Читать книгу Where’s My Guitar?: An Inside Story of British Rock and Roll - Bernie Marsden - Страница 9

On 9 October 1980, the Whitesnake tour bus driver drove over the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan. My mind was racing and I was full of excitement although I tried to appear cool. At last I was in New York City.

David Coverdale walked up the bus, smiling, and shook my hand. He knew what it meant to me. He had been the one to shake my hand the first time I landed in the USA, in San Francisco. He had felt the same the first time he came here, with Deep Purple. I stared at the skyscrapers. It seemed as though there were so many. I couldn’t wait to see Times Square, the Brill Building, Radio City, and Carnegie Hall.

My thoughts drifted to the shows I had done at school concerts, carnivals, wedding receptions, pubs and birthday parties, and in village halls. I felt a huge sense of nostalgia. I looked around the bus, taking in the musicians I was playing with: Jon Lord, Ian Paice, Neil Murray, Micky Moody, and David Coverdale, all now in the same band as me.

Madison Square Garden – here I come.

This had been a huge goal for me since my teenage years, when I listened to live boxing on my portable radio from MSG. I explored the venue by myself when we arrived. I felt like a kid. I wanted to find those boxing dressing rooms and be able to stand in the very spots Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali and the Raging Bull himself, Jake La Motta, prepared for the biggest fights of their lives. Marilyn Monroe sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to JFK here, and the likes of the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and Alice Cooper had performed there.

Whitesnake would open for Jethro Tull that night in front of some 15,000 people as part of our US tour. I had been frustrated many times in previous years by tours in the US being cancelled for various reasons but now all of that was unimportant. It had taken less than eight years to go from my local town hall to Madison Square Garden. No time at all really.

We stayed at the famous Navarro Hotel, a magnificent gothic building overlooking Central Park. Its residents included film stars, poets, musicians, singers and artists and Jacqueline Susann wrote Valley of the Dolls there in the 1940s. Musical guests included Jimi Hendrix, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Jim Morrison. I shared an elevator with actor James Caan when I arrived. Sonny Corleone and me in a lift! I tried to be the cool Englishman as Mr Caan smiled, ‘Nice socks.’ I had completely forgotten that I was holding a spare pair lent by Mick Moody. ‘Take care with those socks,’ said James Caan as he got out.

Whitesnake had no creative management whatsoever but had managed to get to America. That was testament to how together we were at the time. We were ready and it was our time to go global. I was back on the bus and heading for Madison Square Garden in no time. The gig was over far too fast. Jethro Tull’s audience liked us a lot, although we were practically unknown in America. Jon Lord and Ian Paice received the biggest recognition as Deep Purple still meant something to the fans.

Time to break America – that was the plan. But plans don’t always work out, do they? Let’s go back to the start.