WHITESNAKE TRIVIA
Trivia
Whitesnake's 2013 world tour opened in Japan. Speaking to BARKS, David Coverdale said that after all the touring he had done, this was the first time Japan had been the opening date. With 2013 being the year of the snake, he said, he had a feeling it would be a special tour. He added that he always looks forward to playing in Japan: there are faces in front of the stage he has known for decades, and even without ever having spoken to them, they are long-standing friends through the music.
The Purple Album came out in Japan before anywhere else. Released there on 29 April 2015, it reached number two on the Oricon daily overall chart on its first day, as BARKS reported. The record — Deep Purple songs recut by the Whitesnake of the day — reached Japanese shops first.
The name Whitesnake existed before the band did. It began as the title of David Coverdale's 1977 solo album, White Snake, and in May 2017 — marking that record's fortieth anniversary — the band's official site stated plainly that this is where "White Snake" originated, and that it was later shortened to Whitesnake.
David Coverdale joined Deep Purple in 1973 as a relatively unknown twenty-one-year-old singer-songwriter. He made three albums with them before moving on, a few years later, to his own band. In 2023, fifty years after that debut, the very demo that had secured him the job was released for the first time, as part of the Special Gold Edition of The Purple Album — a two-CD-and-Blu-ray set issued on 13 October 2023.
While the 1987 album was being made, David Coverdale came close to losing his voice. Recording had started in Canada, and then came the illness that ended in sinus surgery. He describes how he sounded at the time as though he were speaking while holding his nose. Until then, he says, he had pretty much taken whatever gifts he had for granted: everything had started well, his voice was in shape and went wherever he threw it, every register covered, and the guide vocals he sang live to inspire the band were on the money — the songs had been tailor-made for his pipes. Then it fell apart. He likens it to loving to play the piano and then getting crippling arthritis that stops you completely, and calls it one of the worst and most confusing emotional times he has been through.
On 13 November 2025 David Coverdale announced his retirement. In his own words, published on the band's official site, after fifty-plus years of a journey taking in Deep Purple, Whitesnake, Jimmy Page and many more, it was time to hang up his rock and roll platform shoes and his skin-tight jeans — something the last few years had made very evident to him. He thanked everyone who had assisted and supported him along the way: the musicians, the crew, the fans, the family. It was time, he said, for him to enjoy his retirement, and he hoped people could appreciate that.
Fool For Your Lovin' was written for B.B. King. According to David Coverdale, as reported by Songfacts, that is why the original version has such a bluesy feel. The song was co-written by Coverdale with Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody, and was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage. Released on 1980's Ready an' Willing, it reached number thirteen in Britain and fifty-three in the US; re-recorded for 1989's Slip Of The Tongue, it charted again at forty-three in the UK and thirty-seven in the US. Glenn Hughes, briefly Coverdale's bandmate in Deep Purple, contributed vocals to the 1989 version.
Several accounts of how Here I Go Again came about have circulated. Bernie Marsden, who co-wrote it, told Louder he had read that David wrote it after his marriage broke up, or that it was written on a boat in Venezuela, and that neither had ever made sense to him. His own account runs like this: the song began as a two-track demo at his old house in Buckingham, with the opening line, the chorus and the riff already there. It existed towards the end of the 1981 sessions for the previous album, Come An' Get It, and they had a go at recording it at Rock City in Shepperton — but it only really took shape during the sessions at Clearwell Castle. On hearing the framework, Marsden says, Coverdale disappeared with the cassette, and the lyrics were finished in about an hour. The song has always been credited jointly to Marsden and Coverdale, though Louder notes that Coverdale has since given several differing accounts of his own role in writing it.
The 2013 Japanese run took in Takamatsu and Kagoshima as well as Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya. Coverdale told BARKS that playing to new audiences is exciting because it means making new friends, and that the previous tour had taken them to Okayama and Miyazaki for the first time. Those cities may not be on the Shinkansen, he allowed — and then called the Shinkansen the best train in the world, on the grounds that flying means stress on either side of customs and a tour bus shakes too much to sleep properly.
On 3 April 2013 Whitesnake released Made In Japan – Live At Loud Park 11, a complete recording of their set at the Loud Park 11 festival, issued on Blu-ray, DVD and double CD. BARKS reported the release alongside the Japanese tour that would follow the next month — their first in about a year and a half.
Whitesnake was formed in 1978. In a Craft Recordings press release carried on the band's official site, the group is described as the next chapter for David Coverdale after the international acclaim he had won fronting Deep Purple. Having appeared on Deep Purple's Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band, he formed Whitesnake to pursue his own songwriting vision. The release characterises the band's earliest work as rooted in blues, soul and classic British rock, with later albums pairing those influences with bigger hooks, a heavier guitar-driven sound and arena-rock scale.
David Coverdale played his last gig as a member of Deep Purple on 15 March 1976. The band's official site marked the fortieth anniversary of that night with a post on 15 March 2016. The line-up he left behind is the one known as Mk4.
David Coverdale was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band's official site announced it in February 2016, gave the date of the ceremony as 8 April that year in New York City, and suggested marking the occasion with Deep Purple Live. A year later, writing about the thirtieth anniversary of the 1987 album Whitesnake, the site noted that the induction had fallen exactly a year earlier — and suggested that was no coincidence.
Ready An' Willing, from 1980, was recorded at Ridge Farm and at Central Recorders Studio & Sauna, and engineered, mixed and produced by Martin "Basher" Birch. The players were David Coverdale on vocals, Micky Moody and Bernie Marsden on the two guitars, Neil Murray on bass, Ian Paice on drums and Jon Lord on keyboards — a line-up that included two men from Deep Purple.
Saints & Sinners is the album that carries the original versions of two songs that would become worldwide hits later on. Marking its thirty-fifth anniversary, the band's official site pointed to exactly that: the original recordings of Here I Go Again and Crying In The Rain. The record runs to ten tracks, opening with Young Blood and closing with the title song, Saints An' Sinners.
Slide It In, from 1984, was Whitesnake's first US Top 40 release. In the Craft Recordings press release carried on the band's official site, it is described as the album that pushed their blues-rock foundation towards a leaner, more radio-ready hard rock, powered by Love Ain't No Stranger, Slow an' Easy and the swaggering title track. It kept the grit and swing of the earlier work while pointing clearly at the bigger hooks and heightened production that would soon define the band's international breakthrough. It was later certified double platinum in the United States.
That album goes by more than one name: Whitesnake, 1987, and even Serpens Albus. In an interview reposted on the band's official site, David Coverdale explained it himself: Whitesnake is the official title, and Serpens Albus is simply the Latin for it. There was never a plan for so many titles, he said — he always refers to it as the 87 album.
The 1987 album brought Whitesnake a new logo. David Coverdale says it was meant as a break with the past — a whole new beginning, a fresh start. He worked on it with Hugh Syme, a Canadian graphic designer, and talked through everything he wanted in the presentation: a new logo, and an emblem in the shape of a Celtic, runic amulet that looked ancient, as though it had always been there, while still holding immense power. Every symbol inside the emblem stands for a positive energy — sun, moon, fertility — and there are two interlocking snakes in there as well. Nothing negative, he says, and no black magic nonsense.
As the sessions dragged on, David Coverdale considered disbanding Whitesnake altogether. Asked in the interview reposted on the band's official site whether he had thought the album was ill-fated and whether he had considered winding the band up, he answered that all of that applied. What kept him sane, he says, was probably his belief in the songs themselves; beyond that he could only pray he would eventually be able to sing them. His manager at the time, Howard Kaufman, was very supportive, and John Kalodner believed completely in the songs and the project — the two of them, he says, were a wonderful support system through all the ups and downs.
Asked how he reacted on learning that the 1987 album was one of the year's best sellers, David Coverdale said he had not expected it at all. Its success came as a huge sigh of relief, and the biggest surprise was that it kept going. With the problems and the emotional and financial costs of making the record, he had truly lost perspective. Once it started selling and went on selling, his feeling was simply thank God — otherwise, he says, he would probably have been ruined, and it would certainly have been the end of Whitesnake. The basic principle of his approach to work, he explains, is to make an album that is better than the last one in some way.
If Slide It In opened the door, the 1987 self-titled album kicked it off its hinges — that is how the Craft Recordings press release carried on the band's official site puts it. With Here I Go Again, Is This Love and Still of the Night on it, the record turned the band into international superstars. Here I Go Again, a reimagined version of a song first released in 1982, became their signature hit and topped the Billboard Hot 100; the album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 and was certified eight times platinum in the United States, and Is This Love reached number two on the Hot 100 as well.
The thirtieth-anniversary edition of the 1987 album was more than a commemorative reissue. According to the press release carried on the band's official site, Whitesnake "1987": Super Deluxe Edition was the first release under a newly signed catalogue deal between the band and Rhino Entertainment, the catalogue division of Warner Music Group. The deal covered both North American and Japanese rights, marking the first time a substantial part of the Whitesnake catalogue would sit with Warner worldwide. Coverdale said it felt like coming home: he had good memories of being with Warner in his Deep Purple days, and Warner had distributed his Geffen records too.
Whitesnake "1987": Super Deluxe Edition is a four-CD-and-DVD set: the album newly remastered, plus unreleased live and studio recordings, music videos, concert footage and a thirty-minute documentary built around a new interview with David Coverdale. It comes in a sixty-page hardbound book of rare and unseen photographs from the era, with an extended essay based on new interviews and a booklet of the album's lyrics in Coverdale's own handwriting. The release was originally set for 6 October and moved to 27 October because of manufacturing delays — an announcement made in Coverdale's own name.
Adrian Vandenberg founded his own band, Vandenberg, in 1980 and built an international career with it. David Coverdale asked him to come and play with his band, and he joined in 1986. According to the description of a Dutch documentary carried on Whitesnake's official site, he made a new arrangement for Here I Go Again and played its guitar solo. From then until 1999 he wrote Whitesnake's songs alongside Coverdale and toured the world with them many times over, in the largest stadiums and arenas. In 1999 he decided he had had enough and left; the friendship with Coverdale has continued, and he still turns up as a surprise guest at Whitesnake shows.
Adrian Vandenberg is introduced as probably the most successful rock musician the Netherlands has produced. According to the 2018 Dutch documentary description carried on Whitesnake's official site, he is best known for Burning Heart, the international hit with his own band, but was far more successful later with Whitesnake — Is This Love alone had drawn more than ninety million views on YouTube. The film follows him, then sixty-four, across several continents with his newer band Vandenberg's MoonKings. He lives in Enschede, where he finds the quiet to paint, compose and skate.
Marking the twenty-eighth anniversary of Slip Of The Tongue, the band's official site sent its congratulations to the people who made it: Adrian, Rudy, DC, Steve and Tommy — Vandenberg, Sarzo, Coverdale, Vai and Aldridge. The album runs to ten tracks, opening with the title song and closing with Sailing Ships.
Restless Heart is Whitesnake's ninth studio album, released on 26 May 1997 — as the band's official site recorded in its anniversary post.
Good To Be Bad came out on different dates in different territories. According to the band's official site it was released through SPV / Steamhammer in Germany on 18 April, across the rest of Europe on 21 April and in North America on 22 April. Alongside the standard jewel-case version there was a limited two-disc set, with an extra CD in a cardboard sleeve plus a poster, a photocard and a sticker.
The line-up on Good To Be Bad is David Coverdale on vocals, Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach on guitars, Timothy Drury on keyboards, Uriah Duffy on bass and Chris Frazier on drums. Coverdale said of the record that it contains all the elements he enjoys about Whitesnake and more — that he can hear moments taking him back to the bluesy early years, all the way through the band's musical history to the more electric side of where they were then. Making it, he said, was a labour of love and a joy.
The Purple Album is Whitesnake's tribute to the three years David Coverdale spent in Deep Purple. According to the press release carried on the band's official site, the songs were cherry-picked from Burn (1974), Stormbringer (1974) and Come Taste The Band (1975), with new versions of numbers such as Lay Down Stay Down, Lady Double Dealer and You Keep On Moving. Coverdale recorded it with guitarist Reb Beach, bassist Michael Devin, guitarist Joel Hoekstra — his first Whitesnake album — and drummer Tommy Aldridge, who was appearing on a Whitesnake studio album for the first time since 1989's Slip Of The Tongue.
The two-CD-and-Blu-ray version of The Purple Album: Special Gold Edition goes well beyond the original. According to the press release on the band's official site it adds live recordings and concert videos from The Purple Tour (The Gypsy, Mistreated), official music videos (Sail Away, You Fool No One) and an assortment of previously unreleased material including six alternate mixes of album tracks. The Blu-ray also carries a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the album and a song-by-song commentary from Coverdale. A two-LP version on gold vinyl was issued alongside it.
About a month after the retirement announcement, on 11 December 2025, Whitesnake's official site posted a notice about social media. Its title was Fare Thee Well — the same words used in the retirement announcement itself.
About a year after the retirement, on 15 August 2026, Whitesnake's official site started up again. The notice explained that over the past year they had heard from many people who missed having a place to celebrate everything Whitesnake — and that they missed it too. From then on, it said, the site would be Whitesnake HQ: a home for celebrating the music of David Coverdale and Whitesnake, revisiting the classic albums, uncovering stories from across the band's history and keeping the legacy alive.
The first move after the retirement was a vinyl reissue of three defining albums. Through Craft Recordings, the band's new catalogue label, Slide It In (1984), Whitesnake (1987) and Slip of the Tongue (1989) return to vinyl on 18 September 2026. All three come back in their original US single-LP configurations, each cut from the original analogue tapes. Alongside the standard black pressings there are limited colour variants: Whitesnake on "Tan Smoke" and "Stone Marble" and also on "Gold Black Ice", Slide It In on "Onyx" and Slip of the Tongue on "Crimson Moon".
In 2025 Whitesnake revisited their 2011 album as Forevermore – Revisited – Remixed – Remastered. On 9 October that year the band's official site posted a video of David Coverdale talking about how it was made. The remix project was still running right up to the point, in November, when he announced his retirement.
There are two Whitesnakes, different in character. As Louder sets it out, one is the blues-rock group David Coverdale formed in March 1978; the other is the line-up he assembled from the middle of the 1980s for a campaign to conquer America. For the first of them he chose players for their musical expertise and for personalities that fitted together. By the time Slide It In was released in the United States in 1984, the guitar mainstays of that era — Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody — were long gone, and John Sykes, formerly of Thin Lizzy, had come in. Bassist Neil Murray was re-hired, briefly, and was the sole reminder of the line-up some people still regarded as definitive.
Saints & Sinners was not an easy record to make. According to Louder, David Coverdale read the riot act to the band in January 1982 and at one point pulled the plug entirely, fed up with their attitudes — people, he said at the time, were content to cruise on gold status. Micky Moody walked out at the end of the sessions, and in May wages were frozen. When the band was reassembled that summer Moody was back, and Bernie Marsden had been replaced by Mel Galley, the former Trapeze guitarist who had sung backing vocals on the album. Marsden later called it a remarkably good album made under difficult circumstances, and added that it was a shame nobody but Coverdale was fully credited on the sleeve.
Slide It In was never released as a single but became the title track of the album. Songfacts describes it as taking a page from the Kiss playbook: a lascivious rocker entirely devoid of profanity and very obviously about sex, fitting the band's snake motif — and the cover art has a woman wearing a snake for a necklace. Speaking to the London freesheet Metro in June 2009, Coverdale said a good many media people had told him they lost their virginity to the song.
Micky Moody's departure stung all the more, Bernie Marsden says, once Here I Go Again grew its other head. By Marsden's account he had asked Moody for help on the bridge, and Moody wanted to watch the football instead. Moody now reckons, Marsden grinned, that he could have bought Chelsea had he given him that ninety minutes.
Here I Go Again is usually taken as an inspiring song about facing your challenges head-on. According to Songfacts it is nothing of the kind: it is a song about heartbreak and the loneliness that comes with it. David Coverdale wrote the lyric in Portugal, and what it documents is the breakdown of his first marriage, to Julia Borkowski, whom he had married in 1974.
Here I Go Again was a US number one in 1987, but it was written in 1981 and first released in 1982, when Whitesnake was a very different band. As Songfacts tells it, David Coverdale wrote it with guitarist Bernie Marsden, put it on Saints 'N' Sinners and issued it as a UK single, where it reached number thirty-four. By 1987 the line-up had changed completely, with Coverdale the only constant. They re-recorded it for that year's self-titled album and, that summer, released it as a single in America for the first time; in October it went to number one. In Britain the re-release, labelled the "US Mix", reached number nine.
There are three recordings of Here I Go Again, made for different purposes. As Songfacts lays it out, the 1982 original runs 5:08, building slowly over a gospel organ played by Jon Lord, with the drums not arriving until 1:20. The 1987 album version runs 4:35 with a more assertive keyboard intro by Don Airey and drums at 1:15; that is the one used in the video. Then the band's label, Geffen, ordered a super-radio-friendly version for the single, so Coverdale went back into the studio with Airey and a set of session players and cut a third, running 3:52, which gets straight to the action with drums and guitar from the top — and leaves twenty-two seconds before the vocal, plenty of time for a DJ to talk over.
One line changed in the American version of Here I Go Again: the original "Like a hobo I was born to walk alone" became "Like a drifter". Two explanations sit side by side. Louder says the change was made to avoid confusion with another word. Songfacts notes the same substitution but offers no reason for it, remarking only that it was clearly a better word choice.
The 1987 radio version was produced by Keith Olsen, known for Fleetwood Mac's self-titled album of 1975. As Songfacts reports, Olsen had produced Heart's Passionworks in 1983 and brought that band's rhythm section — drummer Denny Carmassi and bassist Mark Andes — to the session, along with guitarist Dann Huff. Speaking on the Songfacts Podcast, Andes said the players were feeding off the energy of Coverdale's vocal: the singer had a cold or something, and still sang the song like the professional he was, which carried into the vibe of the musicians.
The two Jaguars Tawny Kitaen dances on in the Here I Go Again video both belonged to people making it: according to Songfacts, one was David Coverdale's car and the other belonged to Marty Callner, who directed the clip. The video was an enormous hit on MTV and one of the first of the "tease" videos; among hair bands in particular it became standard practice to keep viewers watching with flashes of beautiful women. Kitaen, who had been in the 1984 film Bachelor Party, appeared in several Whitesnake videos. She and Coverdale married in 1989 and divorced in 1991.
When Tawny Kitaen died in 2021, David Coverdale remembered her as inseparable from Whitesnake — synonymous with the band, as Loudwire reported him saying. After her death, Here I Go Again returned to the top of the rock chart.
Still Of The Night was the first single from the 1987 self-titled album, written by David Coverdale with guitarist John Sykes. Songfacts notes that a great many listeners hear Led Zeppelin in it: the naked vocal followed by the huge riff evokes Black Dog, and the bridge brings Kashmir to mind. Coverdale's own account of the musical inspiration points elsewhere entirely — to Jailhouse Rock, the Elvis Presley hit of 1957.
By the time the album came out, the guitarist who had played on it was no longer in the band. As Songfacts records, John Sykes had left and been replaced by Adrian Vandenberg and Vivian Campbell — and it is those two who appear in the video. The record became a worldwide hit with the men on screen and the man on the tape being different people.
Is This Love was not originally written for Whitesnake. According to Songfacts, David Coverdale wrote it with John Sykes in the south of France during the album's early writing period — but before leaving the UK a friend at EMI had told him they were looking for ideas that might suit Tina Turner. What's Love Got To Do With It had just gone global, and knowing Coverdale was going away to write, they asked him to say if anything came up that could follow it. So when he started the song, it was for Turner. Tinkering away at it in a French villa, he was overheard by Sykes, who said it sounded nice; Coverdale told him it was for Tina Turner, not for their band. In the end David Geffen, then head of their label, heard it and told Coverdale to keep it for Whitesnake.
Is This Love reached number two in America and no higher — held back, according to Songfacts, by George Michael's Faith. The period around 1987 was full of big ballads that became the biggest hits for bands otherwise known for loud guitars and lascivious lyrics: Def Leppard's Love Bites and White Lion's Wait came the same year, Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn and Cheap Trick's The Flame the next. For most of those bands the ballad was the biggest hit; for Whitesnake it was not, since Here I Go Again had gone to number one and Is This Love was the follow-up single.
By the time Is This Love was released as a single, the version of Whitesnake that had recorded it was breaking up: Songfacts records that Coverdale had to put together another band to go on the road and promote it. Whitesnake, the site notes, had been the name of several of Coverdale's solo projects after he left Deep Purple in the first place.
In Britain, Whitesnake had a built-in audience from the start. As Songfacts puts it, David Coverdale was already well known there when he left Deep Purple and formed the band, which made cracking America a great deal harder. They made inroads with 1984's Slide It In and broke through with the 1987 self-titled album — and when they toured America behind it, they did so as the opening act for Mötley Crüe.
Tommy Aldridge's return in 2013 was his third stint in Whitesnake. Speaking to BARKS, David Coverdale was delighted about it, and revealed that many of the songs on Good To Be Bad — Best Years among them — had in fact been arranged on the assumption that Aldridge would play them. A misunderstanding between the two of them had then kept them apart for some years. With Aldridge back, Coverdale said he was looking forward to hearing what he would bring to the material from Good To Be Bad and Forevermore.
Whitesnake's farewell tour, The Farewell Tour MMXXII, began in May 2022 and was suspended at the end of June: as BARKS reported, David Coverdale had been diagnosed with sinus and tracheal infections. More than a year later, in October 2023, he told a SiriusXM programme that he was in touch with the band all year round and that Whitesnake still existed and offers were still coming in — but that he could accept none of them until his physical problems were resolved. He had recently had a fall and injured two rotator cuffs, which would affect his performance. He could promise nothing until his health was clear, he said, and had no intention of going out on tour, having the same thing happen as the year before, and coming home again.
The retirement was announced by video. As Blabbermouth reported, David Coverdale made it public in a video released on 13 November 2025. He was seventy-four at the time.
John Sykes, the guitarist who wrote Still Of The Night and Is This Love with David Coverdale for the 1987 album, died in January 2025. On the 21st of that month Blabbermouth reported the tributes paid to him by a great many musicians, for his work with Thin Lizzy and with Whitesnake.
The Purple Album was also made as a gesture of respect and gratitude towards two men: Jon Lord, who died in 2012, and Ritchie Blackmore, who had stepped back from the rock world. As BARKS describes it, the Mk III and Mk IV incarnations of Deep Purple that David Coverdale sang in had left three albums behind — Burn (1974), Stormbringer (1974) and Come Taste The Band (1975) — and this record breathed new life into those songs through the Whitesnake of the day.
What David Coverdale set out to do on The Purple Album was to respect the Deep Purple originals while arranging them the way Whitesnake would — he told BARKS he had "snaked them up". He handed the current members Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste The Band and asked them to learn every song properly and then bring their own personality and interpretation to it, on the grounds that doing exactly the same thing again would be pointless. He chose the songs himself and set their basic shape; the arrangements were the band's, and in his view they brought a new thrill that was not in the originals.
The Purple Album approached Deep Purple's songs with a twin-guitar line-up. Speaking to BARKS, David Coverdale said that featuring the different personalities and talents of Reb Beach and Joel Hoekstra was one of the album's important points — and that showing what Beach could do on a Whitesnake record mattered particularly, since although they had played Burn on the 2004 tour, Beach had not taken the guitar solo then. Keyboards are indispensable in Deep Purple material and Derek Hilland played them, but Coverdale had told him from the outset that the two guitarists would be the focus, and Hilland accepted that.
David Coverdale took up social media at the suggestion of Doug Aldrich, then the band's guitarist. As he told BARKS, Aldrich argued it was a useful tool for hearing directly from fans; Coverdale was against it at first, saying he had no time, he had work, and what time he had he spent with his family. Trying it, he found he rather enjoyed it. And while The Purple Album was being made he had been slipping hints in among the jokes — a photograph of a purple Christmas tree the previous Christmas, purple lighting in the studio. He had wanted the album to be a surprise for fans around the world.
Before The Purple Album there had been talks about a joint project with Ritchie Blackmore. As David Coverdale told BARKS, the two of them had discussed how good it would be to make an album together and tour the world with it, playing new songs and old Deep Purple numbers — and had even talked about how striking it would be if Coverdale sang Rainbow songs and Blackmore played Whitesnake ones. Blackmore never said yes and never said no. The Blackmore/Coverdale project fell through, and it was out of that sequence of events that The Purple Album came.
Asked which Rainbow songs he would choose to sing, David Coverdale pointed to the early ones. Speaking to BARKS he said he particularly liked the Cozy Powell period and called 1976's Rising superb. The first album, from 1975, he described as Ritchie Blackmore realising ideas he had not been able to use in Deep Purple, using members of Elf, a band that had once opened for them; Rising, by contrast, was new ideas built up by the finest musicians, and Ronnie James Dio was in tremendous voice. After Roger Glover joined, Rainbow moved towards a poppier identity, which was not the kind of thing that interested him — what he had liked, he said, was Rainbow's dark side.