“I’ve always been conscious of writing the best songs I can,” Bernie Marsden told me many years ago, and songs were indeed everything the legendary English guitarist cared about – that and his friends about whom he was always much more ready to talk than he was about himself. This is why everybody loved Bernie and this is why everybody’s devastated by the news of his passing away yesterday, August 24th, at the age of 72 – everybody: those who knew Marsden and those fascinated with the deep tone of his instrument.
“Bernie was great, Bernie was very funny”: courtesy of Phil Mogg, these characteristics of the late veteran nicely summarized Marsden both as a person and a player – the player with UFO and BABE RUTH, WILD TURKEY and PAICE ASHTON LORD but, foremost if not the first, with WHITESNAKE which he formed with David Coverdale and Micky Moody. Without Bernie, there would be no such classics as “Here I Go Again” and “Fool For Your Loving” that the ensemble kept on performing and cutting anew after Marsden’s strings went elsewhere and his voice ceased to be one third of the “three-piece suite” – yet he carried on working with Micky, providing riffs for his partner’s slider to roll across, further down the line, after a stint with ALASKA, in THE MOODY-MARSDEN BAND, THE SNAKES, THE COMPANY OF SNAKES and M3.
But hard rock aside, what Bernie truly adored was the old-masters blues, and his final albums – “Kings” and “Chess” from 2021 and 2022’s “Trios” – were dedicated to that patinated material which Marsden gave a fresh shine. No wonder, then, his admirers included Jack Bruce, Joe Bonamassa and the recently departed Pete Brown, the last artist’s forthcoming platter featuring Bernie’s incendiary passages, as well as Elkie Brooks whose duet with Bernie, preserved for posterity not so long ago, might be his last-ever recording.
To say Bernie Marsden will be sorely missed would feel like underestimation of affection he elicited from people.
