Here I Go Again … Again
Sometimes, you turn on the radio and hear a familiar song but it doesn’t quite sound right. Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” is one of those records – because, over the years, it’s been released to radio and streaming services in so many versions.
Best known is the take that you saw on MTV and heard on most radio stations in 1987. It’s the version with the picture up top, where they didn’t bother to take the price tag off Tawny Kitaen’s new shoes. Today, it exists on YouTube as a blurry “official” clip from Rhino Records.
Whitesnake actually recorded “Here I Go Again” for the first time five years earlier. That take has a more organic-sounding organ intro, instead of a synth, and is less bombastic – more like a band on stage than a highly produced single. (Singer David Coverdale is the only band member on both.) The most notable difference is that Coverdale sings “like a hobo, I was born to walk alone,” instead of “drifter.” The story goes that it sounded too much like “homo.”
After the big hit version in 1987, there came a third crack at the song. You can’t really call “Here I Go Again” a heavy metal song, but as popular as it was, the record company thought they could get in played on the poppier radios stations if they added chugging drums while also smoothing the song out with stacked vocal harmonies, a jangly tack piano, and a different guitar solo. Weirdly, they cut Coverdale’s big high note. You can hear the cut at about 2:43.
So, that’s three versions of “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. That’s enough, right? Well, in 2002, for the album Greatest Hits: Revisited, Remixed, Remastered, there’s a version that sounds a lot like the best known 1987 recording, but with the cymbals pushed way up front.
I’ve been meaning to put all these versions in one place for a while, and by crazy coincidence, when I finally get around to it, Rhino Records has just released an eight-CD collection of six live Whitesnake shows called Access All Areas: Live. So, let’s wrap it up with a version of “Here I Go Again” from London’s Hammersmith Apollo on October 20th, 2004.