Bernie Marsden has revealed some of the material on solo album Shine was written with a Whitesnake reunion in mind.
The co-founding guitarist wrote the band’s early material with David Coverdale, and brought his former colleague back to guest on Shine, which was released last year.
Marsden tells UCR: “I’d written a bunch of songs – not everything on the album, but certainly half a dozen. In the back of my mind I thought there might be a Whitesnake reunion or something.
“David and I had reconnected and I’d been playing with Whitesnake in 2011 and 2012. So that’s where songs like Walk Away come from, and a couple of other things.”
A reunion did take place of a form when Coverdale recorded lead vocals for Marsden’s track Trouble. “I thought, ‘If you’re going to ask people to sing, go for the top of the mountain,’ says the guitarist.
“David was great. He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I said, ‘Just sing, my friend. Just sing.’”
But while some of Shine was written in advance, much of it wasn’t. “Everyone thought I was really clever, that I’d written 10 or 15 tracks all of a sudden,” Marsden reports. “That’s not the case – I wrote about 50% of it in the studio.”
Coverdale recently revealed details of The Purple Album, Whitesnake’s tribute to Deep Purple. While Marsden had no part in the work, he says: “I’d like to think that we could maybe write some stuff together at some point – I think there’s still some good songs in us.”
He adds: “It’s nice to know that Whitesnake is still going in some way. That’s good.”
Marsden appears at the inaugural Ramblin’ Man Fair at Mote Park, Kent, on July 25-26.
