did in my head. The rhythm
section was distinctly shaky before that. Whitesnake was always a live entity,
so the songs would not translate very well on record, but it was a great live
show. That was the strength of it. But Ready An’ Willing was the
first time I started to get it right. And I put a great deal of the
onus on the fact that Ian Paice had joined. Because he is a very secure, very
dynamic and very powerful drummer. I think the first half of the
album is the beginning of what it should have sounded like.”
“The album took about a month, I think,”
continues Marsden, Ready An’ Willing having been constructed in early
1980 with a release date of May 3rd. “It was this tiny old farm place and there
was a pub down the road we used to go to when we had a break, and everybody had
to bend over double, even myself. I’m only about 5’ 8” and I would have to duck
to miss hitting my head on the beams, so everybody would go down to the
pub and have a few drinks and come back with black eyes and cuts on their
heads from bumping into the beams. It was like an ER unit. And on the
album there’s a thing about developing our Rusper stoop or something like that
[the credits, in part, read: “The Plough” in Rusper for developing our
Quasimodo impressions and Groucho Marx stoop]; people wondered what the
hell that meant. But it’s because we would walk around for hours after coming
back from the pub, still bent double so we wouldn’t hit our heads on the
ceiling.”
Here’s how bassist Neil Murray recalls
constructing the album. “Very easy to record. We were down in a kind of
residential, not really a farm, but it’s called Ridge Farm Studios, so we were
all kind of set up in a converted barn. There were fields and countryside
around; I guess there was a farm next door. The building we actually lived in
was like an old manor house dating back quite a few centuries. So you’ve got
big lawns and a tennis court and, I suppose, a swimming pool but not in an
incredibly grand manner. It was just sort of relaxed, sitting around, not
really having much to do with the outside world, which was the
point of being there. But there weren’t that many distractions either.
You got up and maybe read the paper and went over to the studio and worked for
twelve hours and had a big meal at some point.”
In fact, most of the early Whitesnake records
benefitted from the same process. “Yes, all very much the same thing,” says
Murray. “We were there for maybe a couple of weeks doing an album, maybe one or
two tracks a day, maybe more even with respect to backing tracks. It was all
very unpressurized. You might say, ‘Okay, maybe we need more of an up-tempo
song to finish off.’ There would be a certain amount of writing going on at the
time of recording, particularly lyrics. David would always be doing those at the
last moment.
“Bernie didn’t get there for a few days
because he was still on vacation so we came up with, for example, the
track ‘Ready An’ Willing’ without him. We had kind of been finding our sound up
until that point. And that was the first album that Ian Paice had been involved
in and he was very much responsible for taking Whitesnake to a higher level.
Somehow, the band really found its sound of that era on that record and then Come An’ Get It kind of consolidated it.
“You’ve got a real mixture on there,
obviously a really Free-influenced track, ‘Carry Your Load’, and typical boogie
woogie type things. Ian has a great feel. He’s very influenced by jazz and funk
and all sorts of different styles, not just heavy metal bashing. He’s a kind of
groove player and it gives you a lot more to play live. And he’ll do some very
startling things that you’re not expecting, particularly on stage. He really
keeps you on your toes. It’s hard to explain. His sense of time is great, a
great sound; he just generally plays the right thing and makes it very easy to
play.”
Marsden offers a
section was distinctly shaky before that. Whitesnake was always a live entity,
so the songs would not translate very well on record, but it was a great live
show. That was the strength of it. But Ready An’ Willing was the
first time I started to get it right. And I put a great deal of the
onus on the fact that Ian Paice had joined. Because he is a very secure, very
dynamic and very powerful drummer. I think the first half of the
album is the beginning of what it should have sounded like.”
“The album took about a month, I think,”
continues Marsden, Ready An’ Willing having been constructed in early
1980 with a release date of May 3rd. “It was this tiny old farm place and there
was a pub down the road we used to go to when we had a break, and everybody had
to bend over double, even myself. I’m only about 5’ 8” and I would have to duck
to miss hitting my head on the beams, so everybody would go down to the
pub and have a few drinks and come back with black eyes and cuts on their
heads from bumping into the beams. It was like an ER unit. And on the
album there’s a thing about developing our Rusper stoop or something like that
[the credits, in part, read: “The Plough” in Rusper for developing our
Quasimodo impressions and Groucho Marx stoop]; people wondered what the
hell that meant. But it’s because we would walk around for hours after coming
back from the pub, still bent double so we wouldn’t hit our heads on the
ceiling.”
Here’s how bassist Neil Murray recalls
constructing the album. “Very easy to record. We were down in a kind of
residential, not really a farm, but it’s called Ridge Farm Studios, so we were
all kind of set up in a converted barn. There were fields and countryside
around; I guess there was a farm next door. The building we actually lived in
was like an old manor house dating back quite a few centuries. So you’ve got
big lawns and a tennis court and, I suppose, a swimming pool but not in an
incredibly grand manner. It was just sort of relaxed, sitting around, not
really having much to do with the outside world, which was the
point of being there. But there weren’t that many distractions either.
You got up and maybe read the paper and went over to the studio and worked for
twelve hours and had a big meal at some point.”
In fact, most of the early Whitesnake records
benefitted from the same process. “Yes, all very much the same thing,” says
Murray. “We were there for maybe a couple of weeks doing an album, maybe one or
two tracks a day, maybe more even with respect to backing tracks. It was all
very unpressurized. You might say, ‘Okay, maybe we need more of an up-tempo
song to finish off.’ There would be a certain amount of writing going on at the
time of recording, particularly lyrics. David would always be doing those at the
last moment.
“Bernie didn’t get there for a few days
because he was still on vacation so we came up with, for example, the
track ‘Ready An’ Willing’ without him. We had kind of been finding our sound up
until that point. And that was the first album that Ian Paice had been involved
in and he was very much responsible for taking Whitesnake to a higher level.
Somehow, the band really found its sound of that era on that record and then Come An’ Get It kind of consolidated it.
“You’ve got a real mixture on there,
obviously a really Free-influenced track, ‘Carry Your Load’, and typical boogie
woogie type things. Ian has a great feel. He’s very influenced by jazz and funk
and all sorts of different styles, not just heavy metal bashing. He’s a kind of
groove player and it gives you a lot more to play live. And he’ll do some very
startling things that you’re not expecting, particularly on stage. He really
keeps you on your toes. It’s hard to explain. His sense of time is great, a
great sound; he just generally plays the right thing and makes it very easy to
play.”
Marsden offers a
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