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Review: Bernie Marsden & Hand of Dimes, Fleece
Is there a jollier fella in rock than Bernie Marsden? Here’s a chap whose winning way with a catchy hard rock choon has given him writing credits on a string of hit records from back in the days when that meant serious quantities of loot. He could presumably stay at home with his royalty cheques, crying “Kerr-ching!” every time one of his songs comes on the radio. But like most of his loyal audience packing the Fleece on a Sunday night, he’s a rock lifer who seems to enjoy nothing more than the opportunity to get up and play. Only a few weeks ago, he made an unannounced appearance at this very venue to join US guitarist Jared James Nichols. (“Too tall and too thin,” remarks Bernie, who these days rocks the Eddie Large look in an especially loud shirt.)
His collaboration with Hand of Dimes began at the Steelhouse Festival in Wales and proved so mutually satisfactory that they’re doing it all again for this tour. Hand of Dimes go first with a set drawn mostly from their debut album, Raise. Although he’s a little too low in the mix at first, Nev MacDonald swiftly cements his status as one of the last of a dying breed of great rock belters.
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The band have got some excellent songs too, notably the harmonica and slide guitar-driven Guilty, which has a stomp that wouldn’t be out of place on Led Zep III, and the driving Pinstriped Arrogance.
That Nev’s never really had the breaks he so richly deserves is underlined when he revisits songs from a couple of his previous bands – Like I’ve Never Known by Kooga (whose keyboard and harmonica player Neil Garland is back on board with Hand of Dimes) and deliriously received set-closer House of Love by Skin.
Bernie’s up next for an all-too-brief, unaccompanied four song set on acoustic guitar, which, he explains, is how all those Whitesnake classics were written. The Time is Right for Love is unearthed from the Trouble album, having been played live only once before. He has fun with morphing the intro to Ain’t Gonna Cry No More into Big Yellow Taxi and concludes with a lovely rendition of the Fabs’ From Me to You, observing that, like so many musicians of his generation, he wouldn’t be here without them.
Bernie’s such a natural raconteur that you can’t help wishing he’d do a whole show like this. But after a long interval, he’s back with Hand of Dimes for the main attraction: a full electric Whitesnake show, beginning with just the one song from his current solo album, Shine. This is a set list that writes itself, but the fact that one can almost predict what’s coming next makes it no less enjoyable. If anything. Nev’s voice sounds even more powerful than on his own stuff. Whisper it quietly, but he performs these songs much better than the increasingly raspy ‘Sir David Coverdale’, while the rest of Dimes are clearly living the dream by playing the blues-rock soundtrack to the late ’70s.
A terrific Trouble reminds us that The Temperance Movement must have been paying close attention while writing Only Friend. Fool For Your Loving, with its distinctive Hammond intro is dedicated by Bernie to his late bandmate Jon Lord. The guitarist is on great form as they romp through the rest of the songbook from Ready an’ Willing to Walking in the Shadow of the Blues, via Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland’s Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City, which Whitesnake made their own back in their Brit blues-rock incarnation and prompts the traditional gusty terrace singalong.
What’s left? Why, Here I Go Again, the Marsden co-write that hit number one in the US in 1987 after being re-recorded by the pretty boy version of Whitesnake. He introduces this as “a song that makes my wife and daughters very happy indeed. Whenever we’re in America, they always remark, ‘That bloody song’s on the radio again’. I reply, ‘Don’t knock it…'”
All photos by Shona Cutt
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