him, and Marty has just gotten
the call that Claudia Schiffer is out and he doesn't
know what to do, and so as he opens the door,
he sees David with Tawny Katine and he says, you're.
Speaker 3: Her, freaking raise from heaven?
Speaker 2: Can you imagine? Yes, I'm who What do you mean?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, you're her.
Speaker 2: We have to have you for the video shoot tomorrow tomorrow.
Speaker 3: And Coverdale's like, ah, this is kind of a new thing.
I don't know if she'll She's like, no, I'm happy
to help in any way possible.
Speaker 2: I think she had a little hesitation. She was like,
TV was not cool at that point. That's true. She
was doing movies and this was not even really TV,
it was music videos. Can maybe even step down from that. Yes,
I'm so thankful that she changed her mind. Okay. And
another thing that Marty Culner did that you're going to appreciate. Yeah,
he was the one who directed the first pee Wee
Herman show. Oh I love that one, the nineteen eighty
like it's supposed to be a kids show as really adult.
Yeah that was Marty Callner. Pee Wee Herman had done
that character on stage and he's like, we need to
make a show out of this. Marty Culner directed the
very first nineteen eighty This is well before eighty six
when all the other exactly which one you're talking about.
Speaker 3: He hypnotizes a woman from the audience and it makes
her take her clothes off. Yeah it was. It was
definitely one.
Speaker 2: We liked all right then, Okay, so Marty Culner has
shot the first part of the video with the band.
He looks at the footage and he's like, this looks
like a bunch of guys who don't know each other,
who are pretending to play music that they didn't play. Yeah,
and he's like, I need another day of shooting.
Speaker 3: He called him basically Millie Vanilli, right, yeah, He's like,
they can play, but they weren't playing right.
Speaker 2: So he calls Deafen Records up and he's like, hey, guys,
I need another day of shooting. We need some you know,
maybe a female, some sexiness. Let's get this all done intercutting. Yeah,
and we'll intercut it with our first day of shooting.
Won't cost much. I'll shoot it sixteen millimeter, like thirty
five thousand, and David Geffen says, David Coverdale can go himself. Yeah,
I mean he they were done.
Speaker 3: They were done. Geffen was about to go out of business.
Speaker 2: John Kallawdner was about to lose his job, so he
wasn't happy with him, right, nobody was happy with this band.
But Marty says, guys, thirty five thousand dollars, they said, no,
we're not doing it. They can he can rot. And
so that night Marty's like, well sucks, because I really
think this guy can make something of himself. And his
wife says, well, can we afford to pay the thirty
five thousand dollars? And he's like yeah, She goes, do
you really believe in him that much? He said, yeah,
I do. She's been go do it. And so it's
because Marty Callner put up his own money to shoot
that second day and where we had Tawny Kataine. It's
because of that that we get that video and then
not over yet. We keep in mind at this point,
David Coverdale is singing New York Seltzer commercials. I mean,
let's let's listen to this. I'm not kidding, let's listen.
Speaker 5: Do you liten on New York salsa now available everywhere?
Speaker 3: That sounds like a man who lives in a hotel
with no car insurance.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know which is worse that one
or the Hoover vacuum commercial with Brian Johnson's Yeah, that's right.
But these guys were obviously scraping the bottom of the
barrel right before they're about to explode all over the mainstream.
Speaker 3: Marty Kalmer did step in and save the day for
thirty five thousand dollars. Yeah, But you know who else
deserves a lot of credit? His wife. Oh, for sure,
she's the unsung hero in this story.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. She's the one that says if you feel it,
if you feel it, go do it.
Speaker 3: If she had said no, he'd have been like, all right, yeah, sorry,
And that's how we get White Snake nineteen eights.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Marty shoots the second day, intercuts, makes the video,
and he sends it into MTV. So here's where the
stars aligned. Yes, the video arrives at the same time
that he happens to have the manager of led Zeppelin,
Phil Carson, and Phil sees the video and he says
to Sam Man, led Zeppelin would die to have a
video like this, and Sam says, really, I guess I'll
make it the hit clip of the week.
Speaker 3: Hip clip of the week. And in New York City,
the executives at MTV, the people that work around him
are like, this is not hip. This is an old
guy singing, and He's like, no, no, no, you're wrong.
This song is him.
Speaker 2: In Iowa, he knew that the audience had grown beyond
the metro of New York City, right, Yep. The other
side of the street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was the were
the ones buying the Duran Duran albums because they had him.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And he knew that that was his audience. And he
was right.
Speaker 3: There's an army of mullets out there that are waiting
to hear this song this week.
Speaker 2: So Still the Night becomes the hip clip of the week,
and suddenly the band is world renowned.
Speaker 3: White Snake goes from three million dollars in debt having
five bucks in a condom in your wallet. That album
sold one million records in ten days. In ten days,
you talk about your life turning on a moment. It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Just think if the mail had run late that day,
if Phil hadn't been in there talking to Sam, we
may never have known who White Snake was.
Speaker 3: Yep, it saved Geffen Records. Yep, it saved David Coverdale's career.
It gave us a video of Vixen of the Ages.
White Snake then opens for Motley Crue on the Girls,
Girls Girls Tour, Changes lives.
Speaker 2: Absolutely Wow. So nineteen eighty seven means that this album
is thirty five years old this year. Yes, and the
release date was not too long ago. That's right, you
remember the date. I think it was April seventh, April seventh,
and so on April seventh, my genius friend makes a
little post for Facebook and Twitter that says, hey, this
album is thirty five years old to day. He might
have tagged David Coverdale and sweet and he says, what's
your favorite song? And mister David freaking Coverdale responds and
says all of them.
Speaker 3: That was a freaking cool moment in our Surely you
can't be serious. Podcast lives amazed bass David Coverdale replied
directly to my post he likes two of them.
Speaker 2: So you have had some amazing reactions to your Twitter post.
You've gotten David Coverdale to respond to your White Snake post, right,
You've got Stephen Stephen Desusa Desusa to respond to your
diehard post. Have I gotten I don't have I gotten anything?
Speaker 3: Kathy Ireland liked your posts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that maybe makes me the winner.
Speaker 3: Yes, well done done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So now it's time for us to go jump
in the album track by track next week, next week. Yes,
so everybody be sure and hit that subscribe button or
that follow button on whatever your podcast app is so
that you don't miss us going track by track through
White Snake, White Snake nineteen eighty seven, some amazing songs
on the album that We've got so many stories to
tell you, but for now we have to go.
Speaker 3: Promise you we'll be doing cartwheels on the hoods of
Jaguars and talking about infamous MTV nipple slips. It's going
to be amazing. Come back next week.