Whitesnake Look Back At 'Here I Go Again'

Bruce Henne | 05-18-2022

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(hennemusic) David Coverdale is revisiting the Whitesnake classic, “Here I Go Again”, as part of the band’s newly-available remixed and remastered version of their 1994 “Greatest Hits” collection.

Originally recorded for the group's 1982 album, "Saints & Sinners", Coverdale reveals it wasn’t his idea to redo the song for their self-titled 1987 release.

"Well, first off, it was Geffen's idea,” explains Coverdale, “I never re-recorded things other than a song called 'Blindman', which was on my original solo album, 'White Snake', and then we put it on 'Ready An' Willing' album because then that's when I felt we really had the solid idea of the early Whitesnake, with Bernie Marsden, Micky Moody, Neil Murray, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, and they did a masterly job on it.

“But I've never been one for re-recording. And [guitarist] John [Syke] and I had written enough for an album of original material. But [Geffen] wanted to do — and this has served us incredibly well — redo 'Here I Go Again'. John was not pleased, but history speaks for itself. And I said, 'Well, if we're gonna do that, I wanna redo 'Crying In The Rain',' which I was never really happy with the original recording of it. And we had arranged — John, Neil Murray and I had arranged — a special centerpiece, which was a great solo for John, a solo feature. But also the whole album was pretty much designed for [drummer] Cozy Powell, God rest his soul. And when we featured it in concert, it went from John's amazing, electrifying solo into Cozy's extraordinarily earth-shattering, thunderous drum solo.

"We had a great relationship with radio for the 'Slide It In' album, and they were actually waiting for a new Whitesnake album, rock radio,” he adds. “So we delivered this thing. And of course, at that time MTV was a huge element globally. So Whitesnake from being successful in a couple of territories became a global entity, which was super validation, as you can imagine."

While the original 1982 version of “Here I Go Again” failed to chart in the US, the 1987 version topped the Billboard Hot 100 to earn the band their first and only No. 1 US single, while helping the “Whitesnake” album go on to sell more than 8 million copies in the region.

Learn more and watch the remastered video here.

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