DVD Review: Whitesnake - Live In The Still Of The Night

I always thought it was a little unfair to condemn Whitesnake to the rank of Led Zeppelin pretender. I don't think it was all that deliberate seeing that David Coverdale is from roughly the same place and generation as the Zep guys and they were all influenced by that same group of American blues musicians. Sounding too much like Zeppelin is not a bad thing in my book, and seeing that I will probably never get to witness any new live stuff from that great band, a healthy dose of some new Whitesnake may just be the cure.

Whitesnake has always been a revolving door of musicians supporting band founder and frontman David Coverdale. Live In The Still Of The Night is certainly no different, finding Coverdale again surrounded by five hired guns, who breath new life into a band that was unceremoniously left for dead nearly 20 years ago. Back in 1997 Coverdale attempted a comeback with his Slip Of The Tongue guitar-ace Adrian Vandenberg, but the resulting two albums failed to make much of an impact. This new all-star lineup of Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach on guitars, Marco Mendoza on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums, and Timothy Drury on keyboards are arguably his best band yet, and they certainly have the muscle to resurrect this blues-rock dinosaur at a time when most of these "nu-rock" bands need to be stepped on with a two ton paw.

I passed on this DVD a few times before I finally decided to buy it. I figured that a 50-something-year-old Coverdale was probably a little too washed up to do these old classics any justice. I expected some low-budget production that would barely be good enough to entice the remaining Whitesnake faithful into shelling out twenty-plus bucks to see their hero one more time. I was way off the mark on both accounts. Coverdale can still belt out the arena-rock ballads and blues-metal anthems with the best of them, and he oozed enough charisma to keep the audience eating out of his hands for the entire show. Except for a few extra wrinkles on his face, he also looks exactly the same as he did twenty years ago.

Live In The Still Of The Night was filmed at London's famous Hammersmith Apollo (or "Odeon" to us old timers) on October 20th, 2004. The show was filmed in high definition by famed concert video director Hamish Hamilton, whose work also includes U2 and Peter Gabriel. For the most part, this show looks incredible, but I found some of Hamilton's techniques a little annoying, namely his trademark use of slow motion, rapid camera cuts, and grainy black and white footage that gets interspersed throughout the presentation. Thankfully, this is used sparingly and tastefully enough as to not be overly distracting.

Article Author: Paul Roy

Paul Roy is a network administrator by day and amateur music DVD critic by night. When not attending as many live concerts as he possibly can, Paul likes nothing more than to kick back with a good concert DVD and rattle some walls. …

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