Whitesnake - Slide it In

Happy Valentine's Day (VD, har de har har). For today's listening enjoyment I decided to spin one of rocks greatest collection of love songs. This is not high art ... and I should be a little ashamed of what is about to happen. But I really have no shame, so here goes.

Let's peek under the covers and listen to Whitesnake's 1984 release Slide it In.

Like a lot of people, this was my introduction to David Coverdale and Whitesnake. Which puts me firmly in the camp of the great unwashed, but I didn't care. I didn't have a deep well of musical knowledge at the time, other than what I liked I liked. Even now I'm surprised that I wasn't reading Rolling Stone, or reading Guitar Player and stuff back then. Oh sure, I'd flip through them in the magazine rack when I was looking for my comics, but I wasn't spending my limited cash on them. I'd rather pour over the credits and listen to the records in my room. Which is what I did. Oddly, that's what I'm doing now.

Reading the back cover reveals a near who's who of the hard rock pantheon. From Jon Lord who had co-founded Deep Purple, to Cozy Powell who's name was associated with everyone from Black Sabbath to Jeff Beck and all points in between. John Sykes at the time was primarily known as a guy who was in Thin Lizzy but well after the band's '70s success. The other players Mel Galley, who played guitar co-wrote a lot of the songs on Slide it In, notably "Love Ain't No Stranger" and bassist Neil Murphy who like Cozy and Mel seemed to fit into a lot of other musical acts.

I always associate this album with the summer of '84 the year I turned 21 (the mirror image of 12 but a little more mature) and driving around with the windows down. The rock station here seemed to love the album, and although "Love Ain't No Stranger" got the summer airplay, "Slow an' Easy" and "Slide it In" saw a lot of action as well.

This was really good stuff, but my initial reaction to what is probably now my favourite song on the album, "Slow an' Easy" was puke warm (okay, that was a typo, but as I read it again, it seemed to fit with the tone so I left it in) at best. You could say the song was a grower not a shower. Oh don't roll your eyes at me. Truth be told the lyrics to most of the songs could have been written by a horny twelve year old who had just discovered what "double entendre" meant and went to town trying to fit in as many references as possible. The band name itself was about as clever as a cricket wicket to the side of the head. Whitesnake, get it? Get it? Ha ha ha, it's a penis! Trousersnake didn't have the same punch.

Anyway, now that that's out of my system let's get in the way way back machine and see what was going on about 14,600 days ago (more or less depending on which release date you count backward from) when Whitesnake (giggle) released Slide in In (tee hee). For reference, this is the Canadian release and the track list and order may differ from what you remember. That's okay, to me this is my truth.

Side one opens up without any foreplay and get rights down to business with "Slide in In" which sets the tone for good or ill, and you either get it, or you don't. "Slide it in, right to the top." Yup, friggin lyrical geniuses. The song also rocks. This is followed by "Slow an' Easy" and it's a slow burn that gradually builds and when the release comes it's pretty satisfying. At this point you'd think the band would give you a breather and let you roll over for a minute. Nope. "Love Ain't No Stranger" pushes all the right buttons, and despite being a mid tempo rocker it's got a great groove and rhythm. The riffage continues with "All or Nothing" a song that has all the ingredients but doesn't come together. After three killers in a row, the band keeps pumping away, but never really goes anywhere. Side one closes with "Gambler" a song that starts with Jon Lord before the guitars start working in tandem. It's another solid song, and so far this is classic '80s hard rock.

I took a breather before getting up and turning the record over. I had the insert with the lyrics and scanning through the songs on side two I have to admit I don't remember much if anything about the songs that are coming up. Which sort of makes sense, let's be honest that 1,2,3 punch on side one is pretty amazing, and merits thinking of the album as a whole as a classic even before getting to the second side.

Well, let's get into this and see what gets stirred ... in my memory. "Guilty of Love" sets an almost frenetic pace, and the dual leads called to mind old vintage Thin Lizzy. Which may have been deliberate, or more than likely was just my brain looking for a way to fit in a Thin Lizzy reference. "Hungry for Love" opens with a riff that feels like a thinly disguised reworking of Seger's "Her Strut" that just doesn't really go anywhere. "Give Me More Time" is more of the same. I think at this point I'm suffering a little ear fatigue. The band is colouring with a limited palette and while I love consistency it's starting to blur together. "Spit it Out" is way more fun than I expected it to be, and while this is probably the most embarrassing song on the album, it's also one of the most fun. Unabashedly taking KISS' "Lick it Up" and going one step over the line, the band takes it's shot at being the kings of juvenile rock and roll. The album closes out with "Standing in the Shadow of Love" which was another wonderfully generic rock song delivered with aplomb ... and then it was over.

All in all, I still think of this as an excellent record, and true if I was to assign a rating system to each song and then weigh the results as an aggregate the album would seem a bit thin, but this is a classic case of the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, and some of those parts were huge.

The album may not be to everyone's tastes, but when they were good, boy howdy they were good. If you don't like it, spit it out.