Twilight Of The Idols, Part II: Homework Edition
Saturday, February 28, 2015 at 12:01AM Today's article is courtesy of our friend HIM.
No one reads the interwebs looking for homework. No one. Some might read it for help with homework. But not even the most diligent student sits down and says: okay, technology, make me do the heavy-lifting. And this isn’t even school. This is a glam website!
But I ask you to humor me. Listen to and watch this:
Now do the same with this:
By any reasonable standard, several things become apparent. First, the people in the first video look smelly. But I digress before I even start. The first video captures a mood and vibe that sounds utterly authentic. The second video capture a sound and a feeling that seems . . . well, artificial. When I first heard this I had the strangest sensation. Then I had the oddest thought: this is classic rock if Cher and a robot made it.
I have no problem with crisp production. I can deal with brickwalling. I can forgive a host of sins and miss a lot more. Case in point: Sabbath’s 13 sounded just fine to me (even if I kept imagining what it might sound like if Dio sang those songs). Slayer’s albums have gotten louder and louder, even as they have begun to seem similar, and I still buy the product. I am a fan of metal. I ride the rails. I know the routes.
I also have no issue with old masters being updated with new maestros. Blackmore operates in a realm that is by turns understandable and ridiculous. He graced us with more sweet licks than a child hunkering down on a Tootsie-Pop. But he also helped reaffirm the image of the self-indulgent, bigger than thou, guitarist. Dee Snider, a man I respect, bashed former Whitesnake guitarist Aldrich. But Aldrich has achieved more in his niche than Snider is willing to admit. At some level, Snider’s rant is envy coupled with promotion; at another, it is promotion coupled with regret.
Here’s the thing: Whitesnake has not been, for a long time, anything other than a conveyance for Coverdale’s slightly new-agey/clearly old-agey ego. He is at peace. He is blissful. Every press release from his mountain non-redoubt is affirmative, forward-thinking, and upbeat. He probably skips rocks across Lake Tahoe after Tantric sex and before making an egg-white omelet. But Coverdale is also an old man, with new teeth, and a penchant for taking his shirt off. It is off-putting in a way that makes Phil Collen seem polite. Picture your grandma/pa taking her/his shirt off at the slightest provocation, then thrusting towards you, then singing to you, and then you think:
What the hell was that? It sounds like a cat coughed up Vince Neil’s voice and then slapped David Lee Roth’s bald head with the scraps.
But the second clip is so processed, so stripped of any semblance of a real voice, that you wouldn’t know that Coverdale is a spent force holding on to a glimmer of a career as an elder statesman of rock. Watch that video again. Hear those soaring notes in the chorus of "Stormbringer"? Notice they don’t even try to suggest—as autotuned as they are—that the majority of them are coming from his yamhole? Now listen to the first clip. There is some studio finesse afoot. But it is Coverdale and it is a Coverdale that many—men and women alike—would mind seeing smiling and undressing on stage as he pokes the microphone stand up in the air and into the audience like a metal phallus. The Coverdale of old could Download all over Donington. Today's Coverdale would be lucky to belt out the first (and only) verse of "Viva Viagra."
The point? This is what time and age have wrought. This is what we are left with and what we have to look forward to as time passes. It is the metal version of Pink Floyd’s meat grinder: a legendary band’s song, shoved through a fading band’s newest release (The Purple Album if you were wondering), replete with great musicians (Reb Beach and former Night Ranger Joel Hoekstra on guitars, Michael Devin on bass, and Tommy “Is that man really still alive?” Aldridge on drums), and a singer that has nothing left to prove . . . and proves it. In spades. With the help of HAL.
Oh, the tour. The tour. It will happen. And now, instead of fairly glossy studio fare that only occasionally lives up to its promise live, we will get a Whitesnake (version 17.66) take on a lesser, though still wonderful, version of Deep Purple. With grandpa/ma milking it for all it is worth. Still, fans will clamor for it. They will say (as we all do when we are fanboys who look the other way): “the ‘Snake is back!!” Sure. It is. But it is a flaccid snake that can barely slide it in to the entrance.
So what is it worth? This is that tipping point in a band’s existence that finds them and their fans facing down a choice: is the music worth the memories or are the memories worth the music? To my mind, the answer is simple. It is the music that comes first. And The Purple Album suggests that, regrettably, for Coverdale, the memories are all that matter. Sadly, fans are now forced to stand or fall, with Whitesnake and increasingly other bands of our youth, on the merits of that question.
