Sad news that guitarist Bernie Marsden has died.
Our paths crossed briefly in 1978, the year that Whitesnake, the band he’s most closely associated with, formed.
A short thread.
1/
Bernie was born in Buckingham in 1951 and went to the secondary modern school in the town.
He played in several local bands before his first professional gig as a touring member of UFO in 1972.
As a local lad, he was well known to Andy Cooper, one of the teachers at the adjacent grammar school, the Royal Latin, the school I went to from 1972 to 1979.
2/
In 1978, we had a sixth form ball at the school, a fairly staid, conservative affair normally, with the boys in jackets and ties & the girls in dresses. A very Home Counties grammar school thing.
To liven things up a bit, Andy had invited his friend Bernie to play at the ball. Bernie had just formed Whitesnake and asked a couple of his new band mates to come & back him.
3/
However, when the band’s lead singer, David Coverdale, ex of Deep Purple, heard that Bernie had taken their band off to Buckingham, he decided he wanted to be there too.
He made his way to the town & legend has it, stood on the street asking people where the school was.
4/
And so it came to pass that evening, that our school ball turned into one of the first ever Whitesnake gigs, with Coverdale resplendent in full leathers playing the rock god in front of a bunch of rather overdressed & politely clapping 17 & 18 year olds 🙂🤘
Not that we didn’t love rock, many of us – I’d gone to my first ever gig a year earlier, to see Yes at the Empire Pool Wembley.
But it was all rather incongruous nevertheless 🤷♂️
5/
I think you are very lucky to be there at the time, Must be great to have seen bands before their careers, beatles, stones, queen, etc
@zleap It’s one of those mad stories that you tell & retell over years, to the extent that your memory becomes more of telling the story than the original event.
Of course, that’s true of so many things from those times: in the absence of mobile phones as cameras & video recorders, you just have to hang on to fading & perhaps distorted memories of those distant moments.
But the Whitesnake gig definitely happened, of that much I’m absolutely certain 🙂
I agree on mobiles / cameras, I help make video of my local american football training, if I watch with my eyes, I see far more than I do through a camera lens. So I wonder if those people who thrust their phones in front of them at concerts etc are actually absorbing everything around them, the music, excitement of the audience etc, or if they are just there in person and making selfies so they can get social media likes.
I guess there is a difference between active and passive attendance.
