Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale discussed the band’s staple tune “Fool for Your Loving” – originally released on 1980’s “Ready an’ Willing” and then re-released on 1989’s “Slip of the Tongue” – explaining how the song came to be by request of none other than BB King (transcribed by UG):
“Bernie [Marsden, guitar] had interviewed BB King – the amazing bluesman – as a young white blues guitarist. It was a super interview for one of the music magazines in England.
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“And BB had said, ‘Hey, why don’t you guys write a song for me?’ So there was a challenge.
“We cut a demo of it, and [producer] Martin Birch and I – I was sitting in the control room of a studio called Ridge Farm outside London – I looked at him and I said, ‘It’s a bit good…’
“One of the ideas was – I think BB at the time was working with The Crusaders, so there was this really kind of funky jazz groove underneath, and that’s how I was hearing ‘Fool for Your Loving’ for him.
“But when we did the *sings main riff* – I went, ‘Oh, geez, ‘cmon!’ So Birch and I looked at each other and said, ‘I think we should hang on to this.’ Sorry BB. And that was our first significant hit around the world.”
Interestingly enough, another massive WS hit, “Is This Love,” was also originally crafted for another artist – Tina Turner. As reported, Coverdale said:
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“I was messing about with this idea for Tina Turner – the amazing, luminous Tina Turner; I would still love to hear her perform it. I was playing it on the piano *sings the melody*…
“And John [Sykes] would stay up most of the night – he’d get up at the crack of 4PM straight to the kitchen for a coffee. I’m playing the song and he said, ‘Oh, what is that?’ I went, ‘Oh, it’s not for us, it’s for Tina Turner.’
“He sits down, picks his Les up, turns on his Rockman little speaker and starts playing the most incredible embellishments, just entirely naturally. It was so meant to be, the song just unfolded in a beautiful way.
“I still never thought of Whitesnake recording it as a full ballad. When [David] Geffen heard it, it was, ‘No, no, no, you’re keeping that.’ I was a bit nervous about it – until it was a smash hit! [Laughs]
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“And it still is. It’s a huge, swoony song. At times we’ll play these big heavy metal dark festivals, and I’ll go, ‘I wonder whether we should drop ‘Is This Love’?’
“But no, they’re all there, all these big guys in leather coats, Iron Maiden t-shirts, [singing] ‘Is this looove…’ It’s adorable. It’s a good vibe, a very positive vibe song.”