For those that are interested - Whitesnake: Sail Away by Martin Popoff is a great book.


Producer Keith Olsen reveals two very interesting things:

1. Guitarist Dann Huff is all over Whitesnake 1987 beyond the Here I Go Again radio version. Sykes either couldn't play the same thing twice or do what Olsen wanted, so he had to bring in Dann Huff to play for Sykes on a bunch of the songs.

That is sort of disappointing in that I thought John Sykes was this guitar god, but a session musician had to be brought in to play for fucking John Sykes. Hey I can understand Cozy Powell and Denny Carmassi being brought in to play drums for Fred Coury on Cinderella's Long Cold Winter album - but John Sykes???

I think Sykes has been awful beyond the first Blue Murder album with his solo albums, etc. So maybe John Sykes has actually been overrated by hard rock fans for years - because they have assumed the brilliant guitar work on 1987 was him and sure much of it was - but much of it was also Dann Huff according to Olsen, because Sykes wasn't good enough.


2. Adrian Vandenberg's hand injury was bullshit and just for PR. This may be less surprising, since people have suspected that for years. But again, it was a situation where Adrian Vandenberg wasn't good enough to play on the tracks himself - since Vivian Campbell was booted from the band.

Steve Vai refused to record with another guitarist and he was being paid a ton of money to do the project, so they made up the hand injury thing completely.

This does makes sense though - because Adrian's playing on Restless Heart, the Unplugged album, Manic Eden and Moonkings is entirely mediocre. Whatever magic he had on those early Vandenberg albums - quickly left his body.

Further about Sykes:

Here is a couple of things that Olsen states:

Keith Olsen on 1987: The arrangements are great, the drums were really great - but the guitars were totally out of tune. Sykes was going through a period of time where he wanted to have a harmonizer, wanted all the effects, and the harmonizer going up and down so everything was really wide. And Coverdale found out that he couldn't sing to it.

Martin Popoff: Did you say out of tune?

Keith Olsen: Oh ya, really out of tune. Well there was 35 tracks...you know, when Mike Stone took the record and the first onslaught of guitars there were 30 something tracks of guitars and almost, maybe, there were one or two of the guitar tracks that were in tune. And you know it was on every track. And so I would pull, extract those two guitar tracks and then John played a few others and then later when it became impossible for John, Dann Huff had to be brought in. We redid all the vocals, cleaned up all the guitars so everything was in tune, got rid of all the effects that were out of tune.

Keith Olsen on Here I Go Again: I really wanted an eighth note in the verse. I got John on the phone and I said John, could you just grab the guitar and come by. You can plug into the studio amps. I just need eighth notes on two verses. John responds - No Keith, I can't do that. I would need my entire backline or I would have to fly to England. And Coverdale looks at me and I'm going: it's just eighth notes! It's just jung to give a little more push forward.

"Er, sorry - he needs his entire backline? I said Goodbye to Sykes and hung up the phone.

So I bring Dann Huff in again - he comes in with a guitar not even in a guitar case, plugs in, hears the song once and does it perfectly."