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Marsden, the guitar unhero
Bernie Marsden recently spoke to Rockpages.gr, promoting his solo album Shine. The conversation also turned to history.
On PAL:
Rockpages.gr: What do you remember from the Paice, Ashton, Lord album “Malice In Wonderland”?
Bernie Marsden: Ooh, I remember everything! It was one of the best things I have ever recorded! A very very good record, but people weren’t quite ready for it yet, because of the Deep Purple thing. I mean most of the fans were expecting Deep Purple Mk.VI, or VII… you know what I mean… and of course it was totally different. When I listen to it now, that’s me! I am really proud of it. It’s a really really good album, but have anybody heard it really? Hahaha!
…And the Whitesnake of old:
Rockpages.gr: Your work with Whitesnake in the ’70s and the ’80s, when you were playing with Micky Moody, I think gave an edge to the more traditional British blues sound. It made it harder, catchier and more mainstream. Have you ever thought about that, your contribution to that sound?
Bernie Marsden: Well, I think that when we did that at the time it was very conscious. Because of my association with Jon and Ian, and because I would always hear stories about Deep Purple and Ritchie (Blackmore)… when we got together with the beginning of Whitesnake we kind of made a conscious decision Micky and I. You know we weren’t interested in this “guitar hero” stuff. What we wanted to do was to play good rhythm and blues songs played really well. We could play well together, and we were more into the Allman Brothers, than in Deep Purple. And I could see David’s shoulders go “oh, it would be great!”. Because there were no ego problems, you know, who is going to be the star guitarist. Because we had two very good lead guitarists. We just played together. And I think that’s what gave the record a great identity. That and Martin Birch, a great producer who knew exactly where to put stuff in the mix. Sometimes Martin is a little bit overlooked when we talk about the old records. Martin was the extra member of Whitesnake, a very important guy!
Read more in Rockpages.gr
Thanks to Yiannis Dolas for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Bernie is awesome!
December 13th, 2014 at 02:05Bernie Marsden’s ‘Shine’-album was on heavy rotation in my player and I copied most tracks to my ‘blues+bluesrock’-folder on my hard disc drive.
It’s even better than the last studio output from Joe Bonamassa (too many trumpets) but sadly failed to make a small chart success.
Have a nice Day!
December 14th, 2014 at 11:04Bernie is great and one of my heros.
January 1st, 2015 at 00:50Good on you Bernie. Martin Birch was involved in many recordings that a lot of people love.
April 13th, 2020 at 10:26Hardly any one mentions him these days but l was googling him just the other day wondering what he’s up to..